Biologizing mental illness conveniently depoliticizes its social causes

Evidence

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. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 82

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. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 82

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the prior claim that stress has been privatized, reframing systemic dysfunction as individual illness. — connects to: Depression is now the most-treated condition in Britain’s NHS — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 42; Mental illness is captured discontent that points toward a constructive austerity. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 164; Bipolar disorder is the mental illness proper to capitalism’s interior — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 75 (+16 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The move — instantiation says nothing about causation, so biology screens off rather than explains — is a genuinely hard analytic point.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 82
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Related

• Biochemical explanations of mental illness serve capitalism by depoliticizing suffering (similarity 0.94)
• Treating mental illness as brain chemistry depoliticizes it and serves capitalist interests (similarity 0.94)
• Medicalizing depression blocks political explanation of its systemic causes (similarity 0.86)
• Stress has been privatized, reframing systemic dysfunction as individual illness (similarity 0.86)
• Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness (similarity 0.84)
• Capital privatizes stress as illness then profits from treating it (similarity 0.83)
• Capitalist societies socialize stress-producing conditions while privatizing their cost (similarity 0.82)
• Mental health problems are captured discontent that should be redirected at Capital (similarity 0.82)
• Mental illness is captured discontent that points toward a constructive austerity. (similarity 0.82)
• Capitalism’s boom-bust cycles mirror and produce bipolar disorder in populations (similarity 0.80)
• Neoliberalism converts political antagonisms into individualised medical conditions. (similarity 0.80)
• Treating youth distress as individual illness rules out systemic political explanation (similarity 0.80)
• Bipolar disorder is the mental illness proper to capitalism’s interior (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberal welfare policy has privatized stress and depoliticized depression (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness #expands (0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1601
• Biological determinism lets privileged subjects dismiss the social causes of inequality #expands (0.90) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 118
• Attributing blame to mental illness rather than guns is a moral disengagement strategy #expands (0.85)
• Labeling a slave population naturally decreasing masks economic extermination as biology #exemplifies (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 750
• The mental-health harm depends on social meaning, not mere violence exposure #qualifies (0.80)
• Lay explanations of racism favor individual pathology over structural factors #corroborates (0.80) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 353
• Biology represents what social engineering cannot yet alter #corroborates (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 186