Load shedding and mental health in South Africa: Methodological challenges of establishing causal links

Abstract

We critically interrogate assertions that load shedding has a deleterious impact on mental health and explore the methodological challenges of establishing causal links empirically. We highlight the lack of empirical data to support a causal link and the problem of conflating psychological distress with psychopathology. In addition, we set out the methodological problems associated with collecting data to show that load shedding impacts the prevalence of mental disorders. While it may make superficial strategic sense for activists to link load shedding to mental health as a political strategy to raise awareness, this approach could have long-term negative consequences.Load shedding in South Africa has undoubtedly resulted in social and economic disruptions and made people's lives more complicated, but it is not clear whether load shedding has resulted in significant changes in rates of mental illness. Claims have been made in the media that load shedding has had a marked deleterious impact on people's mental health, although the evidence offered in support of these claims is far from rigorous. In this Commentary, we critically interrogate assertions that load shedding has led to an increase in the prevalence of mental disorders and the data that have been offered to support these claims. We discuss the ideological and methodological challenges of trying to collect the data needed to prove such assertions. We highlight how linking mental health to load shedding might further political ends (such as normalising mental illness), while also arguing that claiming such links in the absence of sound empirical data can also have unintended harmful consequences, including misleading the public and trivialising serious mental illness.