Indifference tolls the knell of humankind So easy just to turn our eyes away We often self deceive or mimic blind; So Hitler goosestepped; foolish Pope but prayed
How bright the candlelight on Christmas trees And tender children widen joyous eyes Yet for the other,we will hear no pleas. At every heartbeat “foreign” babies die..
Can we love any but those who share our genes, What sense the tale of Arab aiding Jew? Is the underlying truth not seen? As Jesus said the chosen are but few
We split the world into a double view; The good, the bad,the heart of darkness slew
My red-haired neighbour loved her high heeled shoes She dressed in cream and black when she went out
Her smart appearance called in many views
Even when she fell and was much bruised Her eyes so sharp drove off marauding louts My red-haired neighbour saved for grand cream shoes
She dyed her hair blood red, oh men confused! Though she was ninety she was never stout Her dear appearance wondrous was well viewed
By the Daily Mail, she was bemused She meditated, used it to wrap sprouts My neighbour dyed her hair and matched her shoes
Suddenly her blood its power would lose Her nights out and her cooking were in doubt She so stylish no more could be viewed
She went to Mass on Sunday, sin to rout Her hair fresh dyed, she died where God’s about My red-haired neighbour loved her pretty shoes In her coffin, may she be amused
What was so wrong about asking About your absence from this world And trying to grab you back holding onto your coat tail Eternity’s long enough already We don’t need your vapour trails. Was it a wicked thing to do As you floated so far away To reach out to touch you once more I admit I never knew you kept score. When I beat you at chess so long ago Were you already packing bags to throw out the door? I knew it was the real thing But some men never do. You have your expectations And your tests and rules But we never learned those In our higher math schools. We learned rigour and icy vision We learned definition and precision. But what use are they in loving I didn’t know how to steer with no maps You were off anyhow. The orchestra stoped playing When they saw the gap. You can’t fly forever But I do be leaving you. In the circumstances What else does a woman like me do. You can smile and squeeze your eyes tight Suck in those cheeks and hide your love. What’s coming after you’s an eagle or a crow Not a dove…it’s black I know When you toss it all away then Seems like it’s long past time and emotion to call it a day. Come again…..you must be crazy Love is clear to me now like the face of a new born daisy
But there is another way to see this crisis – one that doesn’t place it firmly in the realm of the medical system. Doesn’t it make sense that so many of us are suffering? Of course it does: we are living in a traumatising and uncertain world. The climate is breaking down, we’re trying to stay on top of rising living costs, still weighted with grief, contagion and isolation, while revelations about the police murdering women and strip-searching children shatter our faith in those who are supposed to protect us.
As a clinical psychologist who has been working in NHS services for a decade, I’ve seen first hand how we are failing people by locating their problems within them as some kind of mental disorder or psychological issue, and thereby depoliticising their distress. Will six sessions of CBT, designed to target “unhelpful” thinking styles, really be effective for someone who doesn’t know how they’re going to feed their family for another week? Antidepressants aren’t going to eradicate the relentless racial trauma a black man is surviving in a hostile workplace, and branding people who are enduring sexual violence with a psychiatric disorder (in a world where two women a week are murdered in their own home) does nothing to keep them safe. Unsurprisingly, mindfulness isn’t helping children who are navigating poverty, peer pressure and competitive exam-driven school conditions, where bullying and social media harm are rife.
If a plant were wilting we wouldn’t diagnose it with “wilting-plant-syndrome” – we would change its conditions. Yet when humans are suffering under unliveable conditions, we’re told something is wrong with us, and expected to keep pushing through. To keep working and producing, without acknowledging our hurt.
