John Humphreys: Goldman Banker doing a “mental health audit”?It’s a little rich

One of the great comedy putdowns on British television happened when Caroline Eihan was playing the wonderful Mrs. Merton. Her victim was Debbie McGee, wife of Paul Daniels.

“So Debbie …” asked Mrs. Merton with that seemingly innocent look, “… what first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels?”

It was interesting because, like all the good comedies, it seemed to touch the unpleasant truth. That’s why I remembered this week when 13 young people who joined Goldman Sachs as trainee analysts were complaining about treatment.

David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, makes a speaking gesture in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Goldmans is the most powerful and ruthless investment bank on the planet. (Photo, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is headquartered in New York)

Goldmans is the most powerful and ruthless investment bank on the planet. When it is hiring, it can take the choice of very good graduates. The average wage at a bank — pay attention to the “average” — is over £ 180,000.

Therefore, it can be reasonably estimated that the 13 lucky ones knew what they were waiting for when they landed the industry’s most coveted trainees.

It doesn’t seem to be the case. They agreed that they were forced to work too hard, so they made the headline: apparently 95 hours in a few weeks. There’s nothing interesting about it, you might say. All employees have the right to be treated properly, no matter how rewarded they are. What they did about it made me feel pretty weird.

We conducted a mental health survey to compare mental health before and after joining the company. The scale was 1 to 10. Before they joined Goldman, their average “score” was 8.8 out of 10. After that, it dropped to 2.8 points.

I confessed that I didn’t even know that such an investigation existed and tried to imagine explaining the concept to my parents.

My dad himself was once out of order. We children shouted from their parents’ bedrooms, sobbed, and woke up in the middle of the night. It wasn’t because of long working hours.

He worked harder than any man I had ever known. However, he was self-employed and his work was exhausted. He was afraid he couldn’t get enough food on the table for his big family.

He looked a little strange and calmed down for a few days, but no mention was made of that night. A few years later, my mother told me he had “memory weakness”. She would not have used the expression “mental illness”. It carried a terrible stigma.

The strict, forbidden mental hospital was called “Looney Bin”. I think the scary words were a form of defense mechanism. We were afraid of them and what they contained.

Thank god Almost everything has been closed since my childhood, and I recognize that mental illness is as part of the human condition as “physical” illness. Indeed, given our knowledge of how the mind and body interact, the very distinction between the two is questionable.

As that knowledge grows, so does the scope of what constitutes a mental illness. However, experts in this field admit that it is not always easy.

If you are worried about your blood pressure, a cardiologist can examine your heart and suggest treatment. Because psychiatrists cannot examine our brains in the same way that we study our behavior.

Therefore, mental illness is classified as a “syndrome”, each with a specific behavioral pattern. Mental health treatment is based on the interpretation of symptoms, so the way we talk about symptoms is very important. It takes me back to those young and overworked bankers.

Mental health has become compulsory today from a subject that was forbidden in my parents’ days.

Remember those endless interviews with teenagers about the impact of not being able to go to school on them?

How many times have you heard them tell the interviewer (sometimes prompted, but usually not): “It affects my mental health.” And how often the interviewer follows up. Did you: “How?”

There are few correct answers. It was simply accepted that the “mental health” of millions of children was harmed by not going to school, no matter what else happened in their lives.

It must be ridiculous not to realize that Covid’s horrific years can be harmful to many children in every way, but encourage children to see it through a mental health lens. That is dangerous.

You might say that it’s just a word and the language is constantly changing. You or I may have said that you are a little tired or sick, but today’s youth talk about mental health being affected. It’s all the same, right?

No, it’s not. Mental health is different.

I know a young man who was attacked on the street a year ago. His injuries were genuine and his effects on mental health were similar. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It was not a subjective self-assessment. It was an objective clinical assessment that he needed treatment for.

Mental health has become compulsory today, from what was forbidden in the days of parents.

I’m not suggesting that not all young people who have spent quite a few months in disastrous need a little help and encouragement. Of course it is. My suggestion is that the objectification of mental health “emotions” or “problems” leads to dangerous assumptions.

It says:’I’give’something — a condition where only highly trained doctors can help me. There is nothing I can do about it. I need a mental health doctor. “

My young friend of PTSD told me he was always listening to it from his own friends.

Language is important. It helps us shape the way we see and react to the world. As the old saying goes, “For a man with a hammer, everything is a nail.” Turn “mental health” into your favorite hammer and everything becomes a psychotic nail. My question is, are we in the process of forging such a hammer as a society?

Perhaps the best answer to that is a very clever young Goldman who felt the need to measure “mental health” on a strange scale to tell himself what they already knew. I am a trainee of Sachs.

We must all be blockade skeptics, Sadik

Sean Bailey is an ambitious politician dreaming of a chance to become Mayor of London. It’s a job with great fame and power that can lead to even bigger things. Ask Boris Johnson.

Bailey’s chances must have been steadily enhanced this week by his challenging man, Sadiq Khan. Of course, it wasn’t Mr. Khan’s intention when he delivered what he probably wanted, but in yet another word a damaging blow in the war.

Kahn called Bailey a “blockade skeptic.” As a reminder, according to the dictionary, a skeptic is someone who has a suspicious attitude towards the assumed knowledge. Is there a soul (probably except Mr. Khan himself) in the land who doesn’t believe he should at least doubt the need for a continuous blockade?

Let’s admit that the blockade was inevitable in the early stages of the pandemic when Johnson was anxious to wave everyone. Due to testing and tracing system attempts, the Tower of Babel looked like a model of careful planning. But keep in mind that our mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. There is no compulsory blockade in Japan and the mortality rate is one of the lowest.

And never forget the terrifying cost of our blockade.

There is something else. The blockade shifts the balance of power in democracy from the general public to the ruler.

Isn’t that a good reason to be a blockade skeptic on its own?