When it comes to our thoughts and emotions, everything feels extremely personal. That sadness? Our fault. This anxiety? Our responsibility. However, back in the 1970s, a social scientist named Urie Bronfenbrenner suggested that the world around us has an enormous effect on our mental health.
Our society typically views mental health in a vacuum. Cultures throughout history– and many still to this day– viewed individuals living with mental illness as ensnared in some sort of spiritual crisis, like being possessed by a demon. More recently in Western communities, people see psychiatric symptoms as weakness, laziness, or insanity.
Nowadays, there is more understanding that mental illness is a condition, not a personal failing. A medical model emerged over the last century to see these symptoms as an illness like diabetes or cancer. An illness can be treated. Continue reading…