Simply Put: The Cause of and Solution to Mental Health Problems from Within an Islamic Communist Bibliotherapy

by

Gavin Bushe

MLIS, B.A. (Hons), Cert.

Psychiatric Survivor and Expert by Experience: 1996-2019 AD

The Causes of Mental Health Problems within the Social Order: Alienation, Ignorance, Poverty, Stigma, Exploitation, Oppression, Suppression, Repression, Social Exclusion

The Social Order

The social order of any society is always an incumbent social order.  Within any society there are people of various levels of social standing.  Life occurs within society and mental health problems are a social signal that there are life problems within it.  People who suffer from mental health problems often understand that there is something wrong with life in society.

Many great men and women have reflected on these problems and produced understandings that aim to resolve what is at the same time problematic for them and problematic within the societies that they live in.

While there are a great many of these great men and women, I regard the following two people as having contributed the most to the social analysis and the resolution of very similar social problems: they are Karl Marx the Founder of Communism and Muhammad the Prophet of Islam.

Alienation

Some people within any given societies do become separated from the social body to such an extent that they are regarded as alien to their fellows.  The process through which this occurs is called alienation.  This means that they are divorced from and disturbed by social relations around them to the point that they no longer know who they are at that time and are regarded as foreign by those social relations.  In Marx’s classical description this process occurs mainly for workers under the capitalists’ social order.  This type of alienated human being is also created by the psychiatric social order which is a parallel regime of human control within capitalism.

Ignorance

People who have become alienated by society often are in the dark about why they are alienated.  Psychiatrists refer to this condition as lack of insight.  The solution from both Founders is to reflect upon your own relations to your kind.  This is the movement from ignorance to understanding.  For Marx this occurs within an historical setting.  For Muhammad this occurs within a prophetic tradition within an historical setting.  Both great men have produced a far-reaching range of texts that aim to diagnose in general terms the overall problems of human beings in societies.  The movement from ignorance to understanding eventually leads to enlightenment.  There are many developments such as this.  However the search for understanding is accelerated by the writings of great men and women and both Marx’s and Muhammad’s manifestations are comprehensive of human reality in the past, present, and future.

There are other understandings of human reality but only Marx and Muhammad claim to have discovered the complete assessment.  This is why I recommend these mens’ guidances.

Poverty

Lack of needs:  Just as a plant will not grow very well without the sustenance that it requires for its growth and development, so too will a human being fail to advance without the things he or she needs.  Poverty is in at least two forms: mental and physical.

In order for a human being to grow he or she must initially receive mental and physical sustenance from another source outside of him or her.  With this sustenance he or she will advance.

According to both Marx and Muhammad the incumbent social order is organised in such a way historically as to prioritise the needs of some over others. Marx calls this class society.  Muhammad calls this pagan morality.  In both cases there is an overlap between class societies and pagan moralities.  In most cases the upper or ruling classes prioritise their needs over and above the lower classes.  At the same time pagan morality which focuses on falsity nearly always operates within the upper and ruling class levels as a commonly re-occuring tendency.

This is why poverty is a scourge for people with mental health concerns.  Without wealth they become dependent on the wealthy.  In this case they might not grow as a human being.

Stigma

Social realities can often create situations where some people in a society are elevated while others are lowered.  The tendency is binary and often self-perpetuating over time. People with stigma are usually maintained in that stigma by those people who by default are relatively elevated by comparison.  Stigma is essentially social taint.  Its origins are historical for many reasons.  The main reason is that within historical societies there have always been, since primitive communism, a social reality where one major class held down and oppressed a subordinate class by succession.  The stigma idea means that this group is better than that group.  It exists in almost every part of society as a consequence of resources being controlled by some who are therefore rulers in relation to others.  Those others are therefore ruled via a dependency relationship.  The stigma is an idea that magnifies the inequality and seems to justify it.

Exploitation

Beyond the subordination of some by others in society, the social life for humans is necessarily socio-economic.  Within a socio-economic relationship that is competitive and controlled by rulers who seek advantage, exploitation emerges by which the economically powerful extract more and more resources from the economically weak.  This strange reality gives rise to pagan morality in the exploiters.  It also causes harm to the exploited.

Oppression

To overbear upon another human being is the expression of social oppression.  This takes on a hideous form when combined with wealth inequality, social consensus, and social acceptance. 

Suppression

Often human beings who are oppressed fight back against their oppressors.  The oppressors in their turn clamp down upon the resisters.  The interaction between suppressers and resisters leads to conflicts, clashes, and riots.

Repression

After the conflicts take on an elaborate development organised social forces within the incumbent social order combine to systematically put-down resistance.

