If this is true, then I believe it will unfortunately get worse. Given the curve of technological progress and social media trends and the overall turn humanity is going right now I believe the future is going to be increasing polarized in terms of happiness. Half of the popular will be extremely happy while the other half will be extremely depressed. Not exactly like this but the psychological well-being bell curve is going to get away from a normal distribution and become more distorted.
The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
101–110 of 514 posts
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#102I recall seeing commentary recently from mental health specialists that noted that young people are increasingly facing a sense of existential dread over climate change - that there's nothing they can do to stop it, and will feel the impact more heavily than previous generations. I wouldn't discount social media and related issues out of hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a contributing factor. I understand…
No you read that from a "some experts are saying" article.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#103These always come up and there's always this internet-commenter tendency to be like "I KNEW IT: SMARTPHONES/INTERNET/LACK-OF-RELIGION/ABCDEFG ANYTHING OF THE LAST 20 YEARS I HATE", which is fine for a hypothesis and worth somebody saying once. But it's really just a hypothesis. Another hypothesis is that it's environmental. There's a lot of research showing depression and stress are correlated with inflammation. Ther…
It's very likely both with the rise of processed food, hormone disruptors, and the "app explosion" where negativity gets engagement/clicks.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#104My bet is that there is a bidirectional relationship between medication and mental health. Meaning, teenagers are over medicated which is messing with their heads. Some of them need the medicine, others are unknowingly suffering under some amphetamine, antidepressant, anti-anxiety etc. Would love to see mental health numbers of teenagers that: 1. Havent been medicated - I understand this biases the sample 2. Exercise
Having been through several months of weekly group therapy sessions with my daughter and having seen dozens of kids suffering from anxiety and depression, I can tell you you're wrong on both counts:
1. They're not medicated. Boys are most likely to be medicated, but out of all these dozens of kids there was only one boy. Boys are so rare that one girl thought it was a girls-only therapy group and wondered where do guys go to get help?
2. Most of them were highly physically active - more so than most of the people I knew when I was growing up.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#105Can't this just be the effect of teens being more aware of their own mental health issues and reporting them more?
No
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#106I recall seeing commentary recently from mental health specialists that noted that young people are increasingly facing a sense of existential dread over climate change - that there's nothing they can do to stop it, and will feel the impact more heavily than previous generations. I wouldn't discount social media and related issues out of hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a contributing factor. I understand…
now imagine spamming their phones with tik tok videos about the end of the world due to ____________. In your example, it's climate change. Maybe it's that, but it could also be that we can now mainline hours and hours of highly provocative content directly into a growing brain.
We grew up with the threat of nuclear destruction, as well as global warming, in the 1980s.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience is the same, back in the 1990s. There was a ton of depression and even suicides when I was growing up. I felt like 50% of teens at my large HS were suffering from some kind of mental issue. And then you had major events like Columbine. The US school system has always managed to produce a lot of very miserable people, and no one seemed to care or do anything about it. And now we have these studies all bl…
In the article, the author makes a point to include objective metrics like rate of hospitalizations, and the data is quite conclusive in showing an actual increase. So these issues definitely did not exist before, at the same scale.
How does the rate of hospitalizations prove anything? Perhaps a growing awareness of mental health made people who were eligibile for hospitalization seek medical care, whereas before they would not be hospitalized for lack of a diagnosis? Or perhaps the same awareness made teens enact the pathological behavior they learned about online, complete with self-harm and suicide atemtps?
Any measure you can think to track a condition that is defined, diagnosed and (especially) self-diagnosed subjectively, is by definition subjective.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
White liberals are the only demographic with an out-group bias, and women rate higher in negative emotion, so this makes perfect sense to me. out-group bias: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1074524252638982144.html
[flagged]
I don't know how you leapt from the only group with a negative in-group bias to wanting to expand the in-group. Hating yourself isn't intrinsically inclusivity.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#109I recall seeing commentary recently from mental health specialists that noted that young people are increasingly facing a sense of existential dread over climate change - that there's nothing they can do to stop it, and will feel the impact more heavily than previous generations. I wouldn't discount social media and related issues out of hand, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a contributing factor. I understand…
Where do you live where young people give a damn about the climate? I find this amazing.
I'm a college professor in VT. They care a lot around here, anyway.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
>aren't allowed to clap at events because clapping is too violent This is the first I'm hearing about this, where did you see it?
They made it up.
It started (in modern times) in the 60's at poetry jams. You can do it one-handed (i.e. while holding a drink) and you can also do it during a particularly impressive part of a performance, rather than waiting until the end.
Some groups have definitely taken it as a preference (sorry for the daily mail link, but it was the most succinct): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3323166/Some-colleg... and tried to tie it to clapping as "triggering", but they're pretty uncommon.
One example of someone not-ironically actually stating that jazz-hands is better than the "triggering" clapping is the Oxford SU Woman's Campaign: https://twitter.com/womcam/status/580389025892175872
You can also