Medicalizing depression blocks political explanation of its systemic causes

Evidence

Depression is endemic. It is the condition most dealt with by the National Health Service, and is afflicting people at increasingly younger ages. The number of students who have some variant of dyslexia is astonishing. It is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being reclassified as a sickness. This pathologization already forecloses any possibility of politicization. By privatizing these problems – treating them as if they were caused only by chemical imbalances in the individual’s neurology and/or by their family background – any question of social systemic causation is ruled out. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 46

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that privatizing suffering forecloses politicization connects to the reader’s Frankfurt School corpus, where psychologism and the culture industry also individualize systemic malaise. — connects to: Treating youth distress as individual illness rules out systemic political explanation — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 46; Biologizing mental illness conveniently depoliticizes its social causes — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 82; Biochemical explanations of mental illness serve capitalism by depoliticizing suffering (+4 more)

Related

• Treating youth distress as individual illness rules out systemic political explanation (similarity 0.91)
• Biochemical explanations of mental illness serve capitalism by depoliticizing suffering (similarity 0.87)
• Biologizing mental illness conveniently depoliticizes its social causes (similarity 0.86)
• Stress has been privatized, reframing systemic dysfunction as individual illness (similarity 0.86)
• Treating mental illness as brain chemistry depoliticizes it and serves capitalist interests (similarity 0.85)
• Capital privatizes stress as illness then profits from treating it (similarity 0.84)
• 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)
• Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness (similarity 0.81)
• Neoliberalism converts political antagonisms into individualised medical conditions. (similarity 0.80)
• Privatized personal depression is being displaced by public political anger. (similarity 0.80)
• Mental illness is captured discontent that points toward a constructive austerity. (similarity 0.79)
• Depression is now the most-treated condition in Britain’s NHS (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Biologizing mental illness conveniently depoliticizes its social causes #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 82
• Treating mental illness as brain chemistry depoliticizes it and serves capitalist interests #corroborates (0.92) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 82
• Biochemical explanations of mental illness serve capitalism by depoliticizing suffering #corroborates (0.90)
• Neoliberalism converts political antagonisms into individualised medical conditions. #corroborates (0.90)
• Neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual mental illness #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1601
• Depression increasingly gets defined as illness, not difficulty, through biological reframing. #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 162