From social class to the "psychiatric class"

Mental health does not exist in schools and it does not exist in any of the integration systems of the individual in society.

The only social integration we know is that of studying and working.

If you are young you study, if you are older you work.

And when life hurts along the way, which it always does, then you hold on.

And when you can't take it anymore, then you get angry, hurt yourself or take drugs.

The result of this vital equation is devastating: suicide has become the leading cause of unnatural death since 2008 in Spain, there is an alarming increase in self-harm and suicidal practices among adolescents, and the use of tranquilizers has skyrocketed: from fifteen years, one in ten Spaniards takes them.

So yes, we have a serious problem with mental health.

And whoever says mental health says the ability to attend to the pain of others, the ability to know the body of each one, to comfort those who are in pain, to accept what is different (the “weird”) that is in each one;

In short: mental health is attending to the recognition of the human that is in us.

So the system is wrong from the root since assistance is only offered in case of illness and not as an education for each one in the difficulties of life, their own and others.

Since we were little, we studied physical education at school, but not an hour of psychic education.

In fact, the care and knowledge of the mind does not receive any attention or space in our society.

So what do children do when life makes them sad?

What we've all done: They're trying to figure out what's happening to them.

And they seek help.

But help her

And this is how we are exposed to the fact that only those who have resources can access healing.

Because, obviously, there are no psychologists or psychiatrists for everyone.

It is impossible: there is no system that resists it.

The reason is simple, not everyone has a disease but we all have a mind to attend to and only one way to help it: psychiatric or psychological therapy.

We know that psychological assistance reduces suicides and that it is essential to increase assistance.

But, at the same time, only a few minds have the right to comfort and these are the ones that can afford it.

Worse yet, even people who receive proper treatment cannot integrate into an ignorant society that still stigmatizes mental illness.

So things,

Mental health is becoming a new element of social stratification, which is already capable of distinguishing those who are socially integrated from those who are not.

It is not an exaggeration.

A study led by the Catalan researcher Oleguer Plana-Ripoll and published in the journal

estimates that people with severe mental disorders lose an average of more than 10 years of working life.

And not because they don't want to or can't work but, most of the time, due to the stigma associated with mental illness in a context of widespread ignorance where living with mental illness is unfeasible where it is most needed, in education. and at work.

On the contrary, far from integrating people with mental illness, a new "psychiatric class" distinguishes those with access to therapy, consolation and healing from those condemned to alienation (many times without being aware of it), precariousness and death.

A much crueler difference than that of social classes because, unlike the previous ones, mental health is something for which each individual can be held responsible.

The eradication of poverty is still understood by social democracy as everyone's responsibility, but madness is still a problem and responsibility of those who suffer from it.

First come the guilt and the stigma and then the most stark abandonment.

A few weeks ago, the psychologist Belén Hernández denounced an untenable situation in this same newspaper:

“If you don't have enough money to pay for a private psychologist, suicide becomes an acceptable alternative.

Is anyone planning to do something?"

Silence on the other side.

The answer, if it comes, will be too late for many people because at this time, Spain is very far from European standards in mental health care.

We have six clinical psychologists per 100,000 inhabitants in the public network, three times less than the European average.

And 11 psychiatrists for every 100,000 people, almost five times less than in Switzerland, and half that in France, Germany or the Netherlands.

But to great evils, great remedies.

Those who are currently part of the "psychiatric lumpen" can always turn to drugs (anxiolytics are easy to get in primary care) or Tik Tok, which is where we have thrown young people to deal with their sadness.

Because, if you are a teenager, life hurts you and your parents do not have the money to allocate an average of 240 euros a month to your therapy, then you are going to end up naming your thing on Tik Tok, where you will find a lot of videos starring kids your age who will serve as inspiration for self-diagnosis.

And most of the time they have legitimacy to do so, not because they have the necessary training, but because they share their own ailment.

That is, they explain what is happening to them to help other people identify the same situation.

And so we find, for example, a lot of videos that explain Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is rampant on this network and with which many self-diagnose, although they are rarely correct.

And that in the best case,

because other times we find the explicit defense of self-injurious behaviors as an analgesic for the soul on the Internet.

Young people are first unprotected (uninformed) then abandoned (without vital help when they can't afford it) and finally, poisoned with unverified psychological information at a single click.

And no, it's not that we've become crazier, it's that we've become lonelier in recent times.

The fault is not ours but individualism that ends up, paradoxically, abandoning us to our (often bad) luck.

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