(We continue to consider potential root causes contributors to the mental health crisis as begun in the prior installment.)

               Simultaneously with these economic forces, many today are entering the work force with a strong desire and expectation to achieve work-life balance.  Maybe their parents’ example of overworking for years leaves them with a longing for time and experiences of life outside the office.  Maybe they have been told that they can have their cake and eat it too in terms of work success and extracurricular fulfilment.  They often expect the benefits and wages of having invested years in a position at the very beginning of a career and may become disillusioned or resentful when those rewards are not forthcoming soon enough. The basic requirements for productive employment collide with the desires for a fulfilled life to create another source of stress.  Their responses of angst or wanderlust for something better creates stress for both them and the businesses they work for.

               Again, many hope that achieving such a balance will bring mental wellness and fulfillment.  The realities of our fallen world places great obstacles in achieving this balance.  The striving after such balance creates more stress and magnifies other challenges to mental health.  Sacrifices must be made to achieve such balance, often leaving these life balance seekers looking for more.  They too must go further upstream to find mental wellness.  That upstream insight, which can only come from a spiritual view of reality, can then guide them in overcoming the obstacles they wish to overcome. 

               With more information to process, more work to do, and more challenges to pursuing life fulfillment, some of us can find ourselves giving less attention to our physical well-being.  For some work leaves less time or less energy to exert our bodies in activities that not only make us feel better physically, but could improve our mental health (many studies support this).  Given the reality of aging and the reality of bodily dysfunction in a fallen world, lack of attention to our physical health will eventually reduce our capacity to handle the demands of life. 

               Even for those who press past the challenges, devoting the time to their physical health which leads to what society considers physical fitness, this only touches on the surface of the mental health crisis.  Healthy bodies contribute to healthy emotions but are not enough to guarantee it.  Going upstream from physical fitness into whole person fitness is still required.  A proper view of physical fitness will lead to a proper response to caring for the whole person, body and spirit.

               The pressures of life can also leave us with less time to gather with family or friends, thus resulting in less emotional support that could protect against threats to mental health.  Having others who provide perspective on life’s challenges, even if they just offer sympathy, empathy, and compassion makes the stress less burdensome.  Having relationships which provide tangible support when jobs fail or when financial hardship hits means that the stressed individual is protected from falling into mental illness.  In contrast, not having such relationships creates a sense of isolation which amplifies the stress rather than limiting its effects.

               Between the closing down of churches during the pandemic and the fracturing of many churches over politics and social issues, the fabric of life which held society and individuals together is wearing thin and giving way for many of us.  Social isolation has become all too common, preventing many from meeting their inborn need to socialize.  The societal safety nets of church, community, and government programs which try to catch the individuals who fall into mental illness cannot presently bear the weight of so many who are finding themselves on such life downward spirals.   

               Simply bringing these isolated people physically together would seem a promising approach, but so many attest to the feeling of greatest loneliness in the midst of a crowd.  Many are already surrounded by other people yet feel quite lonely and isolated.  Being located physically together does not guarantee a sense of belonging together.  The connection must go further upstream, although the increasing isolation does need a response.  Again, incorporating a spiritual view of reality is required.

               In the background of technology changes, work demands, life fulfillment expectations, and social isolation, society has devalued family as a foundation of society’s functioning.  The attempt of a revolutionary mindset to be discussed in the next section has attempted to undermine a traditional view of family and either restructure it or destabilize it into non-existence.  Families physically spread out at greater and greater distances thanks to the higher educational system and the world of labor.  Families spread out socially as teens are socialized to become their own person without regard to their parent’s legacy and beliefs.  Families spread out in what they stand for as the old-fashioned husband and wife with children are replaced by whatever combination of men, women, children, animals, or even inanimate objects.  The stabilizing force of family cohesion dissipates as each spreading out weakens the family structure and its supporting function.  Divorces multiply.  Depression and anxiety grow.  Children grow up without models or support to overcome their life struggles.  They grow into adults unable to withstand the pressures of life, succumbing to more and mental illness unless some other force intervenes.

               Many groups strongly emphasize a restoration of the family as an answer to the mental health crisis.  While this gets closer to the root as will be discussed in the final section of this series, an upstream answer to what is family and how to bring the family back together is required.  Restoring family as a foundational aspect of society requires a response, but is not the whole work of untangling the knot.  A restoration of family must include a spiritual understanding of what family is.

