Don’t stumble. Don’t fall. Lose your mental stride and you’ll end up depressed, bipolar or schizophrenic. You could wake up in a post-war mental ward feeling like your whole past is a hazy dream. And believe it, there are millions out there who know the story: gradually your motivation dims, your sleep becomes disturbed, and you lose clarity of mind. Then you’re in big fucking trouble, for there’s a threshold here, and once you’ve crossed over it’s tough as hell getting back. Sometimes meds help, or even institutionalization, but more often than not you become dependent on the drugs, and then there’s a second monkey on your back

So how do you keep your mental life from crashing? Start by knowing what you’re up against. When Mexican immigrants arrive in the US, they are not as well-off as Americans, but their rates of mental dysfunction are considerably lower. Within a decade’s time, however, their problems with depression, anxiety and addiction nearly double, to the same levels as the general American population (about 32 percent).

These are the dangers of a toxic culture. Denying them won’t do you any good. What will help are them won’t do you any good. What will help are simple things like not living alone and keeping close simple things like not living alone and keeping close contacts with family and friends. Live more fully, live in the moment, live more slowly and live more locally. In the meantime, consider injecting your life with extra meaning by joining the mental-ecology movement.

To fight and win the battle of the mind, we need nothing short of a mobilization on par with the ecology movement launched in the ‘60s. The conservation movement began by redefi ning the meaning of nature. No longer was it viewed as just a playground for development and resource extraction, but as a living system of which we are a part. We mental environmentalists must do something similar.

Culture has an ecology and that ecology determines our mental well-being. There is a connection between mental health and the mental environment that people must wake up to. At the rate we’re losing clarity of mind, there will be no more big ideas. And with no more big ideas our culture is sure to stumble and fall, and so will we. One morning all of us could wake up in a never-ending schizo dream.