The point about mental health is really interesting and important. It's clearly overdetermined, but the different ways of attributing these issues, I think, is understated.

I recently read Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, and one of his theses is that in the neoliberal era we've essentially "privatized" mental health, treating it individually/biologically rather than systemically:

> I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?

He's the north coast synthesis guy? I just tried his modules yesterday, and now I'm reading an old article by him. Small world!

We all live different lives, with different responses. To some, scoping their depression as an illness is wildly helpful, as it moves the topic away from some intrinsic failure. To others, it's a cheap trick, avoiding the real issue. Some people live completely functional lives with bipolar disorder, without ever being diagnosed. Others would probably be better off talking about it with someone.

There's never going to be a penicillin for mental health. Or, to take the analogy a step further, even if we think we've found one, it's hard to say if it's not doing more harm than good in each case.