Prescription for Survival 2022
Of the World Mental Health Coalition
In 1946, Albert Einstein, H.H. Arnold, J.R. Oppenheimer, and other atomic scientists published a famous book entitled, One World or None, launching a project for our collective survival in the Atomic Age. The World Mental Health Coalition, an organization of professionals dedicated to the promotion of societal mental health and safety, declares our era “the Psychological Age.” Now, the collective survival of our species will depend on the mastering of our own minds. Will we be able to cooperate for the common good, so that human civilization can thrive and survive, or will we beckon our own self-annihilation through the greed, exploitation, and injustice inherent in a fragmented, scarcity-minded worldview?
No question could be more urgent or more important at this time. The solutions will require an integrative approach, reaching across disciplines and sectors in the spirit of collaborative participation. Mental health is an integral part of this conversation. Indeed, mental health concerns interventions that foster wholeness over fragmentation. Our state of collective mental health may very well determine our ability to support shared self-rule, equitable distribution of resources, and peaceful negotiations over war. For this mission, I am pleased to announce our “Prescription for Survival 2022”:
PRESCRIPTION FOR SURVIVAL 2022
We are all Mental Health Professionals from many countries committed to the universal health professionals’ pledge, the Declaration of Geneva. In 2017, after holding an Ethics Conference at Yale School of Medicine, we published what became an unprecedented bestselling book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
The World Mental Health Coalition, which formed as a result, rapidly grew and is now the largest mental health association dealing with dangerous leadership. Throughout 2017 and 2018 we had numerous media appearances and met with many members of Congress. In 2019, we convened a major Interdisciplinary Conference, broadcast by C-Span from the National Press Club Ballroom in Washington, DC, which convened thirteen leading national experts in unprecedented ways.
Then came the unforeseen emergency of the Global Pandemic. Given our concern that the then U.S. President was psychologically incapable of handling such a crisis, we issued our “Prescription for Survival” during the first month of the Pandemic, warning: “We have a Presidency that is … making a global pandemic deadlier.”
We prescribed five action items to ameliorate the suppression and subversion of Medical Science, arising from a dangerously unfit President. Had any of the recommendations in our “Prescription for Survival” been followed, the majority of Americans who died from Covid-19 would still be alive. Twice more in 2020, we updated, enhanced, and issued Refills. All these “Prescriptions” are at: PrescriptionforSurvival.org.
Now at this two-year anniversary of our initial “Prescription for Survival,” we are confronting multiple emergencies on many fronts. The gross mishandling of the Pandemic has further exacerbated Economic Inequalities, a failure to deal with a severe Climate Crisis, a subsequent Migration Crisis, rising Global Conflicts, and the risk of Thermonuclear War. Further, we now face an increased likelihood of new Covid variants coming from impoverished countries with the lowest vaccination rates and few public health measures. Underlying this ominous world situation is an overall crisis of Collective Mental Health, about which we recently stated: “Our social, economic, and political system is driving us to collective suicide.”
However, we are not helpless. The World Mental Health Coalition issues our new “Prescription for Survival 2022,” with five more action items. We acknowledge that these multiple critical issues all intersect with Societal Mental Health. When we become the primary threat to our own species’ survival, we unmistakably enter the domain of Medicine and Mental Health, which is the rationale for our participation.
OUR PRESCRIPTION IS ALL (OR EQUIVALENTS) OF THE FOLLOWING:
1) Emergency funding is necessary for vaccinating the entire world against Covid-19 in the shortest possible time. The sooner we do this, the more effectively we can protect the Global Population against further devastating Covid outbreaks, variants, and additional Pandemics. Wealthy nations have selfishly and shortsightedly hoarded vaccines in ways that have caused large regions of the world to be minimally vaccinated—and therefore cause more contagious and potentially vaccine-evading variants that return to wealthy nations. The cost of rapidly implementing this remedial recommendation is less than just the increase of the Pentagon budget this year alone, making it by far the most cost-efficient way to protect all lives.
2) Urgent steps must be taken to rescind the misnamed “Free Trade” and “Globalization” policies the Global North has wrongfully and deceptively pursued for some time. These policies have disproportionately benefited rich nations and mega corporations, at the expense of free trade and global wellbeing for the world. Once we limit these self-serving and onerous policies that escalate inequality and injustice, so will we greatly improve Global Mental Health, not to mention reverse the decline of Democracy everywhere.
3) Immediate attention and education are required on the serious problem of supporting and empowering psychologically dangerous national leaders. It is estimated that dangerous individuals occupy 10% of power positions worldwide but are responsible for 90% of global atrocities. As has now been experienced in the United States, the failure to diagnose, restrain, and hold accountable a dangerously mentally-impaired President has also brought about an ongoing and still escalating Public Mental Health Crisis. All disciplines must work together to contain this Crisis, which contributes to the spread of criminality, violence, death, economic dislocation, crumbling institutions, and a widespread culture of psychological abuse.
4) Immediate steps are needed by all nuclear weapons-possessing nations to ratify and implement the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The currently still-expanding “MAD”, or Mutually Assured Destruction, state of world affairs must urgently be declared incompatible with life. We must transform our world into being truly nuclear weapons-free, with a rejuvenated and strengthened United Nations and potent international law institutions.
5) Implementation of the 2015 Paris and the 2021 Glasgow International Climate Agreements, as well as the alarming United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports, is imperative. Widespread denial of scientific truth, gross governmental malfeasance, extreme corporate disinformation, and unconscionable capitalistic excesses can give rise to collective mental distress. We know from experience and clinical research that hopelessness abates and momentum builds as we become involved. The human habitability of the Planet should be all our concern, and we must take steps to replace our totally inadequate national and international institutions.
The Reason for this Prescription is Hope. The Timing of It is STAT. Compliance is Required for the Survival of Our Species.
Link to C-Span event: https://www.c-span.org/video/?458919-1/the-dangerous-case-donald-trump
Link to previous Prescriptions: https://worldmhc.org/prescription-for-survival/