I don't think you can decouple mental health from politics and economics. Poverty is a huge stressor, especially when combined with homelessness. So to quantify

I don't think you can decouple mental health from politics and economics. Poverty is a huge stressor, especially when combined with homelessness. So to quantify suicides accurately you'd have to exclude the effects of the relatively benign 90s with the current outbreak of extreme financial stress. I agree with your last point though. Mental illness is the result of a complex mix of social/personal, political, and financial stressors, biochemical weaknesses, and unhelpful cognitive habits. But current diagnoses are behavioural, not contextual. And treatments tend to concentrate on one factor to the exclusion of others. Having said that, I think "you'll feel better with insights" line of psychoanalysis continues to be bullshit. Analysis has a terrible record of delivering useful results, and "insight" usually means "learning the mental model the therapist uses without questioning it." There are better and more effective cognitive and psychotherapeutic techniques which work more quickly and are cheaper. Combining them with chemical and welfare help shouldn't be an issue.