I am so sick and tired of being told by leftists that our mental illness problems (my mental illness problem) are the fault of capitalism, or perhaps some such vague and useless thing as “the system.” Sometimes they say this specifically about suicide as well.
There is no simplistic relationship between the generosity of a country’s social safety net and its rates of mental illness and suicide. The Netherlands, a very generous social state and one that has invested a great deal of money and energy into modern psychiatric services, nevertheless suffers from high rates of mental illness. The Nordic social democratic model not only does not prevent suicidality, it is in fact associated with slightly higher than average rates. The USSR, supposedly home to an alternative economic system, had disturbingly high rates of mental illness. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has some of the highest suicide rates in the world. Meanwhile the advantages that more redistributive states might enjoy in mental wellness are hopelessly confounded by their overall status as wealthy and technologically advanced countries. If the problem is capitalism, why do various approaches to the market economy and attempts to ameliorate its ills not produce stable and significant advantages in mental wellness?
Everyone in our society lives under capitalism, yet only a small fraction have severe mental illnesses. Saying that the problem is capitalism is thus no more justifiable than saying that breathing air causes mental illness; whatever the relationship between capitalism and mental illness, it cannot be said that life under capitalism itself is causative of mental illness based simply on observing the presence of both. The 1% of the American population that suffers from schizophrenia lives under the same capitalism as the 99% of the population that does not. What is the causative explanation that functions here?
