A
recent report from the World Health Organization indicates that
depression and anxiety disorders worldwide are at an all-time high.
It seems, though, that most of the increases in mental disorders have
happened in so-called "First World" countries such as
Europe and the US and Canada. Why is this? A study that was released
last month in the Bulletin of the American Psychological Association
tries to provide an explanation. According to the study, which looked
at college-age populations in the US, Canada, and Britain,
perfectionism has been on the rise throughout the 1990s, 2000s, and
2010s. The study relates the rise in perfectionism to the increasing
role in neoliberalism in these countries and also shows how
perfectionism has a negative impact on mental health.
Gregory
Wilpert of the Real
News spoke with Thomas Curran, lecturer in the
Department for Health at the University of Bath and one of the
authors of the study described above.
In
this particularly interesting interview, Curran begins with the
definition of what we call 'perfectionism'. Then, he explains that
perfectionism in on the rise in a global scale. Finally, he explains
how perfectionism is related to the dominant culture defined by
neoliberalism and how it's affecting even the mental health of entire
societies:
Perfectionism
is a personality characteristic, and it has a number of different
elements.
The
first element of perfectionism is one that most people commonly
associate with perfectionism, and that's this idea that we have high
levels or excessively high levels of personal standards and we strive
for flawlessness. That's called self-oriented perfectionism, and
that's the first element of perfectionism.
The
second is a social dimension of perfectionism, and this is the idea
that we perceive that our social climates, the people around us in
the immediate environment and also the broader environment, is
excessively demanding of us.
And
the third element is the dimension of perfectionism that's directed
outwards onto others, so it's this idea that we expect others to be
perfect and we have excessively high demands of others.
Together,
those three elements are what we understand when we talk about
perfectionism.
We
found that all three of those dimensions are rising. But what's
really interesting is the dimension of perfectionism that has
undergone the largest increase, twice that of the other two, is
socially prescribed perfectionism. As I said, that dimension is
associated with the perception that demands placed upon us are
excessive. Now, those are the broad headline findings, and that's the
main one.
We
controlled for country, so between-country differences. These are
American, British, and Canadian college students, so we did a control
of a country to see if there's any differences in those trends, and
we didn't find that when we controlled a country any differences
emerged. So essentially, these trends are consistent across the
nations, in our analysis.
We
were very cautious about using the term "neoliberalism"
because it can be considered a bit of a nebulous term. But short of
anything better, we wanted to use this phrase because what we mean by
"neoliberalism" is this idea that, or essentially a
shorthand description for a political philosophy, which essentially
suggests that the market and marketized forms of competition are the
only organizing principle of human activity. Essentially what that
meant is that since the neoliberal era and the market reforms of
Thatcher, Reagan, and Mulroney in Canada, is essentially an
introduction of marketized forms of competition into civic
institutions where they never used to be.
One
of the key institutions is education, and we see the market in
education for things like standardized testing and the incessant
standardized testing of young children from very young ages because
tests give us metrics that allow us to rank, sift, and sort, so we
can get an idea of which kids are better performing, which kids are
worse performing, which kids are going to the top grades and
therefore the top places in universities. It's a very useful way in a
market-based society to organize.
But
the problem with this, of course, is that what we're doing is we're
teaching children that they need to compete against each other in an
open marketplace. So we are essentially instilling a sense of social
anxiety, of social hierarchy. We're suggesting that inequality is
virtuous because those that have done well deserve the rewards. And
so essentially what we have now is a culture where we are continually
comparing, and it isn't just in education. The explosion of
social media has put this idea of social comparison on steroids and
essentially has given us a platform at a societal level for people to
engage in social comparison, continually working out where we stand
relative to others.
The
link to perfectionism here is that if we continually worry about how
we perform relative to others. And if the consequences of failure are
so catastrophic, both economically but also for our sense of
self-worth - that's to say, if we don't get the perfect score, if we
don't get a high score, if we don't rank better than others, then we
feel worse about ourselves and our self-esteem - what that means is
that we tend to cope in that culture by developing perfectionistic
tendencies because of course if we have high standards, then we're
unlikely to fail, and if were unlikely to fail, we're unlikely to
feel badly about ourselves and also we're more likely to ensure that
we have a higher market price.
So
that's why we link it with neoliberalism, because of this idea that
we're almost forcing kids to compete with each other and to cope,
perfectionistic tendencies are emerging.
But
the problem is for perfectionists, because they have excessively high
goals and because perfectionism is by definition an impossible goal,
when we fail, because the consequence of failure is so catastrophic
for our sense of self-esteem, because we tie our self-esteem on
others' approval and a need for higher achievement, then when we fail
or when we are rejected by others or when we don't receive positive
feedback, then we tend to ruminate, we tend to brew over those, what
could've been otherwise or what we should've done. And over time,
those very negative thoughts and feelings turn into anxiety,
depression, and in the most extreme cases, suicidal thought. So it's
a highly damaging trait, and these trends are quite worrying because
of that.
The
findings of this study, summed up by one of its authors, are really
astonishing.
First
of all, they prove that we live under a cultural totalitarianism of
global scale of which the core is actually the neoliberal doctrine.
A
key element of this cultural totalitarianism is what Curran describes
as 'perfectionism'. It appears that perfectionism is the product of
certain theories that were being developed in previous decades,
especially in the West. The building blocks of these theories were
concepts like radical individualism and ego-power.
While
these theories were being promoted as boosters of self-esteem, like
Objectivism for example, they ended up to contribute to the dominance
of this psychotic culture of uninterrupted competition.
Curran
also gives an idea of how this cultural totalitarianism expanded and
prevailed by basically 'penetrating' and dominating the educational
system of the Western countries.
But
the most astonishing result, according to the study, is that this
culture impacts on the mental health of entire societies.
It
seems that this terrible consequence has its roots to the absurdity
of 'perfectionism' itself. The dominant culture attempts to persuade
young people, for example, that they have equal opportunities no
matter what their background. In real life, however, we know that
this is not true due to a number of factors that have nothing to do
with someone's efforts to achieve specific goals. Thus,
'perfectionism' pushes the individual to believe that what is
considered and dictated as 'failure' by the dominant culture, is
explicitly the result of the specific actions by the individual.
And
therefore, this leads to some serious consequences. People feel shame
and guilt for not achieving "success" according to
standards that have been set by the dominant culture, and this often
results to serious impact on their mental health.
This
is actually a scientific proof of the destructive power of
neoliberalism, which impacts people's lives seriously and in various
ways.
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