A-Infos (en) NZ, Aotearoa, AWSM: One in Three in Distress: Capitalism Is Failing Tairawhiti's Youth (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The latest reporting on youth psychological distress in Tairawhiti is 
grim reading, but it is difficult to feel surprised by it anymore. We 
are told that one in three young people in Gisborne are experiencing 
moderate psychological distress, and the article presents this as a 
growing crisis demanding urgent attention. The numbers are serious, and 
the suffering behind them is real. Young people are clearly struggling. 
But what is striking is how discussions around youth mental health in 
New Zealand are almost always framed in ways that avoid confronting the 
social system producing the misery in the first place. Distress is 
treated as though it exists in isolation from the conditions people are 
forced to live under. The language used is clinical, managerial, and 
depoliticised. We hear about "wellbeing outcomes", "access to services", 
"interventions", and "resilience", but very little about poverty, 
alienation, capitalism, or colonialism. The result is a conversation 
that recognises suffering while carefully avoiding its root causes.

If one in three young people in Gisborne are psychologically distressed, 
this should not be viewed as some inexplicable public health anomaly. It 
should be understood as the predictable outcome of life under a system 
that organises society around profit instead of human need. Young people 
are growing up in an environment defined by economic insecurity, social 
fragmentation, housing stress, ecological anxiety, and increasingly 
bleak prospects for the future. They are expected to navigate rising 
costs of living, unstable work, impossible housing markets, underfunded 
schools and collapsing public services while constantly being told that 
success or failure is ultimately their individual responsibility. The 
pressures are relentless, and they are not accidental.

The article briefly gestures toward social pressures affecting 
rangatahi, but like much mainstream reporting it ultimately reduces 
distress to something that exists primarily inside individuals. The 
proposed solutions therefore remain individualistic as well. More 
support services, better awareness, earlier intervention, improved 
access to counselling. None of these things are bad in themselves. 
People absolutely need support, and mental health services in New 
Zealand are chronically overstretched. But the liberal obsession with 
treatment after the damage has already been done avoids asking why the 
damage is occurring on such a massive scale in the first place. Therapy 
cannot substitute for social transformation. Counselling cannot resolve 
structural despair. No amount of mindfulness exercises or mental health 
campaigns can make life feel meaningful in a society where increasing 
numbers of young people feel economically disposable and socially 
disconnected.

One of the more revealing moments in the article comes when 
entrepreneurship is raised as part of the solution for struggling youth. 
This is presented almost instinctively, as though encouraging young 
people to become entrepreneurs is an obvious pathway toward empowerment 
and wellbeing. It says a great deal about the ideological limits of 
mainstream thinking that even in discussions about psychological 
distress, the answer eventually circles back to the market. Young people 
are suffering under capitalism, therefore the proposed solution is to 
integrate them more deeply into capitalist logic.

Entrepreneurship today is treated almost like a secular religion. 
Politicians, business leaders, and media commentators constantly promote 
the idea that the path out of insecurity lies in innovation, hustle, 
self-branding, and small business ambition. The entrepreneur becomes the 
ideal neoliberal citizen: endlessly adaptable, self-motivated, 
individually responsible, permanently productive. Structural problems 
disappear into personal initiative. If opportunities are scarce, invent 
your own. If wages are low, start a side hustle. If work is insecure, 
monetise your passions. If the future feels hopeless, become a "creator" 
or "founder".

But this mythology collapses under even basic scrutiny. Most small 
businesses fail. Most entrepreneurs do not become wealthy success 
stories. In reality, entrepreneurship under capitalism often means 
precarious self-employment, unstable income, debt, stress, overwork, and 
the constant pressure to commodify every aspect of your life. The 
romantic image of the entrepreneur masks the reality that capitalism 
increasingly offloads risk from corporations and the state onto 
individuals themselves.

More importantly, entrepreneurship does nothing to address the 
structural causes of youth distress. A young person struggling with 
housing insecurity, poverty, isolation, family stress, or hopelessness 
about the future is not liberated simply because they are encouraged to 
"think entrepreneurially". In many ways, this rhetoric intensifies the 
problem because it deepens the idea that individuals alone are 
responsible for overcoming systemic conditions. If you fail, it becomes 
your fault for not hustling hard enough.

There is also something deeply contradictory about presenting 
entrepreneurship as a solution in regions already suffering from 
economic neglect and inequality. Tairawhiti does not need more 
motivational speeches about innovation culture. It needs material 
investment, housing, healthcare, decent wages, infrastructure, and 
community control over resources. It needs collective solutions, not 
another version of neoliberal individualism dressed up as empowerment.

