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%.)
The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
731–740 of 937 posts
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#732Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The problem with capitalism is not that it creates problems for humans but that it exploits the problems that we would have regardless, drastically exacerbating the consequences." –Chris Cutrone
Wow, I think the exact opposite. The wonder of capitalism is that it harnesses the problems that we would have regardless and at least points them in the general direction of social benefit. At least I can't think of any other system of economic organization that has been tried in the history of the world that I would prefer.
It's quite obvious to me that both are true, and that we should continue questioning the degree to which each of them are.
Karl Marx celebrated capitalism for the same reasons you do, while at the same time recognizing the unlikelihood of capitalism being the final form of human organization. Of course, that was before our current awareness of global warming.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#733Earlier quoted context omitted.
Undermining trust in institutions. Prior to the truth of the Vietnam war coming out, ordinary Americans tended to gave the benefit of the doubt to the government. They lost the baby boomer’s trust with Vietnam. Bush 43’s Iraq war did the same to Gen X. For Millenial Americans it was the government’s ruinous response to the 2008 financial crisis. Then the COVID debacle happened. Fast forward to the present moment wher…
and yet all we hear is how the only answer to any problem is more government.
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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#734[flagged]
I don't think Haidt has a political agenda. I've been following his work on this since he published his book on it a decade ago. He has a whole theory about why teen mental health went off a cliff in the last decade, and the theory is basically about technological change and really isn't anything political.
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Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#735I think social media and technology in general ism while important, to some extent a second order effect response to a breakdown in community This is measured in Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone as occurring after 1965-ish[1] through a variety of measures, or for example more recently measuring where couples meet in the US, [2] which were declining well before the 2010s. The Middletown studies of the 1920s for example n…
In the UK working hours (especially working hours per household as women work more) have increased. No one has the time for community.
Schools have also deteriorated and kids are put under a lot of pressure to achieve academically. I opted mine out.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#736People underestimate the change that took place between 2008 and 2012 with ubiquitous phone usage. All of a sudden we all started staring at these devices for several hours a day. We never leave this thing. The resulting impact on our mental state cannot be overstated.
Yep. Boredom drives in person socialising and creativity. Human contact and the act of creation engender life satisfaction, a long term persistent sense of well-being that is far better for you than short term spikes of happiness, and the antithesis of depression. We are never bored with a phone in our pocket.
So - boredom is our natural instinct meant to steer us towards socialization. The ever present phone gives us stimuli that makes our intuition think that we are engaging socially. But the reward we are looking for is social bonding but it doesn't happen because our cognitive functions that makes sense of bonding can't execute because there's no full person to bond to. Most often it's an anonymous disembodied text or an influencer or celebrity that do not know you...?
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#737Earlier 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.
I think it's definitely a tracking thing based on parents now paying more attention to their children's well being or 'academic achievements' than they did several decades ago.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#738Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with most of this but my opinion is that Trump was the symptom, not the cause.
I see it both ways. If you are the type of person Trump targeted with his insults and attacks, which is a lot of people in the US, and you're young and don't really 'get' the political situation, that could cause some significant psychological distress. Imagine you're 17 and the president says "Mersenne and people like them are destroying our country".
I think I would be shocked at his penchant for recreational mathematics.
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#739Earlier quoted context omitted.
lol, ok, never mind all the countless people those "values" drove their childhoods, adolescence and lives into the ground or worse
lol, ok, never mind all the countless people the absence of these "values" are driving their childhoods, adolescence and lives into the ground or worse edit: Right, sorry, that was quite a reactive response on my side. I'll try to be constructive and foster conversation instead of just resorting to sarcasm: what's your point? are you seriously implying marriage and family are overall negative values?
words like "marriage" and "family" when wielded like this are effectively clubs and weasel words meant to induce an image of something akin to 50's propaganda posters of the happy american family living out their american dream, and imply that the people pointing out that's problematic are just being cynical nitpicky amoral misanthropes when really it's the people wielding them in this manner who are very selective about what people they mean to include, and very disingenuous about the many people they deliberately do not mean to include (and just their general agenda)
Re: The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)
#740All 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…
I agree reporting bias could be a thing, but there are statistics like completed suicide which are less susceptible to it (though still present; you can imagine a suicide being declared an accidental death to help a family "avoid embarrassment"). And those statistics have also been steadily creeping up for decades.
I think reporting bias should be the starting point and the primary area of inquiry when looking at this topic. Unless I'm imagining the recent past where mental illness was literally verboten to speak about and mental health services were widely derided as scams. The change in discourse has been as rapid and dramatic as any social change I can think of, yet the authors seem to think it's enough to simply acknowledge that and focus instead on their many charts, most of which are about self-reporting or diagnoses.