A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by datavirtue » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

andrekandre wrote: post #261

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…

> Anecdotally, the largest problem I think we have is that there are vast amounts of people who feel like victims and just about everyone feels like they are under attack or have been violated. its easy to feel that way when the news media from fox (especially) to cnn is pumping that stuff out daily as they almost seemingly yell at you from the screen...

Its not just what they are pumping out. It's what they don't pump out that is the real issue. People know the news is boring for reasons outside their control and they know reality is being obscured through propaganda and a lack of substantive information. When the realization of all this isn't apparent on a conscious level it is still depressing nonetheless. Something is missing.

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

#372

Post by imgabe » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

anbende wrote: post #358

conistonwater wrote: post #177

Diagnostic criteria for anxiety and depression are very broad because they are necessary as tools for practicing doctors seeing patients (as opposed to applying them to a random selection of people). If you turn the process back, and just ask how many people in the population fit under them, you'll always, even in normal times, get an unexpectedly large number. That doesn't imply that anything is wrong or that anythi…

I'm a PhD in clinical psychology, currently working with clients, whose research has focused on the psychometric evaluation of questionnaire measures. I have no idea what you're talking about. The diagnostic criteria are not "very broad because they are necessary as tools". The diagnostic criteria are meant to be sufficient criteria for diagnosing a disorder. Questionnaire-based measures act as a scientifically valid…

Is feeling anxious in a potentially dangerous situation or depressed in a depressing situation really a disorder that needs to be treated? It seems like a normal response and what needs to change is the situation, not people's reaction to it.

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

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Post by temporaryvector » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

kitotik wrote: post #247

warent wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in a city? It sounds like you might enjoy living in a small town much more. Many small towns are very similar to what you just described all the time.

As a self-proclaimed weirdo and staunch individualist, small towns can be very difficult to just mind your own business in. Literally everything you do or don’t do tends to get noticed and talked about amongst the residents. There’s something to be said for the anonymity of large urban center.

I agree with this. I have though about it extensively, as an introvert who hates large cities, and I think (at least for me) a city between 500k and 1 million inhabitants spread out over a sizeable area is ideal. It has some of the benefits of a large city and some of the benefits of a small town, and I think it strikes a good balance between being anonymous in a crowd while having enough space for myself to live comfortably. Such a city would also have the population to find enough people with similar interests/hobbies to have clubs and meetups.

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

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Post by hedora » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

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.

In fairness, the Soviet Union fell when I was in grade school, which means I got laid off from my first job during the dot com crash, went to grad school, and re-entered the market when the housing crisis finally caught up with Silicon Valley.

Worse, I know someone that was supposed to retire in a few years, and he was laid off once for each Republican president going back to Regan.

Of course, when all that happened, the planet’s ecosystem wasn’t collapsing.

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

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Post by burnte » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

aszantu wrote: post #169

As a person with a history of depression and social anxiety I really do feel calmer since the crisis started, as if my state of mind was made for this kind of life. Less people on the streets, it's quieter, no one breathing down my neck in the supermarket, home office, no expectations on how to pick my clothes, how to behave, no trying to hide the weird stuff I eat (carnivore, high meat, raw, cooked and aged whatever…

I also have a history of depression, 20+ years on an antidepressant manages it very well, but I'm an extrovert, so this has me climbing the walls. It's been difficult to deal with for me.

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

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Post by whiddershins » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #349

I'm a very mild type II bipolar, and I recognize that depression is a biochemical affair, but the situational aspect cannot be ignored either. I have ongoing anxiety over the fascist coup that has taken place in the US, as well as the fact that we're cooking the planet and being actively blocked to try to remediate that. I don't know how to be at peace with that.

I might encourage you to reconsider the reality tunnel you are subscribing to.

Not because it is false, but because it is opinion-based, and interpretive, and reliant on certain assumptions. If it is making you miserable, it might be worth exploring a different, equally compelling, version of reality.

