It’s common for American politicians in the twenty-first century to speak gravely of an ongoing “mental health crisis,” which they are increasingly compelled to address through policy. The Bush administration explored technocratic solutions such as the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, designed to develop consistent guidelines for pharmaceutical interventions in treating mental illness. The Obama administration announced the BRAIN Initiative, a $110 million dollar project “to help researchers uncover the mysteries of brain disorders . . . like depression.” Both the Trump and Biden administrations’ efforts have been similar, focusing on countering the widespread mental anguish in our society primarily through the expansion of psychiatric interventions.

In a New York Times op-ed titled “Mental Health Is Political,” anthropologist and historian of neuroscience Danielle Carr asked, “What if the cure for our current mental health crisis is not more mental health care?” Carr argued that the conversation about mental illness frequently elides and displaces politics, ignoring the collective social and economic decisions that give rise to mental phenomena like anxiety, paranoia, and depression. Often the prevailing mental health discourse “puts the focus on the individual as a biological body,” writes Carr, “at the expense of factoring in systemic and infrastructural conditions.”

There’s no doubt that our collective mental health is suffering, and that the matter demands significant attention and robust policy solutions. But when political leaders undertake big policy initiatives designed strictly to increase targeted psychiatric provision, Carr suggested, they are also in a sense letting themselves off the hook for building a less crazy-making world.