In the founding texts of German/Danish critical psychology the phylogenetic development resulting in the human species is conceptualized as a historical and dialectical material process involving organism, psyche, activity, and environment. It is argued that through anthropogenesis hominins gain the ability to walk on two limbs, grip, use, and produce tools, communicate through symbols and speech, cooperate and innovate to sustain life. The brain gains in size, and the duration of ontological development extends.

In these early works the societal nature of human beings was established conceptually, which has afforded attention to sociopolitical and structural conditions in empirical analysis since. Less attention has been directed to organism and environment. However, if we accept that it is in the societal nature of humans to extend, modify, and exploit their habitat, then follows that the developmental dynamic of organism, psyche, activity, and environment has changed dramatically during anthropogenesis. Taking this changed dynamic to the ontological level as embodied subjectivity in sociomaterial worlds we may start untangling phenomena like ‘the global mental health crisis’ (WHO 2025).

Narrowing the gaze to Denmark, I start from what is known about young adults’ mental health and go on asking: what sociomaterial worlds do young adults inhabit? What developmental pathways are made available in what settings? How do these settings afford embodied subjectivities to unfold? By first exploring the characteristics of sociomaterial worlds and concrete settings, then gradually tuning in on embodied subjectivities, we may arrive at insights that do not first and foremost personalise or medicalise mental health challenges. Instead, we may point to structural reasons and solutions, shifting the main responsibility for action from the personal and the medical to the institutionalized pathways of the nation state.