The European Union has allocated at least €1.23 billion to its new mental health strategy. Officially, the aim is to tackle a supposed crisis affecting millions of Europeans. However, a new report published by MCC Brussels argues that behind this agenda a new form of governance is emerging, based on the psychological management of the population.
The study, titled Manufacturing Fragility: How Brussels’s Therapeutic State Makes Citizens Weaker, is written by sociologist Ashley Frawley, a researcher who has spent the last two decades studying therapeutic policies and their impact on public life. According to the author, the EU’s mental health agenda did not begin as a simple health policy.
“It has always been a governance project,” Frawley explains. In her view, policymakers are drawn to this approach because it rests on a conception of citizens as emotionally unstable, unreliable individuals who are better suited to being managed than to actively participating in democratic processes.
The report argues that Brussels is promoting a “whole-of-society” approach that extends psychological interventions far beyond the healthcare sector. Schools, workplaces, public administrations, and digital platforms are increasingly treated as legitimate areas of intervention under the banner of mental health.
One of the study’s central arguments directly challenges the awareness campaigns promoted in recent years. Rather than strengthening society, Frawley argues that they may have the opposite effect.
“When people are constantly educated about all the ways they might become emotionally or mentally unwell, we should not be surprised when they identify more problems and feel worse,” she says.
The author points to a growing body of academic literature describing a self-reinforcing feedback loop. The broader psychological categories become, and the more people are encouraged to interpret normal emotions as potential symptoms, the more likely they are to perceive themselves as mentally ill.
The report also cites a range of studies linking awareness campaigns to rising levels of self-diagnosis, increased demand for professional services, and a growing sense of vulnerability.
Education occupies a prominent place in the analysis. The document argues that new European wellbeing guidelines propose incorporating the assessment of emotional competencies alongside traditional subjects such as reading and mathematics.
But it is in the digital sphere where Frawley sees the most damaging consequences. According to her, the European Commission is promoting a gradual equivalence between physical harm and psychological harm, an idea that could have direct implications for freedom of expression.
“The trajectory is toward increasingly restricting speech that is not illegal but is considered psychologically harmful,” she warns.
The report links this development to the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and to growing pressure on major platforms to manage risks to users’ mental well-being. According to Frawley, this opens the door to the moderation of perfectly legal content based on increasingly subjective criteria.
After months of analysing EU documents, Brussels-funded programmes, and recommendations directed at member states, Frawley admits that a few things still surprise her after twenty years researching this phenomenon. Nevertheless, one aspect stood out in particular.
“I was struck by the extent to which national therapeutic agendas have simply been reproduced at the European level,” she says. She adds that although education formally remains a national competence, European institutions are now recommending even which emotions should be encouraged in the minds of European children.
