The app for independent voices
Of the many 'crises' competing for critical attention, the one affecting the psyche is the most confusing. As twentieth-century narratives of the mind's struggles to reconcile reality, like psychoanalysis, became secondary to more mechanistic approaches, diagnosis rates of a plethora mental health conditions have soared. The idea of 'mental health' thus turned from proverb to jargon, then to cultish, industrial nonsense.
Many of the underlying conditions which we today believe we suffer from are, no doubt, iatrogenic, that is, invented by medics. Yet even 'restless leg syndrome' is about as real as the pill that cures it. The much larger mental health complex, therefore, comes with complex solutions.
The art world, as ever, has muscled in on the act. Like the doctor who has an endless supply of sugar pills to prescribe, it lost sight of the patient. But there are causes for optimism. Art still tells us more about the mind, troubled or otherwise, than the 'creative health' lobby would make you believe. I reviewed The Weight of Being for The Critic.
