The descriptive sub-title of this blog—Against Professional Philosophy—originally created and rolled out in 2013, is “A Co-Authored Anarcho-Philosophical Diary.”
Now, ten years later, after more than 300,000 views of the site, this series, A Philosopher’s Diary, finally literally instantiates that description by featuring short monthly entries by one or another of the members of the APP circle, in order to create an ongoing collective philosophical diary that records the creative results of critical, synoptic, systematic rational reflection on any philosophical topic or topics under the sun, without any special restrictions as to content, format, or length.
In this tenth installment, Michelle Maiese critically explores the malign influence of neoliberalism in higher education on the mental health of students, and the hypocrisy of making faculty members responsible for psychotherapeutic triage.
PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS
#1 Changing Social Institutions From Without Or Within
#4 Respect For Choices vs. Respect For Persons
#5 Thirty-Six Philosophical Precepts of Martial Arts Practice
#6 Enlightenment, Education, and Inspiration
#7 Rigged and Lucky: The Myth of Meritocracy in Professional Academic Philosophy
#9. How Much Does The Chatbot Brouhaha Affect Anarcho-Philosophical Teaching and Learning?
Neoliberalism, Higher Education, and Faculty as Mental Health “First Responders”
If you talk to college students on a regular basis, you’ll be well-aware that many of them feel burnt-out, stressed, and overworked. Available evidence suggests that one in three of them experiences significant depression or anxiety and that the pandemic has only intensified these struggles.
It is not surprising, then, that the academic affairs newsletter distributed to faculty members at my home institution at the start of the Spring semester featured a notification about a new initiative underway at my institution to address the mental health needs of our students.
The blurb reads: “The emotional well-being of students has become a top priority in higher education as mental health challenges among college students have risen significantly in recent years. The Jed Foundation (JED), a nonprofit that protects emotional health and prevents suicide for our nation’s teens and young adults, has developed a guide for faculty to support student mental health. This guide (available for download here) will walk you through straightforward—but significant—steps you can take to: ↘ Support mental health in the classroom ↘ Recognize a student who is struggling ↘ Reach out to a struggling student ↘ Connect students to professional help when it is needed.”
While I applaud efforts to address the mental health needs of our students, I believe that there are several important questions and concerns related to this initiative that ought to be considered. Why are so many college students depressed or anxious? Why are professors being asked to take on this role as mental health “first responders”? Have professors received adequate training to carry out the steps outlined and recommended above?
In my view, both (a) the increased prevalence of depression and anxiety among college students, and (b) the push for professors to serve as “first responders” in providing mental health support, can be understood adequately only against the backdrop of neoliberalism and its rhetoric of individualism, competition, and economic efficiency. If we wish to support the mental health of both students and faculty, these broader social, economic, and political forces will need to be interrogated.
In The Mind-Body Politic, Bob Hanna and I describe how neoliberalism encompasses an ideological framework, a picture of social reality, and a set of policies. As an ideology, neoliberalism involves a system of beliefs, images, symbols, and associated normative values that shape the way that people think and behave. In a neoliberal society, everything is economically framed and organized, and there is a general expectation that people will adopt a market-driven orientation toward all their pursuits. According to neoliberalism’s all-too-familiar picture of social reality, the market is inherently efficient and competition naturally leads to economic growth and prosperity that benefits all of society. Any inequality that arises will be due to differences in the “hard work” and natural abilities of individuals. Since any intrusions or regulations would restrict proper market operations and prevent people from freely engaging, they should be avoided. Individuals begin to see everything they do, including education, in terms of maximizing their “human capital.” This sort of “free market fundamentalism” emphasizes “winning at all costs, a ruthless competitiveness, hedonism, the cult of individualism, and a subject largely constructed within a market-driven rationality that abstracts economics and markets from ethical considerations” (Giroux, 2010: p. 185). All aspects of human life, including human relationships, modes of conduct, and personal goals, come to be evaluated in relation to market demands. Even in the sphere of education, market values such as individualism, self-reliance, investment, and personal profit come to shape what is regarded as rational, responsible, and productive forms of agency.
