Depression, Capitalism, and Radical Care

Abstract

This article discusses depression as inherent to current western society, framing it as both a reaction to and a construct of late capitalism and neoliberal ideology. I expand upon Mark Fisher’s calls to depoliticise depression, drawing on Marxist, critical mental health, and anti-psychiatry scholars. It is theorised that depression, as defined and treated by the psy-professions, was created to further a neoliberal agenda. Sadness, or the lived experience of depression, is a deeply political phenomena that cannot be reduced to an individualised ‘disorder’. However, the undeniable lived experiences of ‘depression’ demand care. This article explores alternatives to psychiatric ‘treatment’, finding glimmers of hope in notions of radical therapy, or even more so in the calls for abolition of psychiatric hegemony and the establishment of radical forms of caring.