Add new comment

Depends if you know what you're doing. It infuriates me that so many anarchists nowadays are fine with calling shrinks on people without consent. Or for that matter, calling pigs. Not only are you violating the person's autonomy. There's at least a half-and-half chance it will make things worse rather than better. Throwing someone in an unfree environment, where they face possible inhumane treatment (such as assault/"restraint", sleep deprivation, forced drugging...), run by people who are nowhere near as knowledgeable as they pretend about psychological differences and who have prejudices against anarchists and a dozen other outgroups the detainee may belong to, is a recipe for fucking people up even more. On the other hand, talking to people, being there for someone, visiting a depressed person, providing practical support if you can, might make a lot of difference. Or not. But at least it's unlikely to do any harm; and if it does, it's not your fault. I honestly think the kind of anomie/loneliness-related depression which is so prevalent today, does not happen to people with strong communities or affinity-groups. There's a passage in Orwell's "Road to Wigan Pier": "Nevertheless, in spite of the frightful extent of unemployment, it is a fact that poverty–extreme poverty–is less in evidence in the industrial North than it is in London. Everything is poorer and shabbier, there are fewer motor-cars and fewer well-dressed people; but also there are fewer people
who are obviously destitute. Even in a town the size of Liverpool or Manchester you are struck by the fewness of the beggars. London is a sort of whirlpool which draws derelict people towards it, and it is so vast that life there is solitary and anonymous. Until you break the law nobody will take any notice of you, and you can go to pieces as you could not possibly do in a place where you had neighbours who knew you". Far too communitarian for my tastes, but useful as empirical data I think. A lot of Bruce Levine's work is along similar lines.

I'm known IRL for having long talks with people about the socioeconomic and ecosocial issues behind their suffering and the possible insights of various different schools of psychology and psychoanalysis. I doubt it's saved any lives but it does more good than harm the majority of the time. But... it's also possible to make things worse with unwanted/inappropriate self-help advice or perceived intrusiveness. Sometimes people are better left to come through it (or not) themselves.