Self-Care Shouldn’t be a Matter of Privilege

Our increasing obsession with self-care is symptomatic of our broken system that denies a fundamental human right to mental health care.

10 DECEMBER 2019 (intended for Slate.com)

In a culture that has normalized burnout and the pressure to create the perfect work-life balance, we've become the "treat yo' self" generation. The hashtag #selfcare has over 21.7 million posts on Instagram: think marble bath bombs, detox smoothies in mason jars, skincare starter-packs, and aesthetically written inspirational quotes.

#Selfcare today seems to be inundated with surface-level stress-relievers, all of which are Instagrammable solutions sold and accessible only to the socioeconomically privileged.

True self-care isn’t about extravagant vacations and $50 crossfit classes. It’s about taking action to live healthier, happier lives. But even tending to our mental, emotional and physical needs is a luxury that few can afford in a time of increasing need for self-care.

The popularization of both #selfcare and more substantive measures are indicative of two larger problems, the first of which is the inadequacy of institutional healthcare in addressing a mental health crisis among young people. The other is a byproduct of the first: the commercialization of aesthetic women-targeted products and Band-Aid solutions for the privileged to buy the promise of mental health.

In 2017, one in five U.S. adults had some mental illness and one in 25 experienced serious mental illness. I am also a tiny fraction of these statistics, recently diagnosed with ADD and struggling with bouts of depression and anxiety.

So I turned to self-care. I sought professional help, took mental health days, and learned to say no to things without feeling guilty; but only because I could afford to. I don't have to work three jobs to feed myself, nor do I have to fear being fired if I say no to something I mentally or physically can't handle.

Anyone who can't do the same is left without the fundamental human right to healthcare.

In fact, over half of American adults with a mental illness receive no treatment, just like the 64.1% of youths with major depression. Arguably, they aren't avoiding treatment by choice -- it's a product of a broken healthcare system that preserves class-based access to proper care.

While the majority of Americans (76%) believe mental health is just as important as physical health, 42% of the population see high cost and insufficient insurance coverage as the main barriers to access. Furthermore, nearly one in five has to choose between treatment for a mental health condition and a physical condition due to their insurance policy.

"For people who are actually experiencing symptoms of a mental disorder for which effective treatments are available, to ask, expect, or encourage them to take care of themselves in that circumstance is to shift the burden of the condition from the system that should be addressing it to the individual," Paul Appelbaum, former president of the American Psychiatric Association, said to VICE.

The #selfcare movement of wellness and personal development, then, is the perfect coverup for the government's inadequate infrastructure. By "outsourcing public healthcare," they let companies create the misconception that individual measures of spa treatment, top fitness centers, and positive thinking are sufficient to treat a mental illness or avoid overload burnout.

This isn't to say that wellness strategies and practicing good emotional hygiene don't help. Rather, the self-care revolution has been co-opted by markets, encouraging millennials to buy into product-driven paths to better mental health. And that means we need to return to the roots of true self-care, making us better citizens and able to care for others.

As black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde famously said, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." For Lorde and many activists of historically oppressed identities, focusing on themselves was a radical act of protest in a society that made them "invisible."

It means we have to flip the narrative so we can seek what self-care meant from the start: an act of self-preservation to advance social change.

#selfcare #healthcare #mentalhealth