Suicide has been perceived, academically at least, as a class issue since the publication of Emile Durkheim’s Suicide in 1897. While Durkheim’s work has been duly been criticised since, its importance in establishing suicide risk relative to class and social position has been invaluable, and research has since repeatedly reflected the material reality that social and environmental factors have the most profound effects on individuals’ mental health and risk of suicide. Owen Jones’ recent column in the Independent highlights this, referencing a Samaritans study which shows the poorest to be ten times more at risk of suicide than the most affluent. Yet cuts to key mental health services persist under British austerity as, surely, they will in Ireland. Those made to suffer most because of capitalism in the first instance are those whose welfare is deemed insufficiently significant as governments turn to austerity to “get back on track”. The clear contrast between what are perceived as economic necessities and human welfare and, in this case, survival, is achingly clear.
And yet we seem loathe to acknowledge the issues of mental illness and suicide as ones which require significant structural change to combat. When “we need to talk about suicide” means “we need more of the same, please”, something is deeply wrong with our cultural perception of the problem at hand. The question nobody seems inclined to ask, amidst all of our talking: what does it mean to be healthy in a sick society?
An excellent, recent piece on Demand Nothing acknowledges the difficulties associated with clinical responses to depression, particularly as regards cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), in which there is a certain tendency to lay blame at the feet of the individual living with depression and ignore or minimise contributing systemic elements, viz. “I am thinking wrong, and not engaging enough in capitalist activity, therefore I am depressed”. Unfortunately, this contradiction expresses itself in our wider, cultural understanding of depression. However, it also represents a crucial area of treatment for those living with mental illness, as an analgesic rather than systemic cure. Our means of tackling depression and suicide can be broadly seen as processes of integration into a system which by its nature creates material conditions which have a detrimental effect on mental health. Before this is acknowledged, any popular discourse about depression and any systems or supports devised to treat it will be a product of a society which values economic productivity, and systems which sustain it (wage slavery, debt bondage, etc.), over human needs.
