Christina Buttons and the Antidote to America's Mental Health Crisis

Is it possible that a lot of today's mental health problems are preventable?

I’ve never met Christina Buttons, though for a few years now we’ve been acquainted through social media.

For those unfamiliar, Christina is an investigative reporter for the Manhattan Institute who rose to prominence in 2022 (or about there) after she abandoned her social justice faith and began to expose the ugly underbelly of woke culture, including sex and gender clubs in elementary schools.

Christina is a talented writer and superb researcher with a nose for stories, but an additional reason she has been such an influential voice is her personal experience: as a former “social justice warrior,” she understands how pernicious and enervating neo-Marxist ideas are to humans. She lived through it.

Christina has been open about her mental health struggles and has alluded to "bad decisions" she made as a young adult, but in a recent post she offered a fuller picture.

Her story is powerful and moving—and an important one.

Some of the details Christina touches on were no doubt difficult to share, like an attempt to hang herself when she was 15 after she was raped. But many parts of Christina’s story are less shocking and more relatable. She was an introvert and a dreamer. A kid who would stare into puddles and think and lose herself in fantasy stories. She was shy, awkward, unathletic, and so anxious she developed dermatillomania (a condition where someone picks obsessively at their skin).

As she grew older, some of Christina’s emotional and mental challenges grew more pronounced. She was spacy enough that her school recommended she get therapy. She became reclusive and taught herself to code. She developed insomnia and anorexia.

Reading the story is heart wrenching, but it’s made easier by the fact that Christina—based on what I know—is today a highly functioning, thriving young woman.

Still, questions loom, some of which Christina asks in her story.

“There’s been much speculation about the ongoing youth mental health crisis, particularly about why liberals—especially liberal girls—report the highest rates of mental illness,” she writes.

She offers a clue to the answer early in her story.

“Some have suggested that locus of control plays a contributing role. Those with an external locus of control, who believe their lives are shaped by forces beyond their control, tend to be less mentally well and lean more liberal. In contrast, those with an internal locus of control, who believe they have agency over their lives, are generally mentally healthier and more likely to align with conservative values.”

These words stood out to me. Nearly 10 years ago I observed that a dark worldview was emerging, one that suggests human destiny is essentially preordained.

If you think I’m exaggerating, I’ll point you to The Atlantic, which in 2016 declared free will to be dead.

As I noted, humans are but amoebae in this Neo-Predestination philosophy. Here, we are not tethered by Providence or Fate, but by the intricate interplay of brain chemistry and the vast, impersonal forces of macro socio-economics, far beyond our control.

This perspective has always struck me as both troubling and deeply flawed—troubling because it strips us of agency and the power to shape our destinies, and flawed because it overlooks the thousands of conscious choices we navigate each day. (Even The Atlantic seemed to recognize this, since it added that we’re better off believing in free will even if it’s a bogus idea. Utilitarianism trumps Truth, I guess.)

If you’re not yet sure what I’m getting at, let me return to Christina Buttons.

“We need to step back from the brain disease model of mental illness and rethink how we understand life’s difficulties. Unwanted thoughts and emotions are not simply the result of abnormal brain chemistry requiring chemical correction. In many cases, they can be changed with effort and persistence—but that process begins by rejecting the idea that you lack the power to make those changes.”

I’m not a medical doctor, but I believe Buttons has it right. A lot of the mental health problems we see today are preventable. This is not to say the conditions are not real; it’s only to say that they are not inevitable. Christina says it well.

“Mental illness should not be viewed as a permanent condition or a defining aspect of one's identity. Instead, it should be seen as something to work toward overcoming—to the extent it is possible. This perspective may not apply uniformly to all conditions, such as psychotic disorders, but in most cases, recovery even from serious mental illness is attainable.”

I think this is largely true (though I of course don’t deny that brain chemistry plays a role). And I think the mental health crisis is in large part a moral health crisis, or perhaps what Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl identified as a crisis of meaning.

“Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life,” Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning.

A great many people lack meaning and purpose in their lives. They’ve embraced what Milan Kundera called the unbearable lightness of being. Our world is rich, but it’s all matter and no soul. (For a deeper dive on the forces behind this, visit: “What the Nothing in The NeverEnding Story Really Is.”

The mental health crisis is being fueled by what Ayn Rand would call bad philosophy. The ideas of Karl Marx are ascendent in most of our institutions, even though people are unaware of it. Marx also believed vague forces controlled humans and history, and he lived a thoroughly wretched life.

This is no coincidence. Marx’s bleak view of the universe was a stark contrast to Aristotle, who asserted, “The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.” Aristotle’s philosophy embraces the idea that humans are not solely shaped by their environments but by their own rituals and habits. That lives are defined not by external forces, but by the intentional rhythms we cultivate.

We are not amoebae; we have power and agency and can shape our destinies. Again, I’m not a medical doctor and won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of neurology. But I do understand the destructive nature of fatalism—and so does Christina Buttons.

“Believe you are sick, and you will be sick; believe you can get better, and you can,” she writes.

She’s living proof that these words are true.

(Follow Christina on Substack)