Live data from Hacker News

City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

popsci.com

141–150 of 180 posts

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow that line of reasoning at all. "Killing in the name of religion" would be to protect or spread some sort of metaphysical belief. The equivalent would be something like going to war with another country to build universities there.

Check out this little country called Afghanistan. Although, not sure if any Universities specifically have been built there by the West, yet.

Just as an exercise, it would be beneficial for you to make your argument explicit. You would notice that it falls apart/there is none.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#142

Every time I visit my relatives in their rural area, I feel a sense of liberation. The air is cleaner, there is less noise, you can hear the breeze, and even the sky seems bigger. You can see the Milky Way at night. Coming from a city, it's a relief. However I also know the dark side of rural areas, mainly substance abuse triggered by boredom and lack of opportunity. There is always a trade-off.

All the cities I've lived in also have pretty significant substance abuse problems. According to this article, https://drugabuse.com/country-vs-city-addictions-differ-says... Rural people are more likely to abuse alcohol, whereas city dwellers are more likely to abuse hard drugs.

By any objective standard, alcohol is a hard drug.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#143
post #44

Every time I visit my relatives in their rural area, I feel a sense of liberation. The air is cleaner, there is less noise, you can hear the breeze, and even the sky seems bigger. You can see the Milky Way at night. Coming from a city, it's a relief. However I also know the dark side of rural areas, mainly substance abuse triggered by boredom and lack of opportunity. There is always a trade-off.

That's not my experience with rural areas at all. Instead, it's usually pretty noisy because of all the neighbors with barking dogs (yes, there are neighbors in rural areas; most people can't afford 40 acres all to themselves, so they live in little clusters), and it stinks because of the cow and horse manure. Just hope you're not located close to a pig farm. And of course there's all the noisy trucks everyone drives…

Depends on your definition of rural, to me if you can see your neighbors house it likely isn't very rural... though the American west is a literal different cause many of the rural towns have all the residential packed on top of each other.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#144
post #60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my experience with rural areas at all. Instead, it's usually pretty noisy because of all the neighbors with barking dogs (yes, there are neighbors in rural areas; most people can't afford 40 acres all to themselves, so they live in little clusters), and it stinks because of the cow and horse manure. Just hope you're not located close to a pig farm. And of course there's all the noisy trucks everyone drives…

Thank you so much for making the counterpoint. I grew up in a rural setting and would give just about anything to take back that loss of years of my life. A few extras: * You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country. * Daily life is /very/ stressful. Forgot milk? Well, fuck you, buddy, because you're ei…

Having lived in a small town surrounded by rural area for a bit:

> You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country.

This is literally what pepper spray and similar is intended for. Don't go cycling without it! You have to look out for yourself if you're in the middle of nowhere. Not willing to do that? Then don't live or do things there. Idiot dog owners are everywhere, but a pack of farm dogs is no joke when the nearest person is more than a mile away.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#145
post #60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my experience with rural areas at all. Instead, it's usually pretty noisy because of all the neighbors with barking dogs (yes, there are neighbors in rural areas; most people can't afford 40 acres all to themselves, so they live in little clusters), and it stinks because of the cow and horse manure. Just hope you're not located close to a pig farm. And of course there's all the noisy trucks everyone drives…

Thank you so much for making the counterpoint. I grew up in a rural setting and would give just about anything to take back that loss of years of my life. A few extras: * You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country. * Daily life is /very/ stressful. Forgot milk? Well, fuck you, buddy, because you're ei…

> You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country.

Even if your neighbor or neighbors have well-trained or well-controlled dogs, you have to worry about wild animals more than you do in urban areas. I'm not talking about predators as much as prey: A mountain lion is scary, but most of them pretty well leave humans alone. A buck deer in rut is big and deer in general are just really, amazingly stupid.

Plus... there's nowhere to walk to unless you really like seeing not only scenery, but the same scenery, over and over again, unless you spend more money to drive someplace with noticeably different scenery. (Rural areas are big. You can drive for days without seeing noticeably different scenery.)

> Depression, drug use, and other adverse coping strategies are literally epidemic -- my entire neighborhood of stable working adults where I grew up all ended up on some combination of meth/oxycontin/xanax/antidepressants with alcohol use in excess of anything I ever see at 2 am throughout the nightlife districts of a top 10 US city.