Social Exclusion

Once the dust has settled for a time on an historical reality composed of ruling class domination and pagan morality, history shows that the subordinated groups and individuals are pushed into zones of society where they are effectively excluded from the contemporary life of their more elevated, or contrariwise, less stigmatised (non) associates.  This social stratification is called combined and unequal development.  It threatens to endure permanently unless remedial action is taken in order to include the social aliens into the social bodies of human life.

The Solutions to Mental Health Problems Within the Social Order: Knowledge, Wealth Redistribution, Mutuality, Ethics, Solidarity, Joint Endeavours

Knowledge

The education of society about mental health problems is the first and most obvious requirement for the dispelling of the myths and lies about the mental health concerns.  Without a correct understanding of what is causing the problems no sincere remedy will ever be accepted.  The people who have mental health concerns at the same time have the answers to those problems.  However it tends to be the case that the mental health population falls into lower classes as compare to their associates who tend to fall into pagan moralities.  This is because the compound effects of the causes results in realities where social stratification is solidified by a conflict between myths, lies and falsehoods versus understandings produced by the mental health population themselves, which is morally corrosive to the truths of the mental health population.

Wealth Redistribution

The incumbent social order after having produced things of value over time must ensure that these valuable are available to all.  Since people with mental health concerns tend to be among the poorest of people in society and it is clear that poverty is a cause of human suffering, both Marx and Muhammad insist upon a revolutionary redistribution of the wealth concerns of the society in favour of the historically oppressed who for that reason chief among the others have a mental health problem.

Mutuality

The key to justice is reciprocation.  Mental Health Problems being social phenomena can only be treated by a change in the way people relate one to another.  As opposed to a one-sided arrangement where the causal factors of mental health problems are heaped upon some while its corollary: wealth, power, and authority within the social order are developed for others, a renewed social order where equality is the rule must emerge.  This must mean that the class distinctions are abolished between social groups.  Within the contemporary society there are the following classes: Landowners, Capitalists, Workers, De-Classed Workers.  Running through these four classes as a parallel phenomenon are the distinctions of mental health.  Unfortunately these distinctions are precluded of their social hierarchy by language.  Within every class there are mental health issues and at the same time the mental health population which runs like a thread throughout them is in each and every one of them the subordinated party.

Ethics

Clearly the reality of mental health problems as a social disease requires for its remedy the cultivation of ethical practices which change society while ameliorating it at the same time.  Marx and Muhammad both agree that it is necessary to aid the lowest classes while at the time fighting against the ruling class with justice practices.

Solidarity

The isolation of people with mental health problems requires the revival of community without which the degeneration of social life into pagan class animosities would continue.  What this means is that unity and community cohesion are antidotes to the world without humanity.

Joint Endeavours

Beyond class society with its tendencies towards pagan moralities people must begin to form egalitarian associations with a determination to oppose the social categories of oppressor and oppressed.  We must build unity and mutual social equality identification and as a rule.  Only then can we live in associations as healthy human actors for whom mental health problems are a consideration of diversity within social growth and development instead of a hierarchical arrangement of quarantined human actors who are underdeveloped and subjected by the super-incumbent strata of the social order.

Bibliography:

Kropotkin, P. (1897) ‘Anarchist Morality.’  www.thing.net  Available at: http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/spunk/pkam2.htm [Accessed 13 January 2020]

This book describes the idea of reciprocation and cooperation in human relationships.  It espouses the idea of mutual aid.  It simplies Christian morality to the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Lenin, V. I. (1919) ‘The State: a lecture delivered at sverdlov university’.www.marxists.org Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jul/11.htm  [Accessed 13 January 2020]

This book describes the idea of the social system as an administrative machine overruling society and reinforcing the rule of those who possess the means of production, distribution, and exchange.

Marx, K., Engels, F. (1848) ‘The Communist Manifesto.’ www.marxists.org  Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ [Accessed 13 January 2020]

This book outlines the entire theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as an analysis of interactive change through conflict between classes across time and place.  It is the expression in the sphere of economics and history of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy of development of the World Spirit.

Marx, K. (1867) ‘Capital, a critique of political economy’.  www.marxists.org  Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf [Accessed 13 January 2020]

This book describes the essential and inherent laws of development of the capitalist system as a mode of production winning its way through history with iron necessity.  It is an explanation of how and why things of use are produced and exchanged and made available to people who need them.

The Noble Qur’an. (623) ‘The Noble Qur’an.’ quran.com  Available at:  https://quran.com/ [Accessed 13 January 2020]

This book is a Revelation from Allah to the Holy Prophet Muhammad.  It was manifested upon the heart of Muhammad ibn Abdullah at Mecca, Medina and wider Arabia in the 7^th Century AD.  Islamic scholars insist that the source of the manifestation is the Angel Gabriel who had also brought the news to Mary of her son Jesus.