Pathologized Infrastructure: Excitotoxicity and the Mental Health Crisis

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Mental Health Isn’t Failing – Infrastructure Is

ADHD, depression, PTSD, schizophrenia: these aren’t random disorders. They are predictable outcomes of infrastructures designed to overstimulate, deplete, and neglect.

Mental health decline is not accidental. It is engineered.

Excitotoxicity as a Systemic Byproduct

Excitotoxicity – neuronal damage caused by chronic overstimulation – is often treated as a biological accident. But it is the predictable consequence of modern systems:

Workplace precarity: Job insecurity and low wages correlate with higher cortisol levels and excitotoxic stress.
Educational stress cycles: Standardized testing and debt burdens shrink hippocampal volume, embedding trauma into learning.
Healthcare neglect: Less than 10% of psychiatric patients receive micronutrient screening, despite clear links between deficiencies and PTSD or depression.
Food systems: Ultra‑processed foods now make up over 60% of caloric intake in North America, directly associated with ADHD and mood disorders.

These infrastructures generate excitotoxic stress, embedding pathology into daily life.

Institutional Friction

Structural reform is costly, and institutions resist change:

Healthcare systems dismiss nutritional interventions as “lifestyle.”
Education systems avoid integrating trauma physiology into curricula.
Workplace structures profit from stress metrics, even as burnout drains $322 billion globally.

Accountability shifts from individuals to institutions.

Contribution to the Literature

This framework contributes by:

Recasting excitotoxicity as infrastructural, not accidental.
Bridging biology and sociology in ADHD, depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, and trauma discourse.
Embedding accountability within systemic actors – corporations, insurers, policymakers.
Highlighting equity audits that reveal disproportionate impact on minority and refugee populations.
Proposing curriculum reform to integrate nutritional biochemistry and trauma physiology into psychiatric training.

Conclusion

Pathologized infrastructure reframes mental health decline as a systemic condition. Excitotoxicity is not a personal failure but an infrastructural byproduct. Resistance and recoil confirm ingestion: the system resists because the theory threatens its framing.

This is not a niche theory. It is a paradigm for understanding how modern society embeds neurobiological vulnerability into everyday survival.

References

Virtanen, M. et al. (2020). Job insecurity and health outcomes.
Lupien, S. et al. (2018). Stress and hippocampal volume in students.
Kaplan, B. et al. (2023). Micronutrient deficiencies in psychiatric populations.
Hall, K. et al. (2019). Ultra‑processed diets and health outcomes.
Denis, J‑L. et al. (2022). Policy capacity and health reform resistance.
Gallup (2022). Global cost of burnout.
WHO (2023). Equity audits in refugee health.