Another reason to stay in your home or stick to a small group of friends with no real ability to branch out. Want another friend? OK, pick the person with whom you have no common interests, the other person you have nothing in common with but this person's an alcoholic, or the person who moved there and obviously left the big town for a reason you'll hear about in gossip which will make you very happy you didn't interact with them.

> Oh, do you think you might need to get actual mental help?

Have fun driving hours to and from the next big town in all kinds of dangerously crappy weather!

> Any "green space" consists of trespassing behind barbed wire instead of a neatly maintained park.

Yes. This is something which needs to be mentioned more often: Cities have more public spaces than rural areas, because in rural areas, land is being used. You can't just wander into a wheat field or a cattle ranch. You could be arrested. National Parks are wonderful, but most rural areas aren't parkland, and most rural areas aren't even close to parkland. BLM land is by no means even close to being the same thing.

Some European countries have "freedom to roam" laws, but they're also more dense than rural North America, so most of those countries don't have "rural" to begin with, by and large.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out this little country called Afghanistan. Although, not sure if any Universities specifically have been built there by the West, yet.

Just as an exercise, it would be beneficial for you to make your argument explicit. You would notice that it falls apart/there is none.

We (USA) do go and destroy places and institutions/governments and rebuild as benefits us, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... or

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/2....

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out this little country called Afghanistan. Although, not sure if any Universities specifically have been built there by the West, yet.

Just as an exercise, it would be beneficial for you to make your argument explicit. You would notice that it falls apart/there is none.

Also, who's arguing?

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#148
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then use the cars in rural areas where they have a place. They don't belong in cities, electric or not. And one of the reasons that cities are better for the environment is less need of transportation.

But are cities better for people if you're cramming everyone into less space and want them to move about less? If research says no, we shouldn't be promoting cities, but ways of reducing environmental impact while also reducing density when zoning/land use planning. "In fact, the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health estimates that city dwellers face a nearly 40 percent higher risk of depression, 20 percent highe…

I won’t get into the completely different discussion about mental health. You don’t state where your quote comes from, but it would be interesting to know if they say anything about what exactly living in a city makes people more depressed.

But your point about move about less: people living in cities actually move more. You’re much likely to walk or bicycle to shops or work when the distance is one and a half mile than when it’s ten.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#149
post #144
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for making the counterpoint. I grew up in a rural setting and would give just about anything to take back that loss of years of my life. A few extras: * You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country. * Daily life is /very/ stressful. Forgot milk? Well, fuck you, buddy, because you're ei…

Having lived in a small town surrounded by rural area for a bit: > You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country. This is literally what pepper spray and similar is intended for. Don't go cycling without it! You have to look out for yourself if you're in the middle of nowhere. Not willing to do that? The…

Pepper spray (hell, even max strength bear spray with tear gas) wasn’t anywhere near enough. You don’t have enough range for it to start working in time when they’re charging at you, at least not unless it’s one of those crazy kinds that shoots like 20 feet, and if you aim poorly it’s over.

The smart people who were crazy enough to walk or jog regularly carried 5+ foot ugly sticks (or spears/lances) and/or a firearm.

I almost had a 65 lb mastiff make it through the window of my dad’s lifted F350 at cruising speed, and that was the third attack in a one mile stretch. That was the day I decided I wasn’t ever going on foot again.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#150
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for making the counterpoint. I grew up in a rural setting and would give just about anything to take back that loss of years of my life. A few extras: * You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country. * Daily life is /very/ stressful. Forgot milk? Well, fuck you, buddy, because you're ei…

> Daily life is /very/ stressful. [...] Want a pizza delivered? Nope. Chinese? Hahah. uh. if that constitutes stressful, how do you survive receiving bad personal news?

Ok, ok, since you want to be horsey: ambulances take 50-60 minutes to arrive (pregnant? heart disease? prepare to feel third world terror), the police can’t realistically save you from any kind of violent altercation or crime and no one else will see it happen, there’s no public transportation and you can’t walk to town—so you’re stranded on a desert island if your car ever breaks down. There’s also a constant threat of things like venomous snakes and predators, so expect your chihuahua to get eaten if he walks out at night (happened not once but twice to my next door neighbors). The list of stressful bullshit goes on and on.
Post reply on HN