The key paragraph from our point of view is this:
"The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its de- politicization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital's drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRIs). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism."
On a first reading we assented to this. On a second we didn’t. A moment’s thought suggests any number of major figures who were well aware of social causation-is that the same as context?-with regard to mental illness. But of course it depends on what is meant by causation and what the collocation mental illness denotes. Bowlby, Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari and all the writers who have been influenced by Buddhism presume the importance of social context.
"The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its de- politicization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital's drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRIs). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism."
On a first reading we assented to this. On a second we didn’t. A moment’s thought suggests any number of major figures who were well aware of social causation-is that the same as context?-with regard to mental illness. But of course it depends on what is meant by causation and what the collocation mental illness denotes. Bowlby, Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari and all the writers who have been influenced by Buddhism presume the importance of social context.