I’m concerned for our country. Yes, our politics have gone insane (on right and left), climate change keeps rearing its head to remind us a real crisis is coming, and my understanding of foreign affairs is quite dense, but it seems countries are getting more and more restless; but actually none of that concerns me as much as the mental health of our country. I want to phrase it another way, I believe the culture of our country is deeply wounded and sick. According to the CDC, suicide was the second leading cause of death in our precious teens in 2019. The second leading cause of death! I don’t talk about this lightly. I have a beloved cousin who chose to end his life this way years ago and it is still painful for all of us. What is hard for me to wrap my head around in our country is that we’ve “come so far” in medical advances, scientific discoveries and progress in general, yet although we’ve prevented so many other kinds of deaths, many are in such despair they do not want to live at all. Why does “progress” increase with mental health decline? Does it have to be so? I don’t believe it has to be this way, but many things have to change about who we are as a people. I’m going to speak about my own observations, anecdotes, and theories to our mental health crisis. I don’t claim to be a scientist, or an expert of any kind in this matter, but this topic has been on my mind for close to 20 years and there are many studies and statistics to back up what I say. I am also definitely not claiming that mental health is merely environmental. I am focusing on the cultural attitudes that, I believe, have dramatically increased our mental health crisis, but there are also biological factors that are very real. If you or a loved one is suffering from mental illness of any kind or degree, please don’t hesitate to get counseling or medication, it only exacerbates our problem that there is a stigma against receiving these kinds of help.
Our soul knows intuitively when we are living in a way that is not life-cultivating, not conducive to “whole-hearted living” to quote a term from Brene Brown that fits well. Whether defensively or after some heart break, or maybe just little by little we’ve gotten sucked into a world where expectations and norms have silenced our soul’s deeper longings and filled it with cheap, counterfeit mirages. As I went to write this blog, I realized I have too many thoughts about the various ways our consumeristic culture has tricked us into living counter-intuitively. Loneliness, relationship to nature, individualism, ideologies vs. reality, presence of children and elderly, busyness and restlessness; these are just a few topics that, I believe, are profoundly related to our mental health crisis. They also tend to be interrelated to each other, but I am going to try to write about them separately.
Thought #1 Loneliness
Our culture has a lot of priorities backwards. We’ve focused a lot of attention on solving economic problems. This is an important goal, but it can’t be the only goal. I think, sometimes, in our quest to eliminate poverty and help people, we’ve forgotten that people need a lot more than material goods to be happy. One of the things that is abysmally lacking in our country is community, friendship and knowing one is loved unconditionally. Loneliness rates are astounding. There are people, many people, who don’t have a single deep and lasting friendship. There are many people who are estranged from their families. There are many people who go days without being touched, and even then, it is only brushing the cashier’s hand or a hired caretaker helping an elderly person groom. Babies who are fed, but not touched can die. Even at a few weeks old, there is something in us that knows we need more than food and water to live. Food, water and material goods are good- we should keep working towards sharing these with all, especially the poor and marginalized, but our consumeristic culture takes the good that material goods are and twists them into some kind of ultimate good. Without realizing what we are subscribing to, we believe, for example, if a house is good and brings a degree of happiness, then a bigger house will bring even more happiness. Little by little, we start seeking after more and more material goods while overlooking the things which would make that house a home. The irony of our culture is that our kitchens keep getting bigger, yet we share a meal in them less and less.
Friendship is not just something additional to our life, something that is nice to have once we’ve gotten or achieved all of life’s other priorities. Friendship has to be a priority, it is absolutely foundational to our life. Children can not learn unless they are in relationship. Our brain doesn’t function unless it is in a secure relationship. Relationship is the key to psychology, education, creativity and so many areas of our life. Yet, in most of our day to day decisions, friendships are, at most, a secondary decision. We would be considered crazy for turning down a job in another state because we are committed to the long-lasting friendships we’ve made. Most of us don’t know anymore how to go about making friends, because it is so foreign to our culture. Many friendships stay at a very superficial level. We have turned something as sacred as friendship into just another commodity that can be disposed of when it no longer suits us or it becomes disagreeable on some matter. We all know the tragic story of the man who chases fame and fortune all his life only to have no one attend his funeral. Those of you reading this blog are not living that tragedy, thankfully, we all though still have work to do in re-prioritizing deep friendships into our own lives, and especially reaching those who are the loneliest.
I worry for our teens who, more than immature peers, need solid adult relationships to form them into quality adults. I worry for our young adults who float between college and family life, bouncing from insecurity to instability, who need solid communities to root them. I worry about our elderly separated from those they love and cherish. I worry about our families isolated from the broader community. It takes work and sacrifice to build strong relationships- we have to choose our time and resources wisely. We have to remember every ‘yes’ to something is a ‘no’ to something else. We have to be brave and creative and figure out how our unique gifts best build relationship (in other words we don’t all have to be extroverted and outgoing). In our current culture, friendship hardly happens naturally, so we have to be very intentional. However, if you’re feeling intimidated by all the loneliness in our world, start with the people around you- your neighbors, your barista at your regular coffee shop, your co-workers, your parishioners. Can you volunteer at the neighborhood school? Visit the local nursing home? Obviously, some of these ideas have to wait a little longer until covid safety is not an issue. Maybe you’ve let an old friendship die and it feels like it’s been too long to try to re-connect- try to re-connect anyway. I’ve never gotten a bad response when I’ve reached out to someone I haven’t for a long time. Never. We have all felt the pangs of loneliness at some time in our life, and the beauty of this is that loneliness is something we can respond to whatever state of life we’re in, rich or poor, young or old, and when we ease someone else’s loneliness, our own is lessened as well.
When we treat people as a problem to be solved we strip them of their dignity. When we share with them our humble humanity, our broken and vulnerable selves, when we offer them our presence before judging if they are worth it, we help both of us hear that silenced soul that’s still faintly calling out to be loved.