“Money is the only value. Human life has none.” This stark comment from co-founder of ITT, Previn Karian, is his repeated response to the several moments when presenter Chrissie Pollard keeps pressing him on why governments take no action in the area of mental health. You can find this in their Launch Interview, available on a number of Podcast platforms and on YouTube.
With even more bleak assessments to follow in the forthcoming interview with Professor Andrew Samuels, Karian insists that the complete dismissal of mental health in any government policy is a predictable outcome of social trends.
This trending of society since the Industrial Revolution has been that money would become the only value, possessed by fewer and fewer people, impoverishing the majority, and making mental health utterly irrelevant to political life and to governments. Karian is dismissive of the way mental health is used as a face-saving PR spin by all political parties on the Left and the Right, when all their policies are based on money, the economy, and people or institutions with money. It is the same mental health spin that is emerging from corporates in the banking, automotive and oil industries. Mental health might have cult, celebrity or PR status. But it has no government policy with meaningful interventions.
Karian goes on to identify two specific areas that drive the suppression of mental health. Society hates and fears the human mind, the idea that we all have a mind of our own. And society hates and fears feelings which are activated in our minds. Whilst our age might be swamped with nothing but feelings, bursting out across all forms of media, they cannot be discussed or reflected on. They are only acted out in unreflective, unconsciously destructive actions – to others or to ourselves.
This beating down of mental health into a voiceless suffering has been dramatically changed by the Covid pandemic. Contrary to societal trends, more and more people are seeking mental health relief. Co-founder of ITT, Chrissie Pollard, always carrying a vision and passion for mental health broadcasting since 2008, saw that the pandemic would force society to find psychological answers and start to look more meaningfully at emotions, feelings and the mind. It was her phone call to Karian that began the ITT project.
The sad and lonely conclusion is that mental health sufferers now have to walk their own journey into solutions for their pain, torment and suffering. They have to find the desire to search for answers deep down inside themselves. The mental health key lies within.
It’s a perilous walk through the world of the internet, self-help, from pop-psychology to more technical books, webinars, short courses, different counsellors, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists. The variety of inputs and experiences can offer you your own way out of personal anguish and pain. For now, that is our social and political reality in mental health. It will be your own solitary journey with pain, which at some level, will always be personal, private and unique to you. But the universe can provide – if you go there.
ITT joins the world of podcasts and YouTube uploads, contributing to mental health broadcasting. To us and those who appear on our interviews, mental health matters. We have dedicated our lives and careers to it. And we are united in one belief: we all have feelings – and a mind of our own. That’s what makes us human.
Please send us your thoughts, feelings or comments. This will help us shape our broadcast programmes with your participation.
