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A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#361

Post by westoncb »

cortesoft wrote: post #359
westoncb wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. So that looks like two separate issues to me, but maybe I'm missing something. I see: 1. Additional always-present criterion of distress 2. Knowledge of prior base rates as a means of estimating a proportion of false positives. The first one makes sense to me in connection with the earlier comment. We aren't great at definitively reading our own states: it's easy for us to imagine symptoms, especially when promp…

The base rate part is just explaining why the diagnostic doesn't work when applied on a healthy population (like med students) The instruction would be something like "if the patient complains of x, check for symptom y... if the have symptom y, they are likely suffering from z" But the med student then checks themselves for symptom y, and thinks they have z, but that is only the case if they are suffering from x. The…

But in the patient's complaint about X, wouldn't X just be another symptom?

For instance, let's say a patient complains of a headache. The doctor uses whatever other knowledge they have of the patient to come up with some candidate diagnoses, and proceeds checking for symptoms from each of the candidates.

Presumably 'headache' is just another symptom on the diagnostic criteria for each of the other candidates. So why is it treated specially?

(Btw, thanks for your response—not sure why you were downvoted, but that was not from me!)

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#362

Post by [deleted] »

surfpel wrote: post #338
buran77 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while I wondered if I'm the outlier since I feel substantially better now than I did before going into isolation. Then some of my close friends who were on anti-depression or anti-anxiety medication told me the same. They actually stopped taking the medication for months with no signs that the symptoms are coming back. It's anecdotal and I have no idea how widespread this is or why it happens, at least to peopl…

I think it’s even deeper than that. Human society has changed a lot really quickly, it would be unreasonable to expect a seamless transition. Similar to how wild animals in captivity suffer from tremendous stress due to their environment, the pressures from living in our society are massive. Compared to say living in 1000 AD. Family units are smaller, life is more fast paced and it’s way more complicated with all the…

[deleted]

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#363

Post by Mehdi2277 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #203
Exmoor wrote: post #3

>“What’s worrying is the effect this situation is clearly having on young adults.” I wonder if this is a perverse side effect of normalcy bias [0]? For me, a person in middle age, I can look back at my life and see a lifetime of fairly stable history with only a few traumatic events (9/11, 2008 crash). If you're 22, the current circumstances make up a much larger portion of your life. >The toll has also hit the poor…

9/11 happened to me in grade school. Iraq war happened thereafter. Then the financial crash. Then the subprime crash. And now covid. My life is shaped MORE by crises than by stability - not just the current one, but ALL of them.

I'm a similar age as you, but personally wouldn't count 9/11 (although maybe the year difference is why). For me 9/11 happened when I was in pre-k. I don't remember learning about it back then and had no clue what 9/11 was until middle school. I'd guess for most kinder/pre-k age kids even if they did learn about it, it's not something they meaningfully processed and then the life post 9/11 is pretty much all they remember. My memories of elementary school as a whole are already really weak and become nearly 0 for memories The financial crash did impact my family some, but not much personally (prevented us from selling our house). I feel like covid is the first situation that's had a very direct impact on me. I was laid off due to finance issues back in march, have had a 'fun' time searching for a new job, and being stuck mostly at home. Still a lot better than others due to having a good financial safety net (my family).

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#364

Post by sk5t »

rootusrootus wrote: post #300
idoby wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-American, why do you care about who is in the white house so much? How does it affect your life concretely? Try watching less talking heads/browsing Twitter less, maybe, and you'll feel better?

> why do you care about who is in the white house so much He raised my taxes last year, rather significantly. So it's not just Twitter rants.

The cap on SALT deductions is insane. More punishment for having to pay city and state taxes...

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#365

Post by dsfyu404ed »

sk5t wrote: post #364
rootusrootus wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do you care about who is in the white house so much He raised my taxes last year, rather significantly. So it's not just Twitter rants.

The cap on SALT deductions is insane. More punishment for having to pay city and state taxes...