               As if we needed one more factor, we have the pressure which the government has forced upon us in its constant attempt to help us and protect us from ourselves.  While laws to limit sinful behaviors are needed to an extent, the extent to which government attempts to control can become a burden rather than a protection.  State and federal governments have a role in maintaining civil order, but their demand for the “rights” of real and imagined minorities again creates undue burdens on individuals and businesses.  Requiring handicapped access is one thing, but forcing compliance with immoral beliefs so that someone does not feel triggered by differing views goes too far.  The “Nanny State” has long moved from the mirage of a doting lady watching over little ones into the specter of a controlling and aggressive tyrant bent on micromanaging what it thinks is best for everyone else. Rather than offering relief from the burdens of modern life, this “nanny state” mentality intensifies these pressures of life and destabilizes the natural supports of family, church, and community.

               Still many others bemoan the growing influence of the government in contributing to life stress and thus to mental illness.  They focus on getting government out of the way which is another basic issue, but this still leaves factors unaddressed.  Mankind without any restraint leads to anarchy.  Finding the proper role of government requires us to again go upstream in exploring the purpose of government and its role in our lives.  We must respond to government’s contributions to the mental health crisis, but we must do so with a clearer and more robust worldview than just wanting the government to leave us alone.  Examining government and its role through a spiritual lens is required.

               Each of these materialistically oriented factors contribute to the dysfunctions of society leading to mental illness but biological factors impacting our mental health deserve their moments in the spotlight as well before going upstream.  We must momentarily consider the toxicity of our fallen world in terms of the living environment which we are creating for ourselves.    

               While the technological, social, and other factors are contributing to stresses and overburdening human limitations, the physical environment we are fashioning around ourselves as individuals and as a society is eroding our bodies’ abilities to withstand such stressors.  In the quest for the next technological breakthrough, chemicals are often produced which disrupt the normal functioning of our bodies.  The resulting inflammation, changes in metabolism, changes in brain function, changes in hormones, and more all alter our homeostasis, or balance of biochemical functions.  Our resilience to withstand the other previously mentioned stressors is diminished as conscious and unconscious resources are diverted to the effects of these toxins.  Besides the technologically produced toxins, our desire for aesthetics and youth drives the market demand for personal care products and cosmetics industries which introduce even more potential biochemical disruptors into our bodies.  Besides these chemicals we breathe and put on our skin, we have created a whole world of food additives to preserve shelf life, enhance flavor, and make food more colorful.  We then eat and drink to our own detriment from the formulations of the processed food industry.  Our physical bodies are presently challenged as never before, and we wonder why we are struggling so much with overall worsening health, including negative impacts on mental health.

               Removing toxins and sources of inflammation from our diet and our environment would definitely help but only so far.  Removing these triggers for mental and physical illness would make us feel better, but still does not guarantee mental wellness when so many other factors are present.  We must go upstream in not only finding the toxins, but understanding how we view our environment and how we view the stewardship of our bodies.  We can respond correctly only with these improved understandings. 

               When we look up on this materialistically focused description of the potential root causes of the mental health crisis, we could feel a little hopeless. Technological advances and their impact on how we live appear inevitable.  Inflation and the economic pressures of work life versus life goals seem unavoidable.  The breakdown of family seems to continue unabated.  The prospects of government’s increasing control of our daily life seems unstoppable. Environmental toxins appear to be encircling every area of life.  These physical factors are at their core, just sources of more and more stress.  Living in a fallen world will necessarily impress some elements of these or other stressors upon us.  Remove one source and others will fill in the gaps.   Pushing back on these societal changes mostly just creates more stress when one person or one family tries to live counterculture to everyone else around them.  Addressing any one of these only untangles one little loop of the knot and their interconnectedness makes a potential starting point impossible to find.  Rather than trying to simultaneously untangle all of these contributors plus others not mentioned, we must look upstream.  If we can move upstream in the factors to something that underlies multiple of the previously listed ones, we can find a common source which when addressed would solve these factors as whole rather than in parts. 

(In the next installment, we move upstream to look for spiritual root causes of the mental health crisis.)