Friday, 10 March 2006

The Nature-Nurture Paradigm in Mental Health

My own personal view is that most things are one way or another a combination of nature and nurture, and that anything that says something is all one thing is somewhat limiting or inaccurate. For example, I believe that mental health problems are mostly socially and environmentally created, but that people might also just be genetically different, whilst not being genetically defective or inferior. Therefore people with mental health problems are also just different types of people, like the different kinds of eyes or skin colour of human beings.

The nature-nurture paradigm in itself can also be limiting, as there may be other psychological factors related to a persons creative or inner learning development, and which don't fall into strict nature or nurture categories. Where the nature-nurture paradigm becomes complex, is that the terms nature and nurture can have double meanings in theory and in application, and that further meanings need to be taken into account if we are to fairly and accurately decode the terminology. By nature or nurture, there are another two concepts which are extensions of the terms, and another set of terms which also need to be taken into consideration.

Nature and nurture can mean objective things or causes, or it can mean the experiences of individuals. Some times nurture can be used in the first way, in looking at objective causes, but without also taking into account personal or human experiences. This is a misuse of its application in mental health, but one which happens nonetheless. Thus when a mental health professional uses the term nurture, but also uses the added term environmental, what may be being described are the environmental causes, and therefore not the social causes, or vice versa.

Nature can mean that which is genetic, or it can mean human nature, but when nurture is used, it also has two other meanings, both of which mean completely different whilst related things. The term nurture refers to two things, firstly it refers to social conditions or social conditioning, and secondly it refers to the environmental as in family dynamics and upbringing. Curiously it doesn't mean environmental as in the green or ecological sense of the term, nor in the institutional sense, but both of which might have a bearing upon a persons mental health and well-being.

If a professional such as a therapist uses the term environmental, the chances are that environmental means parental-and-child interaction in development and up-bringing, but again this could mean the objective criteria of that without also looking the persons social and life experiences of it.

Also, there are mythological meanings behind what are considered to be simply nature or nurture issues, and the combination of the two factors and the interplay between the two can be ruled out in order to look at only one polarised and mythologised area. However, what is considered as natural may be based upon a social or culture myth, and what may be considered as nurture may be based upon a myth concerning nature. In this way one concept is played off against another in order to make a single polarised claim, whilst in reality both concepts of nature and nurture are still being used theoretically to support the polarised application of one against another.

Social Anxiety Labelling

In order to understand a label of any kind, we must try to understand the motives and problems of those who are applying the label, as well as understanding the real motives and problems of the person to whom the label is inflicted.

Social anxiety is a label which can assume that people who have worries about being in new groups are therefore anti-social, rather than looking at the nature of different responses and labelling processes. A further assumption that can be made from being deemed anti-social when one is not, is that the person is seen as requiring being socially isolated from others, because he or she has an isolated problem with being with new groups of people.

This kind of response is punitive because it shifts the emphasis from the social to the individual and blames the individual, seeing it as an isolated problem and not a general human or social one, whilst at the same time it is capable of thinking it is a scientific and humane treatment based approach. These aspects of social anxiety labelling in itself are enough to make a person feel uncomfortable about being in the company of new people, as based upon isolation and their experiences of this labelling, and in itself these aspects of the labelling can be a cause of the problem and not a solution.

Social anxiety labelling suggests that the person has a problem with sociality and it stigmatises people as such, when in fact the real problem may be that the person fears being isolated or marginalised, and being absent from a shared or social context. A person who is suffering from so-called social anxiety is therefore really suffering from a fear of social deprivation, and is not anti-social as the label might suggest.

Social anxiety labelling regards the person whom is being labelled as being a social anxiety upon the mental health of others, and this is at the very core and root of the terminology of the label. The label of social anxiety is presented in the plural (as if it is referring to a group of people), when it is really an opinion about an individual and is therefore applied as a singular term. It therefore tends to disregard the pre-existing social or group qualities and skills that the person has, and it individuates the term social to refer to an individual in isolation from any group interaction and contact.

A person could be seen as a social anxiety upon others if the person applying the label can't be bothered to help the person, meaning that helping or learning about others is actually experienced as anxiety by the applicant. Therefore, the application of the labelling is an anxiety with learning or caring about human beings, individuals, or people, and it is a helping, learning, or caring anxiety or inability of the person or people applying the label.