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The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

jonathanhaidt.substack.com

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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#261

Post by Mordisquitos »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #158

Did anyone look at the case histories? Was there a second opinion on the diagnosis? Maybe big pharma trying to push even more medication may be part of the problem. Interesting that the no one is mentioning this possibility...

How would big pharma pushing medication achieve such a consistent and simultaneous effect across different countries with radically different healthcare systems and policies? And why would their lobbying have a greater effect on diagnoses in the teenager demographic, which due to the risks and side effects involved in psychiatric medication make youngsters less likely to be prescribed them than fully developed adults?

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#262

Post by grog454 »

obscurette wrote: post #218

I'm a father of teen kids, teacher and educator. I don't think that there is a single reason here. All mentioned things contribute – social media pressure, climate problems, economical crisis etc. But I'd like to add another one – declining quality of education. I see increasing number of teens depressed because they don't have teachers and their education isn't good enough for jobs they'd like to get in future. And…

One of the most important things we can teach kids today is how to teach themselves. I wouldn't have graduated college over a decade ago without Wikipedia and there are far better resources now.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#263

Post by yayr »

ttt3ts wrote: post #255
irq wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance is indeed bliss, right up until they’re at your door. I like to have advance warning.

So you can? (serious question not sarcastic)

to contribute to the architecture of solutions is hard indeed... However, to contribute small everyone in most countries can, simply by choosing what and how to consume and by voting, wherever that is possible

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#264

Post by tayo42 »

deepsun wrote: post #229
amilios wrote: post #207

(Seemingly) Inevitable climate change and ecological destruction, growing income inequality and falling standards of living, a deathly pandemic that's still killing people while we pretend everything is back to normal (+ long covid probably bringing about a disability crisis in 3-5 years), increasing tensions between various nuclear-capable states (Russia, China) and the West, changes in the age distribution in most…

> less and less of a future Everything is relative. My grandfather's biggest dream was to live in a city, that's it. Now young people dream (and envy) of way more. So I'd say there's more and more future for youth. They can afford, at least once in one's life: travel abroad, snow skiing, parachuting, going to a restaurant. It's just baseline jumped.

My grandparent's traveled the world and the US. Bought a big house and well obviously had a family.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#265

Post by notch898a »

dragonwriter wrote: post #233
YellOh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I would much rather be a (white liberal) teen girl today than in ~2012, but I can see how insofar as Dobbs is only a manifestation of existing trends, I might be in the minority. It's just hard to wrap my head around what this trend would be, or why teens started picking up on it in 2012. I am not conscious of any major modern debates around women's rights except abortion/birth control, and I see no part…

> I am not conscious of any major modern debates around women’s rights except abortion/birth control, and I see no particular link between the causes of Dobbs and that generic time period. 2011-2012 was when the major wave of state anti-abortion laws (135 in those two years) and the first notable state executive measure defunding Planned Parent that represented the beginning (well, the visible conversion to a major a…

And yet fertility rates had another strong step down around that time.

One conjecture could be that fewer young women with children is correlated with higher rates of diagnosis of mental illness. And if I know I had mental illness, I'd be scared shitless to let it known on the record I had a disorder that a CPS worker or family courts could use against me -- without a child those concerns are lessened. I can also attest having a child means you have way less time for your own personal care, which means perhaps these women now have more time for their own care.

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#266

Post by joenot443 »

zamnos wrote: post #142
evanmoran wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did, but we didn't have endless short videos to scroll through.

Yeah, instead we had our teachers reassure us that if we saw a nuclear explosion that we should hid under our desks and that would protect us. We ran drills practicing this, as if it were expected to happen any moment now. I agree with you that it's worse these days. Now, the kids practice active shooter drills. It turns out the USSR never did launch the missiles, but kids shooting up their school is so common it bar…

The example you're referencing was mentioned in the article, and I think is part of the reason Haidt took the time to prove that this phenomenon is _not_ isolated to the US, and that US specific issues (like school shootings) are unlikely to have an effect elsewhere.

> And it certainly can’t be caused by the most popular theory we hear in the USA: school shootings and other stress-inducing events. Why would school shootings or active shooter drills implemented only in the USA lead to an immediate epidemic across the entire English-speaking world?

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#267

Post by YellOh »

travisjungroth wrote: post #144
YellOh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to be annoying, but I genuinely don't understand what you mean by huge expectations of "having it all" for women (at least insofar as it relates to any trend starting ~2012, when the large growth in depression and self-harm among teen girls seems to have started). The only "revocation of rights" I can think of would be Dobbs - which also does not fit the trend (see my response to the other comment). If…

It does fit the trend. These issues are stacking. You can fool yourself into dismissing it if you split it into pieces. In 2012 you can write it off as fear mongering the media. In 2018 you can write it off as “how does this affect your day to day life?”. In 2022 you can say that Dobbs “doesn’t fit the trend” since it started in 2012. I’m not saying this is the whole story, but it’s possibly part. “Having it all” is…

As far as "having it all" -- female employment has basically not changed since 1990[0], and given the decline in the US birth rate, expectations of motherhood have probably decreased as well. I could see "having it all" increasing stress as, for example, more women were being introduced into the work force, but that seems entirely uncorrelated to the 2010s.

Insta following could be a new pressure and I agree it would fit the timeline, but that'd be a social media effect and not a decrease in real-life quality of living for white liberal girls.

[0] https://genderdata.worldbank.org/indicators/sl-tlf-acti-zs/?...

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#268

Post by wizzwizz4 »

cornholio wrote: post #214
giantg2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"that is constrained by a gender role where aesthetic appeal and social interactions are the most valuable assets?" In theory we should have seen a spike and then slow decline as gender norms and roles continue to become less segregating. "Yet other categories see linear or token increases." Yeah, because other categories may manifest their problems differently. Such as young men turning to violence and drugs more th…

[flagged]

> A significant part of the trans movement is a reactionary reinforcement of rigid gender roles:

Perhaps you're referring to the transmedicalist position? That's rather disapproved of in the trans movement as a whole, from what I've seen.

> gender as a social construct

Have you not seen the memes? https://libreddit.eu.org/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/search?q=gen...

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#269

Post by frumper »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #212
ilammy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explains it rather well: older people dismiss their symptoms as “not real illness” because that’s what society taught them when they were kids.

To me that seems like a purely post-hoc argument with no evidence to justify it. For instance, imagine that the data were showing the opposite effect, that is, adults having a significantly greater increase in depression and anxiety than teenagers. If that were the case, one could just as easily argue that it fits with the "our societies are so advanced that we can listen to mental illnesses" hypothesis quite well, b…

In my experience, adults seem just as quick to dismiss other adults issues as "not real problems"

Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere

#270

Post by wizofaus »

cornholio wrote: post #107
stri8ed wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then you could just look at emergency admissions where the patients were brought in after self-harm attempts that left them obviously in need of immediate medical attention. Unless you're going to suggest our standards for judging whether someone might bleed to death (for example) have changed noticeably in recent decades. Seems to me the idea that teens today are no different to those of prior generations, we're just better at noticing when they've self-harmed (or indeed, committed suicide) and more likely to attribute that to mental health issues is at best wishful thinking, and at worst dangerously dismissive.
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