Before Covid-19 Ends, We Have Entered a New Wave of Mental Health Crisis
How to Reverse the Crisis by Reversing Our Order of Needs
The mental health crisis has already arrived as and when political leaders are dealing with Covid-19.
And we can’t rely on our leaders to cure the mental health crisis. Here’s why and what we can do about it.
Let’s get one thing straight first
One, people with little imagination find it hard to understand mental health issues. They try to understand it like a physical disease, and quick to dismiss any mental disorders because symptoms are not as obvious as a biological illness. Where’s the malignant cell? Where’s the cough and the temperature?
We should know by now that mental health presents itself differently to physical health. But what more complicated is that a mental health issue touches on two aspects of a human — physical and psychological. If we think about it like that, we should all agree that mental health is a much harder issue to treat than physical illness given its complexity.
Sadly, not everyone can see the above. Some even go so far to state that everyone’s mentally ill and stressed as if that’s ok.
Well, it’s not ok that everyone you know is mentally ill, they need help. You need help! This is not a trend thing, mental health illness is not acceptable and shouldn’t be normalized.
Covid-19 is most likely become an epidemic with the introduction of vaccine and immunity, but the aftermath is not only physical but the mental strain it has placed on every single person, the society, and humanity generally.
Is there a vaccine for mental health? No there isn’t and never will be, but there’s still a “cure”.
We can’t rely on the powerful to handle our mental health crisis
Here’s the situation now and it’s getting worse:
25% (one in four people) globally will be affected by mental health issues at some point in their life, and two-thirds of these people won’t get properly treated — data summarised by Project Hope
Leaders and politicians’ attention is usually hijacked by various crises in the country and their own political agenda. As such, we shouldn’t expect them to have the foresight despite the abundance of information.
Bill Gates has warned of a pandemic five years ago and told everyone. He learned this from reading and talking to experts. He didn’t just imagine it out of nowhere and felt that might be the case. It’s hard science backed by real evidence. Although Gates has a powerful voice, nothing was picked up by any leaders in the world.
A great amount of data is also available for mental health issues and people are again struggling to prioritise it. Covid-19 can be cured soon, the mental health crisis is the next tsunami that will destroy our society and exhaust government resources.
The cause of mental illnesses: an order powered by deficiencies
Knowingly or not, we (as citizens of capitalist countries) are heavily affected by Adam Smith’s unlimited wants theory and Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
We are always conditioned to see the earth’s resources as scarce, and wealth has been concentrated on very few people in the world. This is true since the agricultural revolution (see this great article by the World Economic Forum, and also briefly in Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens), this motivates us to accumulate wealth for ourselves and our families.
We constantly feel lacking, that’s our primary motivation.
We must challenge this proposition.
The feeling that our wants aren’t being fulfilled and material fulfilment is lacking when we compare ourselves to others, have made us a chaser of wealth. We work so fucking hard to get more, with many of us meeting at least the “basic needs” layer of Maslow's hierarchy of needs/motivation:
The problem with this hierarchy is he assumed that as soon as physiological needs are met we will move on to psychological and self-fulfilment needs. It’s unfortunately not the case because of our lacking mentality, we keep craving more and more on the bottom-level needs. We keep pursuing more money and safety, maybe extend a little to fulfilling our self-esteem and social needs— yet, rightly labelled above, these are just deficiency needs.
This is precisely why our divorce rate, crime rate, and mental health issues are so severe despite we are so rich and abundant with resources in life. We can’t get enough of what’s already enough and haven’t allocated time and efforts to self-discovery, healing, awakening, and other spiritual pursuits.
As a result, we become sad, dissatisfied, empty, and desperate. We might get ourselves into further addictions because that’s all we know how to live, e.g. depression is the addiction to sadness that we can’t control.
The more we focus on deficiency needs the more we are absorbed by the black hole and never truly grow. Being stuck there and not growing, is the fundamental reason why mental health will break so many of us very soon. Everyone’s seriously stuck.
The cure: a right order powered by enough
It does take an enlightened person (i.e. the person who actually fit Maslow's model to be at the top for self-actualization and transcendence) to teach the world the truth of needs, suffering, fulfilment, and happiness.
We have Jesus Christ, Buddha in various forms, Eckhart Tolle, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, etc. I really recommend starting with the book the Power of Now.
Frankly, there are enough lessons from enough people. Buddha told us the path, Jesus even died for us, and we still haven’t got it.
Enlightened people are usually not rich by our standard because they feel they have enough to move on to the next stage. They didn’t linger on in search of material fulfilment as they switched their focus on the truth of life. In this realm of motivation, we are almost always happy and content. It’s a blissful state.
The first step of the right order to true happiness and reversal of the mental health crisis is to re-educate your assumptions of lack and start feeling enough. We have to become critical of Adam Smith.
The second step is to be aware of the hierarchy of needs and reprioritize your motivation. If we have a 100-year life, how much more time do we need to spend in fulfilling basic needs? When will you start pursuing wisdom and true happiness?
We need to make a deliberate decision to choose to pursue growth rather than to pursue deficiencies. It is a conscious and informed choice.
Closing words
We won’t have a vaccine for mental health because it’s time for us to know that mental health illnesses are strong signals for us to start looking at our motivations, needs, and priorities.
At our current stage of life (suffering, abundant, lost, indifferent), our mental state guides us towards the right order to achieve happiness.
We must transform from our current self, which is governed by lack and dominated by the pursuit of basic needs, to a stage of growth and pursuit of spiritual needs. It has nothing to do with whether we are spiritual or not,it’s merely an objective path that we can’t avoid.
Some further reading: