Electing to Make America Sane Again: Reducing Oppression

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

If we are silent regarding certain issues, we can be enabling oppression. I commented yesterday in referring to the neutrality that Elie Wiesel decried. Is that what we in psychiatry want to condone? Oppression?

Now, “oppression” is not usually listed as a social problem. Perhaps that is because it builds bridges among a variety of what I call the social psychopathologies: certainly any “anti” like anti-Semitism; cults of any sort; and our own epidemic rate of burnout, among others. Social oppression refers to 1 group that unjustly wields and exercises power to dominate and subordinate other groups. Inevitably, that will cause mental and physical trauma, as the following examples (and there are more) indicate.

Anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism can simply be defined as oppression of Jews. The range can be from slang terms for Jews to the genocidal goal of the Holocaust, from micro traumas to major traumas. The Nazi genocidal goal to eliminate all Jews in the world succeeded halfway, until Germany was defeated in World War II. In the current political race, we have claims on both sides to support Jews and Israel, but when Jews are threatened with blame if one side or the other lost, that is anti-Semitism as well as present and future oppression.

Cults. Cults by their very nature take away freedom of thought after professing instant love and care. The internet has allowed more cultish thinking to form online besides the prior physical necessity to form a cult. Devotion to the leaders then leads to doing what they want. If it takes one to really see through a guise to know one, one candidate has been viewed to be a political cult leader by a mental health care professional of scholarly renown who was also a former cult member.¹

Burnout. To bring oppression closer to home, physicians are still burning out at epidemic rates. What seems to be sustaining that? Systems that oppress physicians in terms of limiting the time and interventions with patients that make our healing work so meaningful.² Yes, self-care can help counter some of that, but not nearly enough. Now, such oppression and consequent burnout has spread to other workplaces and then subsequently to parents.

As if these specific examples are not enough in their own right, the biggest threat of oppression is governmental, whether that is from either political extreme. We will cover that political institutionalization of oppression in our next column. Stay open-minded and stay tuned, voluntarily.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Hassan S. The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. Free Press; 2020.

2. LoboPrabhu S, Summers R, Moffic HS. Combating Physician Burnout: A Guide for Psychiatrists. American Psychiatric Publishing; 2019.