> THOUGHTS BEYOND THE SELF. GAZING OUTWARD TOWARD A BETTER WORLD
Existence is rarely, if ever, about me. Still, I seem to spend far too much time navel gazing and invested in my internal world. I hope that phase is over, because I am sick of myself feeling degeneratingly decadent, uselessly self-absorbed. May this space be a place that focuses on things that matter.
Reading the news yesterday an article of complaints and criticisms stuck in my head as something in need of a solution. I'll preface sharing the link on "The [supposed] lack of mental health resources" with my opinion that the writer completely misses the mark and is vomiting word salad to fufill a deadline and need for clicks. I suppose categorizing this as "commentary" lets a jounralist off the hook for innacuracies in reporting: [rural-behavioral-health-in-new-mexico-why-the-money-doesnt-become-care]
First, this article assumes that the US model of clinical services is effective in addressing "mental health" or "substance use recovery" I will not provide any links to words, rather, please go outside and talk to another human to see the efficacy of how the medical/clinical model of behvioral health has helped anyone in this society. The writer complains that the money the State has from the Opioid settlement and within the Mental Health Trust isnt being used. Yeah! That's the point of goverment in America, not only to move slowly, but also to sit on money and let budgets roll over and look good on paper without regard to what is happening on the ground. THe writer then goes on to compare New Mexico with Alaska which may be fair to some degree interms of remoteness, alienation from dominant society and indigineous population but even then the article misses the mark. How are the systems of dominant society i.e., clinical care for "mental health/substance use disorder" supposed to allievate the problems the dominant society created in the first place? The writer apporaces the topic from the perspective of all of us who live in New Mexico are incapable unless someone comes along from somewhere else and "trains" us to be better.
A person is less likely to want to die if they have a reason to keep living and conditions that make that reason a possible reality. Alcoholism/opioid abuse are often slow suicides with other addcitions being ways to numb out against the lack of control a person feels in this world. We would be a lot better off with less clincicans and more housing, a healthier enviroment, healthy affordable food and an end to the continued rape and murder of this land and its original inhabitants by the US government.
[here] is a very recent scholarly article that has research and facts on utilizing indgienous culture (land, language, and, customs) as a pathway toward healing from substance use disorder, which most people accept at this point as stemming from trauma/a maladaptive set of coping skills for PTSD. I did a quick search around the internet and foind that New Mexico has indigenous language programs and cultral non profits already doing this work for their communities. When it comes to healing the land and pushing back against mining and corporate and federal plans to further harm the earth and its waters, indigenous communities are at the forefront of the public hearings, tribal, municipal and state meetings to speak out against these capitalistic and millitary programs. A very recent example and one of many: Dine' Community Members Speak Out Against Another New Uranium Project]
I don't belong to these communities. I am someone who was born in a different place and in many ways my family and myself benefited from US settler-colonialism far more than whatever we lost from wherever we came before. I look to indigenous communities with respect and gratitude for being able to live my life here. There is a part of me that wants to do something to help allievate the destruction that the US govt willfully commits to this day on this land. There is a part of me wants to do what I can to help everyone suffering. We all suffer from the killing of the earth for profit and the alienation of a capitalist society. Again, more clincians for mental health treatment will not solve these problems. Again, housing, access to health food, clean water, a reason to live, the persuit of attainable goals/happiness, and the conditions to make all that happen are what solves these existential issues. What we need is a revolution.
The overall universal point being: It is time we stop calling human expressions of the harms of capitialism, imperialism, fascism, and other expressions of power over communities, societies, and, earth as a whole, a mental health issue/psychiatric disorder that is medicalized, clinical, and billable. It's time we expose the delusion for what it is, the system itself providing a false solution to problems it created in order to insidiously shift blame back onto individuals, simultaneously perpetuating root problems and preventing true healing, all while contiuing to alienating people further away from ourselves, each other, and the earth.
