Inclusion without cure will liberate us all

Journal of Mental Health Promotion, Mar 2004 by Faiers, Adrian

Alternative approaches to social inclusion will therefore need to dig deeper than simply tackling poverty, lack of opportunity and deprivation. They will need to tackle the underlying attitudes and assumptions that give rise to poverty, lack of opportunity and deprivation.

A final anecdote

Moreover it may be more than our mental health that will benefit by re-setting the controls away from status and consumerism, as demonstrated by the salutary and inspiring story of Roseto (Kawachi et al, 1997). Roseto is a small town in Pennsylvania where, during the 1950s, it was observed that the rate of heart attacks was 40% lower than the local average. The only observable difference in the town was the 'social cohesiveness and ethos of egalitarianism that characterised the community'. 'Conspicuous consumerism' was taboo.

As younger people found work outside the community and introduced values from mainstream US life, so income inequalities became more visible - big cars, joining country clubs, expensive holidays. The increasing influence of the status-based, consumerist social model was paralleled by an increase in the rate of heart attacks until eventually it became the same as that in nearby towns.

One of the main reasons we do not want to change is the cost - in both money and time. We cannot afford egalitarianism. We have not got time for social cohesion. We need all our money and time to get higher up a social ladder that is leaning against a very flimsy wall. Yet moving towards some of these changes might influence the whole way in which we currently view cost benefit. It is a mad world. And perhaps curing the mad world rather than individuals within it really would, in Bentall's words, 'make the world a better place for mad and ordinary people alike'.

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