Do You Want Improved Mental Health?
A serious problem that is easy to solve – finally
Contents
Develop your prefrontal cortex (i.e., your capacity to reason) so that the SELF (habit) does not blindly and “self-referentially” decision-make. Simply begin & remain searching for
what is true. Stop reflexively doing what makes you feel good. Use free will and take thoughtful time to make decisions.
Why is this happening?
Since the 1960s, the “progressives,” leftists, and other dysrational groups have been pushing postmodernism. I suppose this was a reaction to the authoritarianism of the Church.
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism toward the “grand narratives” of modernism, rejection of epistemic certainty or the stability of meaning, and emphasis on ideology as a means of maintaining political power. Claims to objectivity are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the “universal validity” of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.
Postmodernism – Wikipedia
Mental-illness is, however, a growing and civilization-threatening problem
There is no other way to say this: postmodernism produces emotional instability (i.e., poor mental health). In postmodernism, your brain consumes and enhances its own bad thoughts. And these thoughts will be, in the absence of reason (your mental exercise), a very bad mental diet.
For example:
Today’s Maoist Young Revolutionaries manage to be helpless, stupid, ignorant, and lame…
and –
The State Of Mental Health In America – 2023 Key Findings
- In 2019-2020, 20.78% of adults were experiencing a mental illness. That is equivalent to over 50 million Americans.
- The vast majority of individuals with a substance use disorder in the U.S. are not receiving treatment. 15.35% of adults had a substance use disorder in the past year. Of them, 93.5% did not receive any form of treatment.
- Millions of adults in the U.S. experience serious thoughts of suicide, with the highest rate among multiracial individuals. The percentage of adults reporting serious thoughts of suicide is 4.84%, totaling over 12.1 million individuals. 11% of adults who identified with two or more races reported serious thoughts of suicide in 2020 – 6% higher than the average among all adults.
- Over 1 in 10 youth in the U.S. are experiencing depression that is severely impairing their ability to function at school or work, at home, with family, or in their social life. 16.39% of youth (age 12-17) report suffering from at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year. 11.5% of youth (over 2.7 million youth) are experiencing severe major depression.
- Over half (54.7%) of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment, totaling over 28 million individuals. Even in Montana (ranked #1), over 4 in 10 adults with a mental illness did not receive care.
- Almost a third (28.2%) of all adults with a mental illness reported that they were not able to receive the treatment they needed. 42% of adults with AMI reported they were unable to receive necessary care because they could not afford it.
- 10.8% (over 5.5 million) of adults with a mental illness are uninsured. Hispanic adults with AMI were least likely to have health insurance, with 19% reporting they were not covered by insurance.
- 6.34% of youth in the U.S. reported a substance use disorder in the past year. That is equivalent to over 1.5 million youth in the U.S. who meet the criteria for an illicit drug or alcohol use disorder.
- 22.87% of adults who report experiencing 14 or more mentally unhealthy days each month were not able to see a doctor due to costs. In Georgia (ranked 51), over one-third of adults experiencing frequent mental distress are unable to afford a doctor’s visit.
- 59.8% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment. Asian youth with major depression were least likely to receive specialty mental health care, with 78% reporting they did not receive mental health services in the past year. In South Carolina, the lowest-ranking state, nearly 8 in 10 youth with depression do not receive care.
- Nationally, only 28% of youth with severe depression receive some consistent treatment (7-25+ visits in a year). Most (57.3%) youth with severe depression do not receive any care.
- Nationally, 1 in 10 youth who are covered under private insurance do not have coverage for mental or emotional difficulties – totaling over 1.2 million youth. In Arkansas (ranked 51), nearly one-quarter of youth with private insurance do not have coverage for mental health care.
- Only .718 percent of students are identified with emotional disturbance for an individualized education program (IEP). IEPs, with sufficient resources for schools and teachers, are critical for ensuring that youth with disabilities can receive the individualized services, supports, and accommodations to succeed in a school setting.
- In the U.S., there are an estimated 350 individuals for every one mental health provider. However, these figures may actually be an overestimate of active mental health professionals, as it may include providers who are no longer practicing or accepting new patients…
Church authoritarianism is/was a problem, but we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater
Just because authoritarianism is wrong doesn’t mean there is no absolute truth. I see problems in human thinking as a normal, though sometimes unhelpful, state of affairs. The Church did not. It declared human irrationality a sin. That was the problem. As a result, the people rebelled.
Moses discovered this, too (in the early days of monotheism). Moses just couldn’t get his people to follow. Inevitably, they would drift towards counterproductive behaviors and away from monotheism, like worshipping a golden calf.
For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the LORD while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die!
Deuteronomy 31:27 (5th book of the old testament)
I think it was a mistake to call irrationality sin. So let’s move on and take another look at absolute truth as the creator’s truth–and focus primarily on that. Humans are neither fallen nor perfect. We are often just irrational (intellectually immature). Absolute truth is the light. Postmodernism is the dark.