In efforts to destigmatise mental distress, “mental illness” is framed as an “illness like any other” – rooted in supposedly flawed brain chemistry. In reality, recent research concluded that depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance of the brain. Ironically, suggesting we have a broken brain for life increases stigma and disempowerment. What’s most devastating about this myth is that the problem and the solution are positioned in the person, distracting us from the environments that cause our distress.‘I’m glowing’: scientists are unlocking secrets of why forests make us happy
Individual therapy is brilliant for lots of people, and antidepressants can help some people cope. But I worry that a purely medicalised, individualised understanding of mental health puts plasters over big gaping wounds, without addressing the source of violence. They encourage us to adapt to systems, thereby protecting the status quo. It is here that we fail marginalised people the most: Black people’s understandable expressions of hurt at living in a structurally racist society are too often medicalised, labelled dangerous and met with violence under the guise of “care”. Black people are more likely to be Tasered, sectioned, restrained and over-medicated than anyone else in our mental health services today.
The UK could learn a lot from liberation psychology. Founded in the 1980s by the Salvadorian activist and psychologist Ignacio Martín Baró, it argues that we cannot isolate “mental health problems” from our broader societal structures. Suffering emerges within people’s experiences and histories of oppression. Liberation psychology sees people not as patients, but potential social actors in the project of freedom, valuing their own lineages, creativity and experience, rather than being forced into a white, eurocentric and individualistic idea of therapy. It directly challenges the social, cultural and political causes of distress through collective social action.
This framework makes complete sense when we hear that the pandemic in the UK has affected poor people’s mental health most. Does it mean wealthy, privileged white men don’t experience suffering? Of course they do. We’re still learning about the complicated ways these structural issues affect our everyday lives. For example, how the pressures of individualism and capitalism may lead to isolation and substance abuse, or how colonial violence towards immigrant families plays out within homes and on bodies.
Let me be clear, I’m not saying people in distress should be out there on the picket line. Pain can be debilitating. But those of us who are supporting people in distress, such as mental health workers, have a key role in social transformation. Social action is the medicine that relieves people’s personal and collective distress.
Instead of trying to change “mindsets” in therapy, we need to change race- and class-based hierarchies, the housing and economic system. Universal basic income has psychological benefits, and recent studies show how it improves the “crises of anxiety and depression”. As a clinical psychologist, some of my most powerful work has been not in the therapy room but in successfully advocating for secure housing for, or working in the community with, queer, black and brown facilitators in organisations such as Beyond Equality, to prevent gender-based violence. The network Psychologists for Social Change shows us a practical imagining of this work. We also need social change that is preventive, such as investing in young people and community-led services such as healing justice london and 4front. They work to shift trauma in marginalised communities through building social connectedness, social action and creativity, towards futures free of violence.
None of this is to dismiss the value of one-on-one therapy (that’s part of my job, after all). But therapy must be a place where oppression is examined, where the focus isn’t to simply reduce distress, but to see it as a survival response to an oppressive world. And ultimately, I’d like to see a world where we need fewer therapists. A culture that reclaims and embraces each other’s madness. Where we take the courageous (and sometimes skin-crawling) risk of turning to each other in our understandable, messy pain.
Meaningful structural transformation won’t happen overnight, though the pandemic taught us that big changes can happen pretty quickly. But change won’t happen without us: our distress might even be a sign of health – a telling indicator of where we can collectively resist the structures that are hurting so many of us.
Dr Sanah Ahsan is a clinical psychologist, poet, writer, presenter and educator
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com
… as you’re joining us today from the UK, we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million supporters, from 180 countries, now power us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.
Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful.
And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.
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But there is another way to see this crisis – one that doesn’t place it firmly in the realm of the medical system. Doesn’t it make sense that so many of us are suffering? Of course it does: we are living in a traumatising and uncertain world. The climate is breaking down, we’re trying to stay on top of rising living costs, still weighted with grief, contagion and isolation, while revelations about the police murdering women and strip-searching children shatter our faith in those who are supposed to protect us.
