disorders of status
Most so-called mental illnesses are disorders of status. A natural result of social interactions rather than quirks of nature or mysterious disease.
Higher social animals use emotions to organise their community-building survival strategy. Activities like blaming, shaming, adoration and forgiveness use emotional states to regulate each member's status.
States like depression, elation, confidence, guilt and anxiety stratify groups by recording each individual's estimation of themselves and fixing their position in a social order. These states act as a currency that is stored in the memories and habits of each member and records everyone's social wealth and roles.
If you are at the top of the tree you get the most nuts, you have less of the stress anxiety or depression that fixes individuals lower in a hierarchy.
At the bottom you get less or no chance to procreate and less of everything else except trouble.
Reduced status can lock stress, anxiety or depression into place. The resulting physiological changes can become entrenched and lead to emotional, physical or mental breakdown.
If someone slips over the edge and becomes unproductive, families and societies either scramble to recover them or else demonise them and leave them there to mark the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. Or both.
The mentally ill, like witches often serve as scapegoats on which to project badness. Everyone else can feel OK and sleep sounder.
copyright (C) John Brasted 2008
updated 11/06/11
