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The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#751

Post by bee_rider »

chasd00 wrote: post #652
bee_rider wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m amazed that I had to read so many comments complaining about social media before I hit this one. How have so few failed to consider the idea that young people might be correctly anxious and worried about the future which looks, in many ways, pretty grim.

virtually all of that fear and anxiety is generated from consuming click-bait doomer social media.

Yes, similarly, I don’t understand why people keep looking at their credit card balances. If you don’t engage with bad news, everybody knows it ceases to impact the real world.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#752

Post by giraffe_lady »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #580
hackinthebochs wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women are more social, i.e. more agreeable[1], more people-oriented[2], and so on. As such, they will be more susceptible to status anxiety derived from their place in the social hierarchy. Men's social status is more about who you are, what you do, or what you have, and so social hierarchy is less relevant. Social media has massively scaled up the complexity and the stakes of managing one's place in the social hiera…

The fact you even had to explain this is surprising to me. We don't need papers to tell us this stuff, this is something one can learn by basic common sense observation of the world. Why are people so keen on pretending like there aren't very basic psychological differences between the sexes?

It's one thing to notice differences, it's completely another to attribute specific phenomena to them based on these lay observations. I mean, in recent memory, the "basic common sense" consensus was that women were not capable of owning property or voting because of these observed differences.

And I mean do I even need to point out that "cattiness" is not exactly a well-attested psychological axis in use by reputable professionals? This is simple straightforward misogyny. They adequately laundered it through a thesaurus to HN standards when pressed but the underlying attitude is just crusty old sexism.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#753

Post by tempodox »

FabHK wrote: post #731

Minor mistake: > a rise from 5% to 15% is a 300% increase, relative to the anchor point No, it's a 200% increase. (It's 300% of what it used to be, which is a 200% increase on top of the original 100%.)

Yes, colloquial language has that pernicious habit of mixing up additive and multiplicative growth. One of my pet peeves.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#754

Post by dotnet00 »

hospitalJail wrote: post #602
ascorbic wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's addressed in the post. There is some of that, but there are similar increases in hospitalisation for self-harm, which wouldn't be affected by an increase in awareness of mental illness.

Mental illness has become a badge to wear. "I have depression/ADHD/Autism/Bipo/sch" Once you think you have it, you notice all the systems. As a medical owner, I'm not going to deny someone money if they are coming. With grey areas, and the lack of science in medical, it very well could be a tracking thing. I certainly wouldn't tell anyone I had a mental issue in the 90s or 00s. Today, its almost cool.

A related factor I've noticed is that at university at least, a diagnosis often gets you benefits like extra time for exams and some more leeway in terms of submission deadlines for assignments.

Which I'd imagine creates somewhat of an incentive to exaggerate even a diagnosis that doesn't actually meaningfully affect one's ability to finish an exam within the normal timespan.

I've seen an example of both kinds of cases, one student who clearly had ADHD, but was also clearly putting in the effort rather than seeming to abuse the benefits, and a roommate who just seemed to care more about gaming and used his diagnosis as an out for every responsibility even when the rest of us roommates tried to help him out.

So, while I am not in a position to judge who deserves or does not deserve those benefits, I wonder if that has contributed to mental illness becoming a bit of a badge.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#755

Post by FabHK »

standardUser wrote: post #727

All other issues aside, it would be shocking if reported rates of teen mental illness did not increase as long-standing stigmas gradually wane and these topic become more acceptable to speak about. If your kid cut themself in 1975, what were you going to do? Ask you husband to spend money to "shrink their head"? More likely you'd hide it, like past generations hid most of their traumas. Now, there are many outlets fo…

And the destigmatisation happened in 2012? I think it happened much earlier than that.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#756

Post by ryandrake »

bentcorner wrote: post #713
Sleaker wrote: post #205

Good to see more indepth research on this the last article I had read was asserting the social media access theory was correlation and not causatory because studies that were done in mental resiliency were showing that if you have built the resiliency then you can safely handle the social media... But it seems like that explanation doesn't take into account the developing mind. Love haidt's work and glad to see there…

I've seen similar claims (social media is correlation and not causation) and it does seem plausible to me. What I haven't seen so far (and it's possible this data exists, I'll admit to not exactly looking for it) is studies around parental consumption of social media and the impacts it has on their children. IMO social media/advertising can have amplification effects by targeting parents.

Yea we try to set a good example as parents. You can’t expect kids to not get addicted to social media when their parents are… constantly scrolling though their phone and social media! I bet even basic ground rules help. We try to adhere to: don’t be seen by our kid doing it. Some parents hold themselves to this rule when it comes to drinking and smoking, so why not apply it to smartphone scrolling too?

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#757

Post by itronitron »

renewiltord wrote: post #13

I suppose the interesting question is what parents of non-sick teens are doing differently from parents of sick teens. Is it a property that some teens are inherently more resilient or is it a property that some teens have a different home environment? There's many post-hoc explanations possible but the really interesting question to me is how some aren't sick. Is it just like PTSD where most people who encounter com…

I have three teenagers and they are all very different from each other in terms of personality, interests, work habits, and phone use among other things.

You could place all of them into three distinct challenging scenarios and a different one of them would excel while the others would flounder. But there isn't that kind of variety in most schools, or if there is students are expected to excel in all three scenarios.

From the inside looking out, I think that home environment is the driving factor as I could easily tiger-mom them into deep depression and anxiety. Are they achieving everything of which they are capable? Probably not, but I do see consistent gains in maturity and personal responsibility each year and that really helps put perspective on some of the struggles.

As a counter-study it would be interesting to track the adoption of PowerSchool software across the US and see if that correlates with teen anxiety.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#758

Post by AlexandrB »

WalterBright wrote: post #502
jampekka wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation and government involvement in economy very much so. This was/is the core of the neoliberal turn.

Consider all the labor regulations since. All the complexity of the taxes. The design of cars today is completely driven by regulations - for example, the tendency for cars to all look alike comes from regulation of every aspect of them. Regulation has driven a lot of industry out of America, as it made it too expensive to operate here. In what area has government been reduced?

> Regulation has driven a lot of industry out of America, as it made it too expensive to operate here.

Do you have any sources? I think most offshoring is driven by significantly lower labor costs in other countries. For example, China has a highly controlled economy, but American companies still offshore work there simply because labor is cheaper. Indeed, we've seen some "onshoring" in recent years[1] now that automation is far more prevalent and labor cost is less significant as a portion of operating costs.

[1] https://www.engineering.com/story/automation-is-making-onsho...

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#759

Post by standardUser »

FabHK wrote: post #755
standardUser wrote: post #727

All other issues aside, it would be shocking if reported rates of teen mental illness did not increase as long-standing stigmas gradually wane and these topic become more acceptable to speak about. If your kid cut themself in 1975, what were you going to do? Ask you husband to spend money to "shrink their head"? More likely you'd hide it, like past generations hid most of their traumas. Now, there are many outlets fo…

And the destigmatisation happened in 2012? I think it happened much earlier than that.

I think it is an ongoing process that accelerated over the past 10 or so years. There are still many people who stigmatize mental health issues and view mental health services skeptically at best.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)

#760

Post by FabHK »

nasmorn wrote: post #691
Aeolun wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes people aren’t induced towards self harm due to an increased awareness? If you believe suicide or self harm are common (and valid/acceptable) solutions to your issue, would you not be more likely to do so?

I guess also suicide attempts and hospitalizations will be highly affected by how society views it. Actual successful suicides seem the least influenced by external trends.

Actual suicides can be quite influenced by events (eg other suicides and reporting about them in the media). This is known as the Werther effect (after Goethe's "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide

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