The Mental Health Scam???

“I feel we need to look more closely into the mental health epidemic facing India. Most education professionals and psychologists want to reduce the pressure and anxiety facing young people without fundamentally altering the “pressure cooker”. As per their fragmented and piecemeal academic training, they want to 'mop up' the proverbial wet floor without turning off the tap of overflowing water. While this might be good for business in the mental health industry, it does not solve the core problem. It only feeds further into a culture of empty gimmicks and eventually more pills being prescribed. This however is a crisis that can lead to total collapse of the nation if not seriously dealt with. We need to stop blaming victims/individuals and look at the systemic causes driving it. It seems to be there are four essential root cause conversations to have if we want to turn off the tap:
1) how do we challenge the myth of the ‘normal child’ and associated labelling and standardisation that the system tries to fit everyone into; 
2) how does factory schooling and its inherent culture of competition/scarcity/comparison feed into this crisis of resilience and self-worth?
3) how do we re-design our education system and our lives for more connection with the rest of nature, with healthy collaborative intergenerational community and with genuine spaces for creativity?
4) how do we shift our core purpose of modern life and raison d'être beyond homo economicus (being defined as making more and more money and pursuing consumerism)?”
- Manish Jain, Shikshantar Andolan
#shikshantar #swarajuniversity #ecoversities #climateaction