Sometimes it is necessary to say out loud what everyone has been experiencing unconsciously for a long time. The Council for Public Health and Society (RVS) did this last week on one of the most important themes of our time: the hyper-nervous society. In a comprehensive report, the RVS shined a spotlight on the greatest threat to public health: the explosive increase in mental problems as a result of – essentially – collective overstimulation.
An analysis such as that of the RVS quickly threatens to get bogged down in empty bureaucratic phrases. However, terms such as ‘institutionalized individualism’ and the ‘performance society’ with its desire for ‘acceleration and optimization’ obscure what it is really about: today’s society is causing more and more people to feel increasingly under pressure.
The number of people with mental problems as a result of ‘life itself’ has grown explosively: almost half of Dutch people are affected by this and it is mainly young people who are hit the hardest. This mental pressure can manifest itself in fear, sadness, stress, burnout. The result: mental health care is clogging up while the real solutions cannot come from there. It is no longer a matter of individual health, but literally of public health, said professor of innovation in mental health care Floortje Scheepers.
Published last weekend NRC an interview with ecological thinker Tim Jackson. He also sees a society in which people are continuously pulled out of balance. Prosperity is measured in prosperity, in wealth, and not in well-being or health.
Jackson wants to organize the economy in such a way that it takes care of the people: “If material prosperity is your goal, growth is a pretty good dynamic model: you can accumulate wealth. More and more is logical. But if health is your goal, it’s all about balance. Sometimes you want more, sometimes less. But you always have to pay attention to that point of balance.”
This attention to balance can also be found in the RVS. It cannot be the intention that people have to have “a mindfulness certificate” in order to cope with today’s society, according to the council. That would indeed be treating the symptoms that ignore the core of the problem. It’s not about finding ways to survive as best as possible in a hyper-nervous society, it’s about curbing hyper-nervousness itself.
That’s easier said than done. The current growth-oriented economic system is ubiquitous. The liberal idea that people should make a different choice for themselves is simply asking too much if all incentives point in the other direction. A cultural change is therefore needed to slow down.
The RVS rightly states in its report that this is a task for all participants in society: governments, employers, employees, schools, parents, students, media, social media and social networks such as groups of friends or family.
In essence, it means that people must learn to listen to themselves better again. Everyone intuitively feels that the current way of doing things have to run, jump, fly, dive, fall, get up and keep going ultimately leads to accidents. The fact that slowing down hyper-nervousness is not an individual problem but a social task may make it more complicated, but no less necessary.
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