[thread] I'm going to briefly explain my issue with saying there's a "mental health crisis" in this pandemic. Psychology talk is often a convenient means of sucking out the politics which produce the sort of despair we're experiencing today./1

Political or economic mismanagement (i.e. rise in neoliberal policies) will inevitably be followed by widespread suffering and despair, especially for the underprivileged. We should therefore normalise saying this is a "political/economic crisis".../2

And understand that mental health will follow. This is not to undervalue the need to understand the mental health of the population, and what can be done to help. The point is to highlight that the crisis is not intrinsic to "mental health" nor the pandemic itself (grief aside)/3

When a building is on fire, we shouldn't say ppl have a "breathing crisis" but focus on the fire and try to understand its causes--flammable cladding, deregulation of building companies, etc./4

We should strive to avoid all the spins which depoliticise mental health issues from their political and economic bases. This would begin by making it clear that a "political/economic crisis" inevitably subsumes a mental health crisis as we know in psychiatric epidemiology /end