As a clinical psychologist who has been working in NHS services for a decade, I’ve seen first hand how we are failing people by locating their problems within them as some kind of mental disorder or psychological issue, and thereby depoliticising their distress. Will six sessions of CBT, designed to target “unhelpful” thinking styles, really be effective for someone who doesn’t know how they’re going to feed their family for another week? Antidepressants aren’t going to eradicate the relentless racial trauma a black man is surviving in a hostile workplace, and branding people who are enduring sexual violence with a psychiatric disorder (in a world where two women a week are murdered in their own home) does nothing to keep them safe. Unsurprisingly, mindfulness isn’t helping children who are navigating poverty, peer pressure and competitive exam-driven school conditions, where bullying and social media harm are rife.
If a plant were wilting we wouldn’t diagnose it with “wilting-plant-syndrome” – we would change its conditions. Yet when humans are suffering under unliveable conditions, we’re told something is wrong with us, and expected to keep pushing through. To keep working and producing, without acknowledging our hurt.
In efforts to destigmatise mental distress, “mental illness” is framed as an “illness like any other” – rooted in supposedly flawed brain chemistry. In reality, recent research concluded that depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance of the brain. Ironically, suggesting we have a broken brain for life increases stigma and disempowerment. What’s most devastating about this myth is that the problem and the solution are positioned in the person, distracting us from the environments that cause our distress.‘I’m glowing’: scientists are unlocking secrets of why forests make us happy
Individual therapy is brilliant for lots of people, and antidepressants can help some people cope. But I worry that a purely medicalised, individualised understanding of mental health puts plasters over big gaping wounds, without addressing the source of violence. They encourage us to adapt to systems, thereby protecting the status quo. It is here that we fail marginalised people the most: Black people’s understandable expressions of hurt at living in a structurally racist society are too often medicalised, labelled dangerous and met with violence under the guise of “care”. Black people are more likely to be Tasered, sectioned, restrained and over-medicated than anyone else in our mental health services today.
The UK could learn a lot from liberation psychology. Founded in the 1980s by the Salvadorian activist and psychologist Ignacio Martín Baró, it argues that we cannot isolate “mental health problems” from our broader societal structures. Suffering emerges within people’s experiences and histories of oppression. Liberation psychology sees people not as patients, but potential social actors in the project of freedom, valuing their own lineages, creativity and experience, rather than being forced into a white, eurocentric and individualistic idea of therapy. It directly challenges the social, cultural and political causes of distress through collective social action.
This framework makes complete sense when we hear that the pandemic in the UK has affected poor people’s mental health most. Does it mean wealthy, privileged white men don’t experience suffering? Of course they do. We’re still learning about the complicated ways these structural issues affect our everyday lives. For example, how the pressures of individualism and capitalism may lead to isolation and substance abuse, or how colonial violence towards immigrant families plays out within homes and on bodies.
Let me be clear, I’m not saying people in distress should be out there on the picket line. Pain can be debilitating. But those of us who are supporting people in distress, such as mental health workers, have a key role in social transformation. Social action is the medicine that relieves people’s personal and collective distress.
Instead of trying to change “mindsets” in therapy, we need to change race- and class-based hierarchies, the housing and economic system. Universal basic income has psychological benefits, and recent studies show how it improves the “crises of anxiety and depression”. As a clinical psychologist, some of my most powerful work has been not in the therapy room but in successfully advocating for secure housing for, or working in the community with, queer, black and brown facilitators in organisations such as Beyond Equality, to prevent gender-based violence. The network Psychologists for Social Change shows us a practical imagining of this work. We also need social change that is preventive, such as investing in young people and community-led services such as healing justice london and 4front. They work to shift trauma in marginalised communities through building social connectedness, social action and creativity, towards futures free of violence.
None of this is to dismiss the value of one-on-one therapy (that’s part of my job, after all). But therapy must be a place where oppression is examined, where the focus isn’t to simply reduce distress, but to see it as a survival response to an oppressive world. And ultimately, I’d like to see a world where we need fewer therapists. A culture that reclaims and embraces each other’s madness. Where we take the courageous (and sometimes skin-crawling) risk of turning to each other in our understandable, messy pain.