In terms of policy, neoliberalism favors deregulation of the market, the globalization of capital, and the “rolling back” of the government’s welfare state activities. The manifestation of these shifts in policy varies depending on country and context, but general trends include an emphasis on market security, privatization, deregulation, and minimal government (Larner, 2000: p. 6). Policies that involve dramatic reductions in government funding and the dismantling of social programs and services—that is, policies associated with neoliberal trends—significantly contribute to poverty and stress thereby give rise to psychological distress. Other economic factors such as job insecurity, the intensification of work demands, and the stagnation of wages also contribute to financial instability and lead to increased stress and anxiety. For many, the workplace has become increasingly pressurized and unrewarding as the demands for increased productivity and efficiency have increased (Moncrieff, 2014: p. 15). People must work longer hours or multiple jobs to satisfy basic needs.
Together, these policies and ideas have contributed to economic instability, a weakening of social bonds, and widespread anxiety and insecurity. Such trends have lead some theorists to conclude that neoliberal societies in fact make their citizens mentally sick (Schrecker and Bambra, 2015). It is striking that the number of children diagnosed with a mental disorder (such as emotional disorder, conduct disorder, and hyperactivity) doubled between the early 1970s and late 1990s (British Medical Association, 2006), precisely the time frame during which neoliberal ideas gained dominance.
Why think that neoliberal ideas and policies have a negative impact on the mental health of young people, in particular? In the United States, many people’s childhoods are characterized by competitiveness and anxiety about losing out in the neoliberal “war of all against all.” As families have become smaller and religious belief and membership have declined, the collective integration and emotional connection that previously helped people to withstand life’s stresses and pressures are no longer as readily available. Instead, people tend to adopt a more individualistic orientation and their social interactions are guided more and more by an emphasis on of personal responsibility, competition, and calculation (De Lissovoy, 2018: p. 188). In the realm of education, an increased emphasis on market considerations has given rise to a new kind of student, one who is focused on building his or her academic portfolio, achieving high grades, and gaining the credentials needed to secure admission to highly regarded colleges and universities. Along these lines, De Lissovoy (2018) maintains that the fundamental rationalities of competition and entrepreneurialism increasingly organize students’ relationships to others and to themselves in school settings. Once they internalize the competitive logic associated with the market, they begin to adopt a strategic orientation toward their education and strive to outperform their peers (De Lissovoy, 2018: p. 196). This orientation often takes a serious toll on young people’s mental health.
In this environment of self-promotion and hyper-competitiveness, there are shrinking opportunities for young people to develop compassion, empathy, or close social bonds with their classmates. Instead, they are more likely to experience themselves as “anxious, exhausted, and isolated entrepreneurs of their own talents and capacities” (De Lissovoy, 2018: p. 199). After all, there is heavy pressure not only to perform, but also to avoid being idle or wasting their time. (O’Flynn and Petersen, 2007: p. 469). If the college classroom becomes a “risky terrain best navigated by relying on competitive calculations rather than ethics of cooperation and mutual aid” (Slater and Seawright 2019: pp. 374-375), it is not surprising that many students feel intensely anxious, isolated, and vulnerable. Even allegedly “low-stakes” assignments, exams, or classroom discussions may seem especially stressful, and students may feel especially fearful about making mistakes. However, the sorts of anxieties fostered by neoliberal trends often are not acknowledged or addressed in university programs aimed at improving student mental health.
It is worth noting that the mere fact of being at college seems to be a source of distress for many students. They do not view higher education as a privilege or a meaningful opportunity, but instead as a chore that they dread. Especially in courses that many students are taking to fulfill some sort of requirement, there is often an air of tedium and misery. Since some of them approach their education with negative feelings, they feel burnt out almost from day one. This is a cause for concern as far as mental health goes, but the problem goes well beyond those students with a diagnosable mental health issue. Rather, there is a general existential unease, a sense of “there is no point to this, but it’s something that I have to do.” In a neoliberal society, the only fully comprehensible reason to get a college education is to secure a well-paying job. Meanwhile, many students face financial burdens and need to work long hours (in addition to going to school) in order to afford college.
