How to cure mental health?
Andrew Tate has an amazing view on mental health in which he says he doesn’t believe in depression. But he did say that he believed in being temporarily depressed.
And this is a perspective that I like to discuss because it is the truth. The issue with the mental health industry is that it is a business. Meaning its purpose is to be profitable and sustainable. And what is the best way to sustain a business rather than to ensure that you have repeat customers coming through your door?
So the approach that I have taken to mental health is quite controversial but honestly is the most logical way to approach healing long-term and that is through treating symptoms.
For example, if you are low energy throughout the day we might change the diet and add exercise. Or if you have a high rate of negative thoughts coming into your conscious mind, we would do sleep hypnosis and reprogram the subconscious. Given I am not a licensed therapist or psychiatrist (yet) but I have done my own due diligence and in the process built a library of experts that have helped build the foundation of my knowledge.
These methods are not typically given to people with mental illnesses because they are not as profitable. For example, an article from the New York Times discusses how it is more profitable to have a medication visit than it is to have a talk therapy session. One can get paid $150 for a 15-minute medication visit compared to $90 for a 45-minute talk therapy session.
Mathematically speaking, you could make about $600/hour having 4 of those visits back to back (medication visits). Giving people a magic bullet to solve all of their problems instead of giving them effective strategies to solve their problems which would make around $120/hour. Drastic pay difference don’t you think?
And with incentives such as this from insurance companies, it is only logical to conclude that most psychiatrists would lean towards giving people medications instead of treating properly (long term wise).
We as a society don’t believe in stopping or stagnation so we want to get you back to work as fast as possible. But what we also don’t understand as society is that when we are depressed, it is usually because something in our life is causing us constant cognitive dissonance. The way I like to describe cognitive dissonance is that little voice in the back of your head that tells you to get up and do that assignment when you sitting and watching Netflix. That mental discomfort that we feel when we go against our better half. The half that wants us to fulfill as much of our potential as possible.
We need to remember that we were hunters and gathers at one point (speaking to tribe-like times). And we need to constantly “hunt” in order to survive. In a modern society that could be hunting for better education, more skills, or a better network of friends. But we feel that need to get up and go, even when truly don’t feel like it.
That last statement may confuse you but let me clarify. Have you ever been and bed and not wanting to get up but you know you need to get up? It is your 2 sides clashing for dominance. And the issue with most of us is that we give in to our worse half. We become slaves to our bodies and seek instant gratification in Netflix, tinder, or even just porn. We no longer become the “hunters” we once were.
That is why we currently see many people stagnating. Especially with the introduction of legal drugs such as marijuana which targets the reward centers of the brain. So you get the feeling of accomplishment without accomplishing anything at all. And this vicious cycle is not sustainable because that feeling habituates. After a month of smoking, for example, you no longer get that movie-like feeling of an out-of-body experience. You chase the feeling over and over again hoping to find it but all you find is an unhealthier, broker, blemished filled of an existence.
If you take nothing from this, take these words: The reason you are depressed is that you have made choices that have habituated you into the infinite regress of life. This can ultimately lead to suicide. So take a day, week or even a month and reflect on what your life is.
And if you do not what your life is, here is a simple definition that I took from Jordan Peterson. Life is what you do every day. So if you spend an hour or 45 minutes arguing with your spouse, your life is just a toxic mess with no effective lines of communication. Anything you do daily is your life.
Bruce Lee put it better (and I will leave you with this), “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”
Sources:
- Harris, Gardiner. “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Mar. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/health/policy/06doctors.html#:~:text=A%20psychiatrist%20can%20earn%20%24150,45%2Dminute%20talk%20therapy%20session.
P.S. There is another book that I wanted to include here. So I will either edit this later or just write another post regarding the book. It talks about the epidemic of medications being distributed and it shows statistics of the use of drugs such as benzodiazepines over time.
