Self-selected wards of the state

An interesting piece.  From A Broken Model of Brokenness by Freddie deBoer.  DeBoer starts out quoting a correspondent:

I have met and helped and treated numerous individuals now who are my peers in age - anything from 18-early 30s. And so many have internalized a generational "understanding" of mental illness that is toxic and worthless beyond condemnation. Our youngest generations' understanding of mental health enables, encourages, and at worst glorifies mental illness. I can not understate the number of times I've met a young woman who has made being mentally ill, and polysexual, and queer, and autistic, et cetera, their identity.

Accountability is absent to the nth degree. But more importantly, a lack of any accountability has deprived these people of personal empowerment and agency. Mental illness is no longer something to recover from and fight against. It is an identity and a definition of life itself. There is no reason to seek "cures" (which of course is borderline nonexistent in mental health but thats a whole essay itself), there is no reason to look to better ourselves. There is no reason to fight our internal struggles at a personal level, without feeling the need to inform every last member of the community whom we interact with. This is not only society's problem, but our peers'.

An interesting observation and one with which I concur.  It feels like in recent decades we have sought to relieve the young of the burden of responsibility.  We have done so by pathologizing discomfort.  And every discomfort has to be sourced to something institutional or external which causes an infirmity to the sufferer.  

My view is not that there are no legitimate mental illnesses or that such conditions are not material and threatening.  My point is that we have stretched definitions to such an extent that we invoke real diagnoses for merely uncomfortable circumstances and by doing so we strip the young of their agency and accountability.  If you cannot bear accountability, you cannot be responsible and if you cannot be responsible, you cannot be a real and full citizen.  

My particular bugbear, which I hear in various formulations, is ascribing bad or maladaptive behavior to some uncomfortable event which purportedly caused mild PTSD.  PTSD is real and can be severe.  Acting out after being rejected for a lead part in the school play is not suffering from PTSD (for example.)

The original correspondent observes:

I can not understate the number of times I've met a young woman who has made being mentally ill, and polysexual, and queer, and autistic, et cetera, their identity.

Accountability is absent to the nth degree. But more importantly, a lack of any accountability has deprived these people of personal empowerment and agency. Mental illness is no longer something to recover from and fight against. It is an identity and a definition of life itself. There is no reason to seek "cures" (which of course is borderline nonexistent in mental health but thats a whole essay ifself), there is no reason to look to better ourselves. There is no reason to fight our internal struggles at a personal level, without feeling the need to informt every last member of the community whom we interact with. This is not only society's problem, but our peers'.

DeBoer picks up on this issue of self-disablement through identity creation.  

I do think that the endless search for new identity markers to validate people’s status as unique or, worse, to validate their suffering is a road that has no ending. I do think that all of these adolescents who have decided that they have rare and debilitating conditions like dissociative identity disorder are no doubt reacting to real pain and really need help. But I also think that they fail to understand that suffering itself is not a rare condition, but a universal one, and that attempting to represent theirs as deeper because it supposedly stems from very uncommon conditions will do nothing to make them feel better. And that is the point, always, with mental illness, not to publicize it or revel in it or derive identity from it but to manage it, to reduce pain and instability.

I blame not just the bizarre path identity politics have taken in the past decade but also a culture that still romanticizes mental illness as a quest against the constricting force of society’s norms, instead of a set of conditions that cause immense misery to those who suffer from them and their families. Mental illness is not dramatic or a somehow more authentic way to live, but mostly lonely, sad, and pathetic.

I agree with both DeBoer and the correspondent that encouraging anyone to seek solace and benefit by giving up their agency and autonomy by becoming a victim dependent on the charity of others is a catastrophic turn of events, both for the individual and for society.

I would make the additional point though that the search for "identity" itself is a pernicious game.  It sounds plausible and reasonable.  But to paraphrase Whitman, we are all multitudes.  There is no single mask, face, bit part, or role that any of us play all through our lives.  We live, we learn, we grow.  At any moment in time we are constituted of multiples of identities.

Identities are not important.  They are the intersect between self and others' perceptions.

What is important are goals and behaviors.  That is how we judge ourselves and how most people judge others.  It is immaterial how an individual self-identifies.  What matters are the patterns of their demonstrated values and behaviors.  

Are they kind, courteous, courageous, hard-working, persistent, goal-oriented, forgiving, reliable, etc.  Those things matter.  Identities do not.  Sending the young into a goose chase after identities wastes their time.  More importantly, it distracts from living an accountable life, learning hard and uncomfortable lessons, becoming the better person you probably want to be.  

Pursuit of vestigial and transient identities is a huge disservice to our future citizens because it relieves them of responsibility and makes them self-selected wards of the state.