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Mental health under the Solberg government

Are the government's policies really compatible with their own commitment to better mental health?




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

One of the fan cases when the Solberg government took office in the autumn of 2013 was an increased focus on offers to the mentally ill and addicted. At a national conference on mental health and substance abuse research in January 2014, the then secretary of state at the Ministry of Health and Care Services, psychiatry professor Astrid Nøklebye Heiberg, presented what appeared to be an ambitious plan to give this field a real boost: One should bet on knowledge and prevention, the budgets for psychiatry and drug treatment should increase more than the budgets for the treatment of somatic disease – and especially children and adolescents should receive extra attention. Since many of those who drop out of high school are struggling with underlying mental health problems, this would also be socially economically profitable, Heiberg reasoned. Furthermore, this part of the health care should come under the free hospital choice scheme, so that harmful waiting times for needy patients could be minimized. All this sounds good. Or?

The biology of experience. My agenda here is not primarily to evaluate how things have gone with this focus area – but I register that one has not heard as much about psychiatry and intoxication from the government during the years that have passed since the measures were launched. Admittedly, more money has been spent on psychiatry as promised, free hospital choice has been introduced, and a package for mental health and intoxication is on the stairs. In addition, Minister of Health Bent Høie has started a drug-free treatment program that can be chosen by a number of mentally ill people in all of the country's health regions, which is really a courageous measure. But let's return to Heiberg's more profound visions of knowledge, prevention and commitment to young people.

If the government really meant seriousness, this would be a radical project. If so, what knowledge would they gain? And would they be ready to take the consequences of the knowledge? There is constantly new knowledge in the field called the biology of experience: the knowledge of how man's experiences and life experiences fall into physiological patterns that predispose to disease, be it mental as well as physical. The banal short version of this insight is that too much stress over time creates illness. Experience biology tries to unpack this point and attach more meat to the legs in the argument. That mental and physical violence and neglect of care in childhood create illness is well documented. When the mechanisms behind the relationship are gradually uncovered, it is understood that it is not only this type of serious stress that has an impact on health and illness – almost the whole field of relationships and interaction with other people plays a role for health. In particular, this applies to the work situation, be it at school or in paid work.

The whole field of relationships and interaction with other people plays a role for health.

Job and school. As a general practitioner, patients are often met with diffuse ailments: mild depressive tendencies, anxiety, worries, difficulty sleeping, body pain and fatigue. Some patients have one or more of these symptoms, some all at once. These are patients who are not necessarily ill, but who are at risk of becoming so. A common denominator for these people is not infrequent that they either have problems in their workplace, or they are unemployed, dependent on straw jobs or pushed as a parcel post through NAV's training and facilitation systems. Now you also start to see children with the same symptom picture. Before Christmas, pediatric and adolescent psychiatry professor Trond Diseth at the Rikshospitalet in Oslo raised an alarm and pointed out a five-fold increase in admissions of children with stress-related disorders in his clinic over five years.

Contradictions. The fundamental question of the government's focus on drugs and psychiatry will then be the consequence of the deeper values ​​in the government's policy in this area. In particular, I think of turbo capitalism, with the enhancement of workers' rights vis-à-vis employers, and the introduction of the "knowledge society" with an ever-increasing performance hard drive in school and demands for grades in primary school. Is the government's basic policy compatible with the goal of giving the mentally ill and drug addicts a real boost? Much indicates the opposite.

torekierulfnaess@hotmail.com
torekierulfnaess@hotmail.com
Næss is a doctor and philosopher. Regular commentator in Ny Tid.

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