Mental Health and Cows.

For Christmas Sallymouse gave me a book, ‘The Secret Life of Cows’, knowing I have a huge soft spot for Highland Cattle. Rosemary Young knows her herd intimately, each a character with caring family relationships and friends, each relating to humans in their own way. Thirty years of stories illustrate their need for freedom, interesting things to do and eat, the relationships of a supportive group. Her herd is healthy without the need of antibiotics and their meat is health giving too, and it’s commercially viable. She describes how factory farming is profoundly unnatural and emotionally damaging to animals. They become stressed, aggressive, lethargic and depressed, prone to health issues and lameness requiring constant preventative medication. They grow slowly and their meat is less healthy. Personally I love cows because they teach me the real quality of acceptance. If one is willing to divest one’s many human imperatives quality time with a cow will provide meanings to words we would otherwise only construct in the abstract. So mental health according to my Christmas book is situational and the summation of what’s gone before. If, as seems to be, there is a human mental health crisis it is the result of our situation, of factory farming. We also have, “a need for freedom, interesting things to do and eat, the relationships of a supportive group.” Poor mental health isn’t in general caused by some personal weakness but by personal depravation; a systemic process of demoralisation. As such our health becomes prone to attack and our output becomes poor. The NHS is overstretched, there’s an urgent unmet need for counselling and productivity in the UK hasn’t increased in years. Rosemary Young could teach us a lot about running the country.