The truth about Poverty, Mental illness and Genetics

by Tom Wheat

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Any Psychiatrist worth his salt will agree that there is a direct correlation between poverty and mental illness. The realities of poverty, homelessness and a disaffected system of public outreach has further compounded the problem inviting the deterministic argument usually launched by conservatives that there is a genetic basis for mental illness, and that since those factors are solely causally ascribed at birth, the problem should remain unchecked, and rather the argument favors a seemingly rational position, 'don't add fuel to an already burning fire.' The reality is in fact far different though no less complicated by a paradox of reason.

Mental illness has some genetic basises in fact, however the majority of its symptoms are socially conditioned by class often by the same people we put in place to stem the flood of the millions disaffected by an ideological system. Capitalism and its creator, Protestantism has taught seemingly nice middle class people to view the poor as wicked or incapable of success. Since the poor do not have the access to knowledge and power, or other cultural determinants it is easy for them to fall for this culture of poverty hypothesis as well.

There have been many debates on capital hill about the sanctified nature of privacy of patient records and the necessity for insurance companies to not have access to data that looks for genetic predisposition as a prerequisite for providing medical care. Once the insurance companies compile genetic profiles on their clients is when the system of exclusion and class bias to medical care will really begin. Since the wealthy can insulate their bastard miscreants with long-term expensive Jungian psychotherapy they more or less will be able to perpetuate an argument as old as the middle ages, that the wealthy are sanctified by god, now by genetics as well, and that the poor are just stupid and crazy and hence deserve their economic position. Hence the poor only receive sedation therapy, cheap psychotropic medication that has more side-effects both short and long-term than actual benefits. The idea is not to talk to them, rather sedate them. The dirty secret, the truth is on everyone's lips it's just that everyone smiles the empty 'I really do care smile' when they actually don't because they have been taught to do this when they were impressionable children.

The neo-freudians are the first to champion this approach, cheap drugs to cure a drug problem originally created by our foreign interventions in countries where the ideology of free trade conflicted with communism. Any student of history will tell you that when a country undergoes militarization its living standard, the social quality of life suffers. This becomes more readily apparent when you consider the effect of US intervention in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was ideologically motivated more so than a real national security imperative and oh by the way in these areas was also a thriving drug market begging for international export. After the Vietnam war America suddenly had a drug problem. Substituting legal dope for illicit dope is not going to make the panhandler go away. We must address the true nature of poverty in America.

Sigmund Freud was a coke head and a morphine addict. How is it that a dead drug addict and his present cohorts the Neo-Freudian's still dominate the discourse on mental health? How is it that the wealthy and powerful of this country have forgotten who it was that made them powerful?

Inherently, truth and everything else has been trivialized via our corporate media and its invention the sound byte: information that sells more viewership.

Genetic profiling has been enlisted by those who do not want to assist the poor, since they profit most from the daily malaise being visited upon the poor working classes of america via the largest series of US tax cuts since the 1960's. This government subsidizing scheme allows the government to endow corporations with Corporate Welfare programs, that amount to far more dollars and more US tax payer expenditures than any previous scheme in our history versus poverty based welfare programs in operation today. Of course, The ideology behind this is that this capitalist system of corporate entitlements will create more jobs for the American worker, whereas in reality it has decreased the number of jobs necessary to keep the majority of Americans above the real poverty line, when you compare the cost of living indexed for inflation. Hence the Corporate conservatives call poverty based welfare an unnecessary entitlement, and together with their cohorts on capital hill have systematically attempted to bankrupt the legacy of Roosevelt's New Deal Legislation for their own personal and collective aggrandizement.

Logically, if one has any inkling of life experience under his/her belt, it would be reasonable for them to assume that poverty and mental health are more of an issue then genetically preconditioned illnesses. The reality has occurred where science has been enlisted as the reactionary arm of history to justify the existing social order at the expense of the truth.

Pontius Pilate said, "What is Truth? Truth is in the mind of the maker, and for the majority of Americans that truth comes from the medium of half truth, media information, television, education etc., the sum totality that argues that American's are incapable of critical thinking. This symptom of media mis representation of facts or bias has been showcased by the military industrial complex and the parasitic corporate tax harems. Just ask an average MTV (subsidiary to Viacom) viewer if he can identify when the revolutionary war began. He would probably argue that Marilyn Manson defeated Lord Cornwallis at the MTV video awards.

The myth of a left wing bias to the American media is astounding to ponder via its ability to perpetuate adherents to such a false reality. Corporate Public relations is the largest facet of the entertainment business, and its views concerning, social issues are actually very conservative and as a ventricle of social and class control seeks to either promote a neutral or trivial stance towards anything that does not directly support the status quo. The myth of dynamic media also perpetuates its own set of myths though they are just as static as the policy papers that come out the other end in defense department think tanks: reality is framed by blanket circumstance irrespective of the causes. Hence All of America is suffering from a case of mass hysteria chiefly of the form called trivialisim.

Poverty and mental illness need to be treated as related factors instead of the current program of stigmatizing the mentally ill person as unfit for society and rewarding that person's acknowledgement of his own inadequacy by a welfare system that not only used to encourage poverty but is now fast disappearing all together. Genetics while a revolution in the field of sciences must not be enlisted as an agent of class oppression. It was Christ who said that only the poor stand the greatest chance of entering heaven, it is a shame that most self styled christians do not believe him.

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