To manage these stresses, students often are called upon to be “resilient” and develop self-management skills. The rhetoric of resilience that universities frequently utilize functions as a “do-it-yourself” healthcare promotional initiative that solicits people to alter their behavior and to adopt lifelong habits that will improve their own mental health. If they come to view themselves as individualized actors who are responsible for “working on themselves” and enhancing their well-being, this is likely to increase their feelings of insecurity and sense of pressure to succeed. And as Moncrieff (2014) notes, widespread acceptance of the idea that depression and other forms of mental illness are caused by an imbalance in brain chemistry “has helped to displace responsibility for suffering and distress away from the social economic arena onto the individual and his or her brain” (p. 14). In my view, providing adequate support for the mental health of young people requires that we challenge some of these dominant assumptions and give more careful consideration to how to resist neoliberal trends. More consideration needs to be given to how to structure society’s institutions, including higher education, so that they best support mental health and well-being.
In addition to failing to acknowledge some of the social, political, and economic pressures that contribute to students’ mental health struggles, the new mental health initiative at my institution also places more of a burden on professors to conduct mental health screening and serve as “first responders” when mental health issues arise. That is, “patching up” the anxious identities produced by neoliberal conditions thereby becomes part of the job description of professors. One worry is that professors often do not have the proper training to serve this role; even in cases where some training is provided, the associated increase is not acknowledged or compensated in any formal way. What is more, transferring some of the responsibility for student mental health screening to faculty may further stretch professors who already are over-burdened with teaching, committee week, and research commitments.
Yet another worry is that these expectations open up professors to new forms of assessment and measurement; mental health provision potentially becomes part of what it means to provide quality instruction, leading to increased workload (and likely increased rates of depression and anxiety) among faculty members. Also overlooked is the fact that acting as a mental health “first responder” involves a great deal of emotional labor. The message that faculty members are responsible for paying attention to the mental health needs of their students may be especially problematic for professors who have been diagnosed with depression, an anxiety disorder, or some other condition.
The push for professors to identify students who are struggling with their mental health, rather than hiring additional mental health professionals to fill this role, surely is driven by budgetary constraints and considerations of economic efficiency. The costs associated with providing mental health services can be minimized if professors are expected to help conduct screening and identify students who may be struggling with their mental health. At my home institution, I have heard many students complain that our counseling center is understaffed, that they are limited in their number of visits per semester, and that they often must wait for a long time to secure an appointment. True commitment to the mental health of college students would require that mental health services be fully funded and fully staffed, which would be far more costly. So, neoliberalism in higher education gets them coming, by making the students sick, and then also gets them going by failing to provide adequate care for the same students once they’re actually sick. Nice, very nice.
REFERENCES
(British Medical Association, 2006). British Medical Association, Child and Adolescent Mental Health: A Guide for Professionals. London UK: British Medical Association.
(De Lissovoy, 2018). De Lissovoy, N. “Pedagogy of the Anxious: Rethinking Critical Pedagogy in the Context of Neoliberal Autonomy and Responsibilization.” Journal of Education Policy 33: 187-205.
(Giroux, 2010). Giroux, H. “Bare Pedagogy and the Scourge of Neoliberalism: Rethinking Higher Education as a Democratic Public Sphere. The Educational Forum 73: 184-196.
(Larner, 2000). Larner, W. “Neoliberalism: Policy, Ideology, Governmentality.” Studies in Political Economy 63: 5-25.
(Maiese and Hanna, 2019). Maiese, M. and Hanna, R. The Mind-Body Politic. London UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
(Moncrieff, 2014). Moncrieff, J. “Ideas about Mental Health in a Neoliberal World.” Group Analysis 47: 12-16.
(O’Flynn and Petersen, 2007). O’Flynn, G. and Petersen, E. B. “The ‘Good Life’ and the ‘Rich Portfolio’: Young Women, Schooling and Neoliberal Subjectification.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 28: 459–472.
(Schrecker and Bambra, 2015). Schrecker, T. and Bambra, C. How Politics Makes Us Sick: Neoliberal Epidemics. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
(Slater and Seawright, 2019). Slater, G. and Seawright, G. “Putting Homo Economicus to the Test: How Neoliberalism Measures the Value of Educational Life.” In K. Saltman and A. Means (eds.), The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform. Hoboken NJ: Wiley & Sons.
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