Silver lining to the psychiatry cloud - reduced human population good for the planet

[whatisbrain]

This may only cheer up forum members who are concerned about the environment, and may be a downer for everyone else.

 

It recently crossed my mind that if one cares about non-human creatures and the environment, it may be logical to welcome psychiatry's role in shortening people's lifespans and wrecking some people's reproductive systems, slowing down human population growth a bit.

 

Sounds dark, but when I am facing the frustration of seeing my best friends' children or my own mother start their way on the prescription path to an early grave, thinking of it as a possible gain for the planet calms me down a bit. Even helps when grieving my own physical and cognitive deterioration.

[canaanstongue01]

this is gross. it is very possible to be pro-human and pro-environment. our world is messed up because of the same promethean march toward “progress” that lead to things like ssri’s in the first place—a belief that nature is something to be conquered and mastered. i don’t really come on this site or the internet in general to argue, but wow… being pro-depopulation is a new one for me. 

[ChessieCat]

1 hour ago, whatisbrain said:

This may only cheer up forum members who are concerned about the environment, and may be a downer for everyone else.

 

It recently crossed my mind that if one cares about non-human creatures and the environment, it may be logical to welcome psychiatry's role in shortening people's lifespans and wrecking some people's reproductive systems, slowing down human population growth a bit.

 

Sounds dark, but when I am facing the frustration of seeing my best friends' children or my own mother start their way on the prescription path to an early grave, thinking of it as a possible gain for the planet calms me down a bit. Even helps when grieving my own physical and cognitive deterioration.

 

 

If it was your partner, parents, children who died or were directly affected because of this I think you would look at this very differently.

[hypnagogue]

As much as my brain likes to opine that the world might be a better place if I personally did not exist in it, I think the problems we're seeing--everything from the destruction of the environment to the (mis)treatment of "individual" mental health issues--are systemic and wouldn't be solved just by having fewer people around. No source on hand atm but I've seen studies about how the planet could sustain the current human population easily if resources were more equitably and sustainably managed and not being hoarded/misused by corporations for a profit. I'd imagine that most of us feel pretty powerless at the mercy of a socioeconomic system that views everything, including people, as disposable resources whose only value is in being exploited by and for capital. So many of my friends and loved ones barely have what they need to get by, materially and otherwise, but their anxiety and despair are pathologized, isolated, and seen as a personality defect rather than understood as a natural response to hostile circumstances. Society is cruel and sick, and while I don't doubt that mental health care as it exists now has, however imperfectly, helped some people some of the time, it's not capable of addressing the issues that are making people miserable in the first place.

[MermaidsCantCry]

On 5/2/2022 at 3:20 PM, ChessieCat said:

 

 

If it was your partner, parents, children who died or were directly affected because of this I think you would look at this very differently.

OP literally said it was his family...
why are you a mod if you're unable to detach from your own emotional reactions enough to even reply to what was actually said and not your emotional interpretation of what was said?

as a mod you should have deleted the message calling OP gross, not jumping on the dogpile

I can see this is not a safe forum to be in and i regret giving it my attention.
 

[whatisbrain]

Thanks for your support, MermaidsCantCry, and in fact your careful reading did catch the fact that psychiatric drugging was and is happening to my close family members, namely my mother and her brother, so I when I referred to a "silver lining", it was part of me trying to cope with my inability to protect my own mom and uncle. In any case, I did not feel personally attacked - I knew most people would not find my "silver lining" appealing, but I hoped at least a few might find it a little bit useful in their own coping toolbox. Since then, a lot of new information has come to my attention, and I have mostly stopped caring about the effect of population growth on the environment.