What about the awareness of what self-harm/depression is in the first place? It's easier to say you're depressed if you understand what depression is, and it's easy enough to Google that. Same with self-harm, I wouldn't ask my classmate but I could easily Google it. Similarly, mental health campaigns could contribute, accelerating how fast kids learn about bad mental health. We could've had the same percentage of depressed young people, they just wouldn't know how to express it/act on it.
The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
621–630 of 937 posts
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a possible explanation would be that the increasing desire for more government regulation, or at least functional government, runs counter to the world, which is increasingly ruled by inhuman, (even anti-human) forces. This breeds a desperation in people as they realize that humanity is viewed as a resource, not an end in itself, for the inhuman forces (call it capital, technology, whatever) to consume and mo…
Are you saying that capitalism and technology are inhuman forces? That humans were in some idyllic state before 1800?
No, not at all, just that (post) modern techno-capitalism has grown out of the need to justify itself via appeals to humanism. Another way of looking at this is by considering the difference between life/death drive in psychology as they relate to humanism/anti-humanism and how that manifests in systems.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the 1930's movies were blamed for the decay in society. In the 1960's comic books were blamed for teen problems. In the 70's it was rock music.
> “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ~ Socrates Seems lik…
Is your conclusion, therefore, that every negative observation about a younger generation is false?
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've honestly never heard those two being linked before. That would seem to imply that Canada, with a drinking age of 18, would you have a a higher drunk driving rate than the US, and I wonder if that's the case.
In most of Canada the drinking age is 19 (only a few provinces are 18), but it’s also slightly harder to get your drivers license in Canada. You’re required to take a written test and then two driving tests in order to receive a full license.
Sure, OK, but that's still at least two extra years. We didn't used to have the two driving tests, and in Alberta we don't anymore - you transition off GDL after a set time without a test, but all the GDLs were instituted relatively recently, so we should be able to look at data 20-30 years ago to see data matching that claim, right?
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#625I’m not a parent nor am I a teen so take my comments with a grain of salt. The one thing that has consistently jumped out to me on this topic is how quickly people seem to jump to convenient answers. Of course you can’t ignore the rise of social media since 2010, but what about the level of control, structure, and surveillance that most young people have been subjected to over the same arc of time? That gets no atten…
> Of course you can’t ignore the rise of social media since 2010, but what about the level of control, structure, and surveillance that most young people have been subjected to over the same arc of time?
Add on top the permacrises/polycrisis time we're in.
My generation, we entered the workforce right during the 2008ff financial crisis. The Europeans got further fucked by the Euro crisis 2010, which crippled our career entries, and lasted for years with its consequences.
In parallel, in 2011 the Arab Spring broke out, leading to years of wars and refugees. Then in 2014, the Russians made their first move into Ukraine, and the migration crisis began that then fully escalated in 2015. Right in the midst of that, the US elected the 45th and we all know how that one went. As the migration crisis died down to manageable levels in 2019, we only had a few months of rest, as at the end of 2019 COVID hit the entire world - and before that was over, the Russians went into the rest of Ukraine. That in turn led to cost of living exploding, now also across the world instead of "just" in the urban agglomeration eras.
And the entire time, the far-right and authoritarians have been on the rise worldwide, politicians are doing nothing to meaningfully combat climate change or the demographic crisis or ever rising cost-of-living cost and income/wealth disparities.
And then people, particularly the Boomer generation, have the audacity of calling us snowflakes, weak, "depression is just a trend" or whatever? They created all this mess, they're all set in cheap homes they paid off decades ago, when wages were still worth something, while we've been fighting for survival? And our younger brothers and sisters have it even worse than we have, they saw us and our parents struggle all these years.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#626The instinct is to treat this as an apocalyptic change of some sort in society. Here's an alternate framing. The DSM-5 was released in 2013.
The DSM is primarily used in the US, whereas the article is claiming that there is an international epidemic of teen mental health problems.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kids need more time away from other kids. They're spending too much time in the insane asylum with the other inmates. This leads to bullying, gossiping, comparing themselves against one another. Social media made it worse. Kids at home on the farm, reading books, exploring nature - that was healthy. Now they're addicted to algorithmic peer pressure before their brains can even adjust to filtering it out.
Humans, including kids, are inherently social creatures, and are happiest when communing with their fellow creatures (including pets, but mostly other humans). Kids are most happy when they and their friends are playing together, and my personal belief is that they are happiest when helping other people together (so much of my childhood play was around pretending being a hero, sacrificing and risking my life for the…
Don't overgeneralize. People are different and have different needs. You can speak your truth without having to say it is true for everyone.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's responsible for a ton of AIDS deaths, so we'll let him be with one pandemic.
Now Reagan caused the worldwide epidemic of a mysterious disease of unknown origin?
No, he just ignored it.
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not sure if we can ever go back to that without some major catastrophe. We easily can. With the network effect, we can just encourage everyone we know that socializing with real people in real life is important and set up some coffees, lunches, dinners, walks, board games, etc, and then encourage those people to do the same with the people they know. Won't take very many hops to reach everyone this way and get back…
>We easily can. With the network effect, Sometimes I wonder if people read what they actually write? What you're saying is you want everyone to disconnect and no longer be part of the network effect we're currently under.... This thinking seems to have a few flaws. 1. You have to remain within the supposed 'bad' network effect to broadcast your message. If you leave and go do your IRL things, you won't be there to br…
Sticking with the tech analogy, People can and do switch networks all the time. You also don't have to wait for average user to become an early adopter.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that capitalism and technology are inhuman forces? That humans were in some idyllic state before 1800?
No, not at all, just that (post) modern techno-capitalism has grown out of the need to justify itself via appeals to humanism. Another way of looking at this is by considering the difference between life/death drive in psychology as they relate to humanism/anti-humanism and how that manifests in systems.
I have no idea what that means.