Meaningful structural transformation won’t happen overnight, though the pandemic taught us that big changes can happen pretty quickly. But change won’t happen without us: our distress might even be a sign of health – a telling indicator of where we can collectively resist the structures that are hurting so many of us.
To return to the plant analogy – we must look at our conditions. The water might be a universal basic income, the sun safe, affordable housing and easy access to nature and creativity. Food could be loving relationships, community or social support services. The most effective therapy would be transforming the oppressive aspects of society causing our pain. We all need to take whatever support is available to help us survive another day. Life is hard. But if we could transform the soil, access sunlight, nurture our interconnected roots and have room for our leaves to unfurl, wouldn’t life be a little more livable?
Dr Sanah Ahsan is a clinical psychologist, poet, writer, presenter and educator
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com
… as you’re joining us today from the UK, we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million supporters, from 180 countries, now power us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.
Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful.
And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.
Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future.Support the Guardian from as little as £1 – it only takes a minute. SingleMonthlyAnnual£6 per month£12 per monthOther
ContinueRemind me in Novemberhttps://6bd2070874e8cb4fdc70397ff773cf80.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
You revealed the face within your face Human,lowly,humbler than an ant The pathos in your eyes made sad my gaze The other face, defended, has no grace With it ,you appear quite confident. Yet you revealed to me your hidden face I know now of the suffering of your days A fear of tragic pasts feared imminent The pathos in your eyes made sad my gaze The mental torment heavy all your days. Yet you must hide from men intolerant You revealed the face within your face Like martyrs, you were tortured and disgraced You wandered feebly,lost, itinerant The pathos in your eyes makes sad my days If Love exists then would that not embrace The lost, the lonely, even the vagrant? You revealed the face within your face The pathos in your eyes made me feel base
We had to learn in school what our religion was about so I’ll try to put down the main ideas. It’s good to take thorns out of lions’ paws. Men should never cut their hair nor anyone else’s. Sausages are rude because they look like penises.That’s why some folk can’t eat pork,I think. When we receive Communion and bite the bread,Jesus can feel it.That worried me Candles can help the soles in purgatory as they can see others then If you have no sins to confess,you should be ashamed of yourself as you are too proud. Jesus was God’s son but God’s name was not on his birth certificate so Mary was on child benefit and housing benefit too.And it was not wrong because God told us to help each other and the poor.And it was a test.Which we have failed. God can sew because Jesus liked needles with small eyes. and did embroidery. God didn’t want Jesus to die but human beings are cruel and tend to attack the good… like God’s own chosen people who were given the ten commandments to pass on.There were more than ten but they lost a few in the desert when their tablets’ batteries went flat. God likes to hear us sing but not rock music as it makes his head ache. God has his own Spirit to fortify him but he doesn’t smoke every day.He’s like a dragon,you see. After we die we can be improved by being roasted in a hot fire and eaten by cannibals.It’s called the Inferno and Dante wrote the script before God made the film which seems hard to find but we kept looking. When we are in heaven we will never have sex again.Or in some cases leave out the “again”.
We feel the bitter winter of the heart The icy hand ,the cruel teeth’s sharp bite When close friends die, when lovers break apart
Terse,cruel words can make our deep self smart The weak have little power to make things right So feel the bitterest winter of their hearts
Humans may like fruit be much too tart Thus fantasied revenge can blind with light As close friends die or false lovers depart
While we suffer, we seek maps and charts Which path to follow,which leads us aright From the bitter winter of the heart?
The muscles clench, the ligaments are taut Faces frown, in mirrors demons shriek If close friends die or lovers haste to part
The pain of loss, the tears that agitate The mental functions,all have gone on strike Stricken in the winter of the heart
Retaliation , bitter, wants to fight. Yet we have little time to see the Light We curse the bitter winter of the heart Instinct, humbler. finds for us new charts
How my heart sings 