K-punk has linked capitalism and bi-polar depression (manic depression with its suicidally depressed and delusionally manic mood swings). That post suggests that depression is more an illness of civilization, and not a biological disorder that is genetic in origin.

The medical solution? Gulp down a handful of pills every day makes you sane. Well, the daily dose of lithium may help you get your life under control.

Many argue that the chief problem under capitalism is not that people are getting treatment for mental illness and reconciling themselves to capitalism. It is that people cannot afford, or do not have access to, quality treatment that can enable them to lead a life that is productive (not only economically, but socially, politically, culturally and emotionally).

But that is not the end of the matter. We also have the medicalization of daily life. Thus psychiatry has a tendency to expand its diagnostic system so that more and more experiences are brought within its domain, whilst the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry believe that deliberate efforts to synthesis new therapeutic compounds could alleviate suffering while generating profits.

By emphasising the biological (that is psychopathology is a consequence of inheritance and other constitutional factors) psychiatry has located the source of the problem in the individual. So, as treatment is directed at the individual, (psychiatry in effect is emptying symptoms of their possible moral, political, economic or social meanings because the symptoms have only biological significance. That is the discourse of psychiatry.