Medicalising The New Normal
Sadly, now that the post-pandemic era is in sight, mental-health professionals are busy inventing new problems to worry about.
Photo: Priscilla Du Preez, Unsplash
It appears as if the mental-health industry is determined to ensure that we approach the post-pandemic as vulnerable, anxious patients rather than as citizens impatient to embrace freedom.
In recent months they have been busy telling us not to be in too much of a hurry to leave behind our lockdown lifestyle because we face a variety of post-pandemic related disorders.
Steven Taylor, a professor and clinical psychiatrist at the University of British Columbia claims that “there will be people who develop chronic mental-health problems” caused or exacerbated by the pandemic. Taylor, like numerous other mental-health professionals is busy inventing hitherto unknown psychological disorders. He anticipates a surge of “prolonged grieving disorder,” a condition that apparently affects about 10 per cent of bereaved people. Taylor claims that this condition only becomes apparent months after the death of a loved one and can last indefinitely.
Dr. Alain Brunet of the McGill University-affiliated Douglas Research Centre asserts that a “significant minority” of people—such as front-line health care workers or those who witnessed death or had a near-death experience—have developed or are at high risk for developing post-traumatic stress disorder due to their experiences during the pandemic. More alarmingly, he claims that “tenfold more” will struggle with an “adjustment disorder.”
The diagnosis of an adjustment disorder is one that can be triggered by virtually any dimension of human experience. Brunet states that “an adjustment disorder is like a little brother of PTSD.” This condition might develop as a “result of being exposed to a stressful but non-traumatic event,” such as losing a job, struggling financially or quarantining alone.
During the past 18 months the mental-health industry has regarded the pandemic as an opportunity to turn this global disaster into a mental-health crisis. It has warned us with fearful stories about the threat the pandemic represents to our psychological well-being. For example, The Sunday Times conveyed a mood of panic when it published an alarmist narrative about the tortured life of teenagers facing deteriorating mental health under lockdown. In the UK, The Royal College of Psychiatrists has asserted that the closure of schools and the lockdown threaten to unleash a mental-health crisis amongst young children that can damage them for life.
Sadly, now that the post-pandemic era is in sight, mental-health professionals are busy inventing new problems to worry about. They claim that the return to normal life will be anything but normal. Expect “heightened levels of stress and anxiety.” One psychiatrist advises us to beware as lockdown ends and we confront “re-entry syndrome”!
Re-entry syndrome illustrates how mental-health entrepreneurs complicate our lives. If you believe them, you could well imagine that millions of people who suffered in prisoner-of-war camps are now wary of their own liberation.
No doubt many professionals mean well when they raise concern about the mental-health impact of this or that dimension of the pandemic experience. But the cumulative outcome of their scaremongering about mental health is to make the situation worse. They turn our understandable anxiety about what lies ahead into a mental health issue. In this way they unwittingly cultivate a sense of powerlessness and distract people from coming to terms with an uncertain future.
To be sure, mental illness is a serious problem and can have a devastating impact on those of us that it afflicts. We trivialise this condition if the normal problems of existence are treated as mental-health issues. And that is of no help to those members of society who are genuinely afflicted with the agony of mental illness.