Why Is Our Mental Health in Crisis? It’s The White Patriarchy, Stupid
Our mental health crisis is more acute than in other high-income countries — and more therapists, drugs, or guns won’t solve it
We are not well.
We are anxious, we are angry, we are depressed. We are teetering on the brink. We are emotionally agitated, mentally distressed.
Everything is on the rise: Road rage, substance use, mass shootings. A paramedic writes in The New York Times, “I’ve never witnessed a mental health crisis like this one.”
He’s in the thick of it, but even us “ordinary” folks see evidence everywhere that we are losing it. News stories — the really outrageous ones — used to happen “over there.” Now everything is closing in.
A young woman who lived across the street from us was shot by a white supremacist at a Black Lives Matter protest. She is quadriplegic now, bound to a wheelchair for life.
A family who lives two doors down got stuck in traffic on a freeway, and a man with a gun attempted to take them hostage. They escaped on foot, clutching their toddler and newborn baby in their arms.
My elderly neighbor next door was attacked by his grown son, who struggles with…
