mental health issues are less prevalent when you're able to afford a healthy diet, roof over your head, occasional social activities, and aren't constantly stressed about all the bills you have to pay.
Biologist here. You are absolutely correct.
The “mental health” we talk about is 100% the functioning of your physical brain. Your physical brain is partly a function of your genes, inherited from your parents and grandparents stretching back to before the first two cells decided to cooperate. It’s partly epigenetics - if your mother was malnourished or stressed that will carry over onto you and can last until your kids’ generation. It’s partly the embryonic environment - nutrition, drug and alcohol use, physical and emotional stresses of the mother, overall medical health. It’s partly how you were raised - physical and emotional abuse, education opportunities, supportive environment, racism, violence, poverty, acceptance. It is constantly being tuned - if you’re in an honor culture in which physical defense of personal honor is mandatory, you’ll have received rewards for doing so. Those help pre-condition the brain to do that kind of thing again, more easily next time. PTSD, whether you’re a marine from Iraq or a kid from Gaza, will change your brain.
Mental health care including medication and therapy can help these problems, but systemic problems need to be addressed systemically, and we’d be better off if we were able to start to alleviate these issues at their causal level.
