You may be unfamiliar with Frank Furedi who, to quote from his own website is a “Hungarian-Canadian academic and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent.” He’s also a founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) who, in common with many of his RCP comrades, has tacked to the far right of politics, reinventing himself as Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán’s attack dog and an all round wrong ‘un. So it was no surprise to see his name on the front page of today’s Daily Hate Mail as it launches yet another attack on young people.
This kind of thing plays well with the Mail’s elderly hate-filled readers who love to blame young people for the state of the nation and the target of today’s front page is the number of young people who are ‘economically inactive‘ due to health issues, a figure that has increased from 93,000 to 190,000 in the last decade, according to a report by the Resolution Foundation. The Mail’s sub-editor came up with this headline: ‘Young people are increasingly blaming their mental health for being out of work … but critics question if it’s all just snowflakery.‘
Furedi explains to the Mail that a mental health diagnosis has now become the norm, stopping people taking responsibility for their own lives. He goes on (and on):
‘What used to be known as existential problems of being young – relationship breakdowns, failing, not being part of something – the normal difficulties of making your own way in life have been compartmentalised into mental health issues. We’ve created a mental health crisis by reframing the problems of everyday life into this.
‘We dispossess young people of their sense of being able to take charge of their lives and control what happens.
‘If you have a mental health condition, how can you possibly take responsibility and take control of your destiny? The minute something goes wrong, as soon as you have normal tensions of work, it turns into a problem of stress and depression.’
I am not an emeritus professor of sociology but let’s call this out for what it really is: bullshit. There may be many people who have entered the grim world of stress and depression because of events, like ‘relationship breakdowns, failing, not being part of something’ – I know I have, because numerous psychiatrists and therapists have told me events affected my mental health – but that simply doesn’t mean that people aren’t actually ill. Unless, like Furedi, you suggest that mental illness isn’t actually a thing at all.
People like Furedi create their own conclusions to suit their own bat shit theories. No consideration is given to the likelihood that people, particularly young people, are more likely to admit to mental health problems these days, unlike my generation who were all but encouraged to just get on with it and stop feeling sorry for yourself. And there are far more things for young people to get stressed about these days, like the difficulties trying to afford somewhere to live or get a decent job. But it’s not just people with stress and depression that stoke Furedi’s ire, it’s conditions like ADHD which late in life I have been diagnosed with, too. He goes on:
‘We have the constant proliferation of psychological diagnosis given to children so things like ADHD are constantly handed out like candy. If you look at all the reports published over the past 20 years, it’s really intensified in the last ten years, they’re constantly talking about mental health conditions.
‘I predict the problem is going to get worse as we have three generations now who have been educated into this belief.’
What on earth does this mean? What is he on about? ‘The constant proliferation’? Does this bloke not realise how difficult it is for anyone, but children in particular, to get an assessment, never mind a diagnosis for anything these days? It’s hard enough to get a GP appointment, never mind an assessment and, God forbid, treatment. My ADHD diagnosis was not ‘handed out like candy‘. It followed an in-depth psychological assessment.
The poisonous Mail saw things differently, of course. “Critics last night blamed a ‘cultural drive to medicalise everyday life’ and create a generation of ‘snowflakes‘, was the best they could come up with. Yes, that old chestnut again. Let’s trivialise and diminish what can be very serious conditions. If you have a mental health condition, that apparently makes you a ‘snowflake’. Let’s drill into the S word.
According to the Urban Dictionary, the definition of Snowflake is as follow: ‘A very sensitive person. Someone who is easily hurt or offended by the statements or actions of others.’ Do you read that and think, “Hmm. That’s me.” I doubt that very much. What’s a very sensitive person anyway? I was under the impression that sensitivity was a virtue? Or maybe in the modern world it is better to be insensitive? What does ‘easily hurt or offended’ even mean? There are things that make me angry – racism, homophobia, paedophilia for example – and I am offended by them. Standing up to hate is a bad thing? Fuck me. Call me a snowflake, call me woke (I am 100% woke and proud, by the way) and call me anything you like, but if you are gaining your moral compass from a newspaper that supported Hitler before World War Two (it’s moved a long way to the right since then) then you may be a lot more hurt and offended by the way in which I regard you than I am about how the Mail might define me.
Just imagine your job was to go to work every day and find things to make other people angry, often about things that are either untrue or just twisted to the point of meaninglessness? Because that’s the point of the Mail’s latest exercise.
It has literally been government policy since 2010 to defund mental health provision and in this sick-making front page piece (you can seek it out yourself: I’m not given them free clicks by way of links) you see a clear effort to suggest that mental illness isn’t really a thing at all. If you are mentally ill, you very much know it is a thing, so don’t let the bastards grind you down. Hate and bad news sells newspapers. Save money and choose love.