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

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Post by JPKab » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

foob4r wrote: post #315

derg wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What future? What is there to be excited about? Can't actually spend money at the federal and state level aside from tax cuts and the military without being met with resistance and a subset of politicians and economists screaming bloody murder about super dooper hyper inflation that's totally going to happen any day now we promise (but don't worry about the last 40 years of us saying it, this time we're sure we're co…

False optimism about the future from older generations is nothing new - been happening for years now

sorry but typically in the past older generations have been optimistic about the future and younger generations have been pessimistic. That is a a common phenomenon observed by social scientists which is that people in their twenties are a lot more pessimistic than people in their 40s and 50s.

Let's be clear: globally the world is much better off than it has ever been and therefore the optimists were correct. Even in the US I remember how in the early '90s the Gen xers were always complaining about how the future was going to be f*. They were wrong too.

based on historical trends you are most likely wrong as well.

I mean listen to yourself. you are talking about generations of false optimism and yet the world and even this country has a much higher standard of living than it has ever had.

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

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Post by JPKab » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

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?

As an American I completely agree with you.

The fact of the matter is that the federal government does not have a huge bearing on most Americans lives. I live in Colorado and therefore get to enjoy marijuana whenever I want despite the fact that it's not legal at the federal level. I like it that way.

Yet when we talk about this virus that is making everybody so miserable via lockdowns and for some killing them, suddenly everyone talks about it at a federal national level.

As if the United States is a small homogeneous country.

The virus hit New York City hard and nowhere else in the country. if you remove New York City from the equation the United States is at the top as far as low numbers of deaths per 100,000.

if you include New York City the United States is still doing better than the United kingdom Spain, Italy, and Belgium etc.

However the news media in this country is in the mode of if it bleeds it leads. they like to scare people to get them to keep their eyeballs glued to their screens and their prescription drug advertisements.

The most recent thing that they've been doing is focusing on absolute numbers rather than relative numbers with the deaths. Same for positive tests. The number of tests being administered has gone up radically and therefore more positive cases are turning up. The media in this country has conveniently left out the fact that the positive test rate is the number that matters and that has gone down all over the country.

I really really dislike Donald Trump like most of the people on this website. However I'm old enough to remember when a previous Republican president started a needless war that cost thousands of American soldiers their lives as well as trillions of dollars and I'm not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that were killed. The current president is incompetent and just says dumb s* all the time. That's honestly the extent of it and I have to constantly hear the whining and complaining as if the world is coming to an end. It's frankly very irritating and the media doesn't help.

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

#379

Post by pstuart » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #376

pstuart wrote: post #349

I'm a very mild type II bipolar, and I recognize that depression is a biochemical affair, but the situational aspect cannot be ignored either. I have ongoing anxiety over the fascist coup that has taken place in the US, as well as the fact that we're cooking the planet and being actively blocked to try to remediate that. I don't know how to be at peace with that.

I might encourage you to reconsider the reality tunnel you are subscribing to. Not because it is false, but because it is opinion-based, and interpretive, and reliant on certain assumptions. If it is making you miserable, it might be worth exploring a different, equally compelling, version of reality.

I'm always welcome to new input, but the two cases I cited have compelling facts behind them.

Being that I'm not thrilled to carry these notions, I'd be more than happy to have my mind "changed".

Go for it: change my mind. I'm not spoiling for a fight -- I genuinely don't like being "wrong."

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

#380

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 28, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #101

presiozo wrote: post #27

I wonder what's the correlation between this and people being underpaid. I'm fortunate enough to have my own house after graduation so I don't have to pay rent. But I have friends that don't have this luxury and man, they are struggling. Besides eating and rent they can't afford anything else in a month. No question here what's giving them these feelings

I don't know whether there's a large correlation, but I believe it would mostly be in the severity of outcomes. Depression isn't "because life is hard", but life being hard makes dealing with depression harder than life being easy. I know people who are very wealthy who struggle with depression, I know people who are very wealthy who don't even really understand the term because they've never experienced anything rem…

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