Three years ago, Congress activated a nationwide hotline 988 “for suicidal thoughts and other mental health emergencies.” As you call 911 for physical problems, you call 988 for all your non-physical issues, like loneliness or depression. Stress is everywhere and so is the eager mental health helper.

Street demonstrations and political protests are now fashionably threatened to be replaced by therapy couches and support groups. Here, we witness a natural evolution of American society toward an ultimate dystopia where all the woes of life are resolved by a phone-number in everyone’s pocket. Just call 988, and it is at this number (and with its soothing voice) that the lost souls of America find comfort. In short, most working Americans have become quite lazy — unmotivated by work ethic or personal ambition, and uninspired by any grand ideals dreamed together. We are back to the lethargy and dependency of our mothers’ wombs. In spite of our famous vibrancy, America is a spent nation. We only look to the next-scheduled mass entertainment and social media with any degree of enthusiasm.

How did it happen? We are descendants of the most rugged pioneers who refused to pay unjust taxes and dared a revolution against the upper-class rulers. Today, as wimpy navel-gazers, we pay whatever is demanded out of our pockets by the upper-class capitalists and their lobbyists-controlled politicians, whose power is immensely strengthened by their mental health experts. A tribe who famously tamed the wilderness and built a world-dominant and soul-conquering commercial empire is now made up of whimpering children quick to run to their mothers for skinned knees.

To gain some perspective on the matter: Let’s say, a group of so-called “mental health experts” comes into town and sets up shop. The townspeople, prior to the experts’ arrival, took care of themselves when their daily relations encountered problems, talking to their family, neighbors and friends, and often to priests and ministers. To them, illnesses only meant something that happened to their bodies, like appendicitis, pneumonia, broken bones and such. There were problems in their relationships, to be sure, but not as diseases, just “problems of living.”

Until the new experts’ arrival, townspeople didn’t know there were so many “depressed” adults and “stressed-out” teens and so many psychological “disorders” that required therapy. With the new experts, all issues of living were now turned into medical diseases to be resolved by their incantations and pills. Phenomena like depression and stress are so vague and diffused they could be caused by something as momentous as losing your job or something as frivolous as your bad hair day.

In February last year, a mental health company, Clinical & Support Options (CSO), came to town and announced its business plan to “[train] 1,800 medical professionals.” What would they be trained to do? Basically, spot mental problems among townspeople.

With such a large number of spotters available, western Massachusetts is now invaded by 1,800 pairs of eyes trained to spot people who need help. They are everywhere: “Primary care providers, pediatric practices, hospitals, veterans organizations, schools and early learning agencies, law enforcement, first responders, courthouses, victim-assistance providers and advocates, and other grassroots community-based organizations and businesses,” and so on.

“Feeling sad, stressed, or helpless? HELP is here,” so whispers a billboard in Greenfield. A church sign a block away says, “Need a listen? Call 988.” So surrounded by helpers and with so much of their sweet help just under our fingertips, we are now quick to seek relief from whatever bothers us. In a nation where everyone’s life is insecure and future uncertain, mental illness in America is open season on all of us.

Interestingly, all mental health experts get their daily bread from our stressed life. As they claim to help us, the experts certainly help themselves. We are their cash cow and bodies to fill mental wards — a $100 billion industry; and, like letting the town barber decide who needs a haircut, we let them create illnesses at will. Invariably, every “helping” hand comes with an invoice and every “therapeutic” word is on a timer. Like the empowered barber who sees bad hairdos everywhere, mental health experts see needs for psychotherapy in everyone.

Late psychiatrist Thomas Szasz famously declared mental illness a medical fraud. He argued that only physical causes create physical effects. Minds do not bend spoons, nor does abracadabra cause a hernia: If your body needs fixing, you go to a doctor. If you are depressed or stressed out, the help is in your family, friends, community resources, government agencies, or, as most of us do most of the time, your own resolve. All of our “mental” issues are “caused” and “resolved” in our living together. You would not get mentally ill if you lived in a cave alone or were Amish.

Oddly in our super-scientific era in which we habitually demand “facts” and “empirical evidence” on everything, however, only the mental health experts claim they can create illnesses and their cures — just with their magic words and pills. In the Soviet Union, 95 percent of Russian psychiatrists worked for the government, busily branding as “crazy” those who opposed the communist government: All “factual evidence” was their own creation.

Whether in America’s escapism or Russia’s fascism, the psychiatric branding applies mostly to the powerless who cannot easily escape the trap. Especially in America, every mental patient is just one step away from falling into the gooey honey-pot of a Venus flytrap and its paralyzing seduction. Once you’ve tasted the sweet comfort of psychiatric couches, only running out of money or your breath would stop the temptation.

It’s no secret: To live in society is to need help from one another, but not from the Orwellian Big Brothers who help us by taking away our freedom and independence.

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and professor emeritus, lives in Greenfield.

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