How is it insane? Allowing SALT deductions at all allows states and municipalities to skip out on federal taxes by taxing themselves. That's money that isn't going into medicare, the VA, etc, etc, (thereby defeating the point of funding those things at the federal level) and instead is going directly into state/local coffers which defeats the point of having uniform federal taxes for funding federal programs.

I'm personally paying more thanks to the deduction cap but I understand the principal of it.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#366

Post by [deleted] »

idoby wrote: post #263
JSavageOne wrote: post #131

As an American it's not surprising at all. Six figures of student loan debt, job insecurity, healthcare insecurity, rampant poverty / homelessness, the most despicable president to disgrace the white house (who didn't even win the popular vote), stay-at-home orders because the U.S. couldn't manage the crisis, lack of community (doesn't help that 99% of the country is sprawl), rampant obesity, and general lack of hope…

As a non-American, why do you care about who is in the white house so much? How does it affect your life concretely? Try watching less talking heads/browsing Twitter less, maybe, and you'll feel better?

[deleted]

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#367

Post by hedora »

davidw wrote: post #316

US politics are making me seriously anxious. Will I have to leave if I want my kids to grow up in a healthy democracy? Where would we go? Will there be violence before/after the election or transfer of power? More than anything, I don't have much of a sense of hope for something better. Maybe things go ok and "the bleeding stops", but it'll still be a long, difficult slog to start fixing all that's broken. Oh, yeah,…

You forgot that global warming will displace 1/3 of the earth’s population by 2070, and that the WHO is now estimating that the coronavirus response will lead to 1 billion starving people (1/7 of the population), up from their beginning of year estimate of 135M.

That’s 10x more people than died in WWII (including civilians on all continents). As a percentage of population, it’s 3x more than WWII.

In the WHO numbers, I don’t think starvation implies death, but it’s clear the earth has never seen a humanitarian crisis of this scale.

(Edit: my percentage of population math was off. It’s 4-5x WWII on that metric.)

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#368

Post by jyrkesh »

malandrew wrote: post #301
cwperkins wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say I share the same feelings as you, but it certainly would be great to see young Americans be more excited about the future and I think some big investment in infrastructure could be a way to make that happen. There are many people worse off in other Countries that are happy because they are seeing vast improvements year over year and their own value goes up proportionately to how much effort gets put in. W…

> I think some big investment in infrastructure could be a way to make that happen I'm curious what infrastructure you think would excite young Americans. With the exception of changing energy generation from fossil fuels to renewables, I can't think of a single thing that I could generalize young Americans caring about, much less be excited about. Not saying that there aren't people like yourself and others that get…

I'm a "young"-ish American (lower end of millenial), and the growth of public transit in my local city was immensely exciting. New trains and bus routes were probably a huge factor in me staying where I'm at, and I feel more engaged in local politics than anything happening on the national stage.

Contrast that with some of the underfunded, addiction-riddled states where nothing new has been built since the 1960s...I mean, I'm going crazy just from staying inside for the last couple months. I couldn't imagine what it'd be like if I was born in and terminally stuck in a town that looked exactly the same for entirety of my life. That's incredibly depressing and demotivating.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#369

Post by prawn »

naasking wrote: post #269
troughway wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And internet dating is very heavily driven towards superficial things No, internet dating is no different than real life, it just mirrors the nature of things and is very harsh. Some people might find things that certain people want superficial, but that's ascribing morality to a very biological and carnal need.

> No, internet dating is no different than real life, it just mirrors the nature of things and is very harsh. It's a little different. People are typically more polite in person. Their behaviour online reflects what they would do if there were no consequences.

Also, I think if presented with a list of interests online, you'd be more inclined to rule people in or out of contention. Whereas, if you met in person, you might notice chemistry before you realised you liked different movies and music, for example.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#370

Post by kbos87 »

I went through a several years long period of pretty extreme anxiety. I went through sleepless nights, racing thoughts, near panic attacks on public transportation (for seemingly no reason!) In retrospect, it was a pretty terrible time, despite the fact that a lot of things were going well in my life from an outsiders perspective.

I can honestly say that therapy along with a lot of introspection got me to a much better place, despite my doubts from time to time. For anyone going through it, know that it actually, honestly is something you can get past with help.

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