Dr. Sofia Jeppsson

Clarification, problematization, coping and thriving

What can philosophy do for mental health? A lot, I think, so I will give four answers – not intended to form an exhaustive list.

First, there’s clarification of what’s initially muddled. This isn’t particular for mental health. In many interdisciplinary collaborations, philosophers supply clarification to other fields. How the psychological relates to the neurological, how to understand the phrase “psychiatric comorbidity”, or what “self” and “illness” can refer to when discussing “the self-illness ambiguity” – all of these problems need philosophical clarification before any useful, substantive discussion can be had.

Second, there’s problematization of what might seem clear and obvious. For instance, it seems obvious to many that although the non-clinical population frequently reason and behave in irrational ways, anyone suffering from a mental disorder will be more irrational. Philosophers have shown that this need not be so. Philosophical conceptions of rationality differ from the sort of basic common-sense that often is undermined in various disorders; arguably, the latter but not the former is central to sanity.

Third, people who are both philosophers and mad frequently make use of their philosophy skills to develop highly personalized coping strategies. This might seem of narrow interest, since philosophers make up a very small subset of people who are mad or mentally disordered. Nevertheless, I hope and believe that our publications could be useful for others too. For instance, I, Paul Lodge and Michael Dickson have all written about why so-called “reality testing” didn’t help us; it’s not just the case that we were “non-responders” to this sort of therapeutic intervention and that’s it.

Finally, philosophy could help people’s self-esteem. Sophie Stammers and Rosalind Pulvermacher led a philosophy group with psychiatric patients and saw positive effects, mostly from problematizing notions of, e.g., rationality/irrationality, as discussed above. However, I also believe that it can be helpful to see inherently terrifying and disabling experiences as simultaneously philosophically interesting. This point requires careful argumentation, because one might be interesting to others in the same way as a virus is interesting to the virologist. One might be studied and objectified as a mere specimen, or regarded as horrifyingly fascinating. But there are also more positive ways of being philosophically interesting, and this can help one’s self-esteem. Stressing that the terrifying can be interesting at the same time might be a better way forward than trying to minimize that which doesn’t lend itself to minimization (e.g., “I’m just like everyone else except I have this medical condition, but it’s no big deal, really”). It could be a first step towards thriving rather than merely surviving.