The entrepreneurial fantasy also reflects a broader ideological shift 
under neoliberal capitalism where collective politics is replaced by 
individual aspiration. Previous generations of working-class politics at 
least recognised that social problems required collective struggle and 
structural change. Today, even despair is increasingly privatised. 
Instead of asking why communities are impoverished, people are 
encouraged to become personal brands within the very system 
impoverishing them.

Young people today are inheriting a world defined by crisis. Climate 
catastrophe hangs permanently over the horizon. Stable employment is 
disappearing. Rent devours huge portions of income. Home ownership 
becomes more impossible every year. Education increasingly functions as 
a debt-producing conveyor belt into insecure labour. Social life itself 
becomes more commodified and isolated. Even leisure is increasingly 
mediated through screens, algorithms, and corporate platforms designed 
to monetise attention and insecurity. It is hardly shocking that 
distress levels are rising. What would be shocking is if they were not.

Capitalism produces alienation because it reduces human beings to 
economic units. Our worth becomes tied to productivity, employability, 
and consumption. Relationships become transactional. Time becomes 
fragmented around work and survival. Communities weaken as competition 
intensifies. Under these conditions, anxiety and depression are not 
individual malfunctions but rational responses to a profoundly unhealthy 
society. The system constantly generates insecurity and then blames 
individuals for failing to cope with it.

This is especially visible among young people because they are often the 
first to feel the contradictions most sharply. They are told from 
childhood that if they work hard enough, stay positive enough, and make 
the right choices, they can build a decent future for themselves. But 
the material reality surrounding them increasingly contradicts this 
narrative. They see parents working exhausting hours while still 
struggling financially. They see graduates trapped in debt and 
precarious employment. They see governments endlessly discussing housing 
affordability while homelessness grows more visible every year. They see 
corporations making record profits during a cost-of-living crisis. They 
see politicians speak about climate action while continuing to expand 
industries driving ecological destruction. The future offered to many 
young people is one of permanent instability dressed up in the language 
of opportunity.

In regions like Tairawhiti these pressures are intensified by long 
histories of colonial violence and economic neglect. Maori communities 
have experienced generations of dispossession, land theft, state 
violence, and deliberate underdevelopment. Poverty in these communities 
did not emerge naturally. It was created politically and economically. 
Colonisation shattered communal systems of life and replaced them with 
exploitative structures designed to enrich settlers and the capitalist 
economy. The effects continue across generations through inequality, 
housing insecurity, over-policing, family stress, addiction, and reduced 
access to resources and opportunities. When Maori youth experience high 
levels of psychological distress, this cannot be separated from the 
historical and ongoing realities of colonisation.

Yet mainstream discussions often strip this history away. Distress 
becomes individualised and medicalised rather than understood 
politically. The same state that participated in destroying Maori social 
structures now presents itself as the neutral manager of the resulting 
social crisis. Governments promise targeted interventions while 
maintaining the economic conditions producing suffering in the first 
place. It is a cycle that repeats endlessly. Communities are 
destabilised through poverty and marginalisation, then handed 
underfunded services to manage the fallout.

There is also something deeply revealing about the way resilience is 
constantly discussed in these conversations. Young people are repeatedly 
told they need greater resilience, better coping mechanisms, improved 
emotional regulation, and healthier habits. Again, none of these things 
are inherently bad. But resilience discourse often functions 
ideologically. It subtly shifts responsibility away from social 
structures and onto individuals. If you are struggling, the implication 
becomes that you lack the psychological tools to cope properly. The 
focus turns toward adapting individuals to unhealthy conditions rather 
than changing the conditions themselves.

A society that demands endless resilience from its young people is often 
a society failing them profoundly.

The reality is that many forms of psychological distress are deeply 
social in origin. Loneliness, hopelessness, anxiety, addiction, despair, 
and even interpersonal violence do not emerge in a vacuum. They are 
shaped by the environments people live within. Capitalism fragments 
collective life. It isolates people from one another while 
simultaneously intensifying competition between them. It creates 
constant insecurity while promoting impossible ideals of success and 
happiness. Social media often amplifies these dynamics, but social media 
itself is not the root problem. It is a technological expression of 
broader capitalist relations. Endless comparison, self-branding, 
performative identity, commodified attention, and algorithmic insecurity 
all mirror the wider values of capitalist society.

Politicians frequently describe youth mental health as though it were a 
technical policy challenge requiring improved coordination between 
agencies and service providers. But the scale of the crisis suggests 
something much deeper. If distress is becoming normalised among huge 
sections of the population, perhaps the problem is not simply access to 
treatment but the structure of society itself.

https://awsm.nz/one-in-three-in-distress-capitalism-is-failing-tairawhitis-youth/
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