Each year one in four people in the Netherlands will develop a diagnosable mental disorder such as a mood disorder, anxiety disorder or addiction (Nemesis 3, Trimbos Institute). Why is there so much mental suffering in a prosperous land with high quality of life and one of the best mental health care systems in the world? One would expect that wealth and quality of life would be correlated with an increase in mental well-being but the reverse appears to be the case. Why don’t quality of life indicators and prosperity translate into good mental health outcomes? The aim of this project is to investigate whether the increased prevalence in mental health problems may be causally connected to the pursuit of the unattainable ideal of individual personal autonomy.
Autonomy was originally a political concept that applied to nation states and cities. In the last 200 years philosophers began to apply the concept of autonomy to individual persons. Persons were treated as self-determining, capable of making their own choices and acting on them. The desire for individual autonomy in the West may have been a precipitating factor leading to our current mental health crisis. Our hypothesis is that it is the pursuit of this unattainable ideal that has led to many of the ills of modern society – stress, exhaustion, trauma, burn-out, loneliness and feelings of meaningless and emptiness.
Supervision:
PhD Student: Jessy Bergamin
Publications:
Book project: D. Denys (In progress) Onze Adembenemende Autonomie: Terug naar het nieuwe normaal.
Bergamin, M. Hoven, R. Van Holst, C.L.H. Bockting, & D. Denys. 2024. Development and validation of the autonomy scale, Amsterdam. Comprehensive Psychiatry 131(1): 152466.
Bergamin, J. Luigjes, J. Kiverstein & D. Denys 2022. Defining autonomy in psychiatry. Frontiers in Psychiatry
Denys 2022. Is the mental health crisis fuelled by our desire for individual autonomy? Eur Neuropsychopharmacol. 2022 Nov;64:30-31. doi: 10.1016/j.euroneuro.2022.08.004.