Politicians want to improve our worsening mental health with big psychiatric initiatives. The problem with this model, says historian of neuroscience Danielle Carr, is that it ignores the social and structural forces causing widespread mental suffering.
Although we desperately need better medications (that are affordable), this covers treatment. What’s being pointed out here is that we’re not addressing the causes. Legalization certainly helps with one cause, but there’s clearly way more contributing to the rise in mental illness which is largely being ignored.
I agree with what you’re saying and probably mostly agree with the article.
But the headline pitched it as an either/or thing (not psychiatry but politics!). My comment was meant to highlight the impact politics has had, and continues to have, on psychiatrists being able to use medicines that Western science has been well aware of the potential for in the treatment of mental illness for 50+ years.
There’s similarities in regards to body autonomy and Dr/patient autonomy with abortion access and psychiatric medicine that many people are ignorant too because of oppressive policies on the part of the Nixon administration that continue to be the status quo.
Public policy changes to address systemic causes of mental illness are absolutely needed. But pitching it in this sort of binary as the headline does misses the mark imo.