Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

news.gallup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 199 posts

Re: U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

#91

Post by bt4u »

sieongioetnio wrote: post #58
GiorgioG wrote: post #9

In the last few years inflation has hurt the fuck out of all but the richest Americans. Financial stress leads to depression. Add both political parties are constantly telling us the other side is ruining everything and it's just piling it on. A recession is here/coming.

I don't understand this concern about inflation. It was never that high, didn't last very long, and wages kept up pretty well (real wages are higher today than they were a year ago [1]). People are panicking over a problem that has done little real harm. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/05/economy/real-wages-inflation/...

[dead]

Re: U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

#92

Post by GiorgioG »

sieongioetnio wrote: post #58
GiorgioG wrote: post #9

In the last few years inflation has hurt the fuck out of all but the richest Americans. Financial stress leads to depression. Add both political parties are constantly telling us the other side is ruining everything and it's just piling it on. A recession is here/coming.

I don't understand this concern about inflation. It was never that high, didn't last very long, and wages kept up pretty well (real wages are higher today than they were a year ago [1]). People are panicking over a problem that has done little real harm. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/05/economy/real-wages-inflation/...

Not everyone got a raise or changed jobs since last year. Everything is still expensive, and continues to get more expensive.

Re: U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

#93

Post by tayo42 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #47
GiorgioG wrote: post #9

In the last few years inflation has hurt the fuck out of all but the richest Americans. Financial stress leads to depression. Add both political parties are constantly telling us the other side is ruining everything and it's just piling it on. A recession is here/coming.

Why does the US have higher depression rates than any country in Africa then? Aren't there a lot of people there under financial stress?

I read a book that suggested some clues, it was a pretty opinionated and cynical book (Dark star safari). So im not an expert. The commentary he had suggested its cultural. They know what they know, kind of accepted how things are. Dont really care about getting ahead, buying, and accumulating wealth. those kinds of are effected by economies. but just one viewpoint someone had

Re: U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

#94

Post by ultra_nick »

People work twice as much for the same wage. Most households now have two full time workers. Strangers raise our kids. Affordable small houses are no longer built. There're few legal or free places to rest. The rich pay significantly less taxes than when America was in its prime.

Poverty is the cause. The US will only get worse until citizens vote for corporations to pay their historical tax rates and reduce outsourcing.

Re: U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

#95

Post by Saturn5 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #47
GiorgioG wrote: post #9

In the last few years inflation has hurt the fuck out of all but the richest Americans. Financial stress leads to depression. Add both political parties are constantly telling us the other side is ruining everything and it's just piling it on. A recession is here/coming.

Why does the US have higher depression rates than any country in Africa then? Aren't there a lot of people there under financial stress?

It is very difficult to compare the numbers directly. I would expect that on many African countries there is less acces to mental health professionals to diagnose people, maybe also more prejudice agains seeking help for mental health. Also it could be that people seek help in their community or religion without a formal medical diagnosis. Possibly for regions where there is war or food insecurity seeking a diagnosis is less of a priority. I have no idea how much of an impact these have if any, but I don’t think you can just compare numbers directly.

Re: U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

#96

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mc32 wrote: post #60
GiorgioG wrote: post #9

In the last few years inflation has hurt the fuck out of all but the richest Americans. Financial stress leads to depression. Add both political parties are constantly telling us the other side is ruining everything and it's just piling it on. A recession is here/coming.

I can't believe we're worse off financially than during the great economic depression. Do we have numbers from back then? Are people today more apt to become depressed, are we conditioned to get more depressed, or is diagnosis better, or are we classifying and identifying more things as depression? Back then we had no social services, no soup kitchens, "food stamps" etc. There was no governmental help (other than job…

Anecdote, not data: My father was born into the Great Depression. He said you couldn't buy thread - not because you didn't have money to buy it, but because all the thread factories had closed, and there was literally no thread to buy.

Data: The US unemployment rate peaked at 25%.

So, yeah, things were (much) worse during the Great Depression. I have no data on whether people were depressed then (though the final lines of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, his message to the country, were "Buck up" and then "Smile"). But I know that it left deep marks on people. When there just wasn't stuff, and there was no promise that there ever would be stuff, it affected people for decades after it was over.

Re: U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

#97

Post by George83728 »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #33

[flagged]

Same-sex marriage wasn't nationally legal until 2015. How can you say that social conditions for LBGT people in America are worse in the present than in the past? Maybe if you're only looking in the past few years, but zoom out to view a few decades and it doesn't make sense. What qualifies as extreme anti-LGBT rhetoric today was very mainstream 20 years ago.

Re: U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

#100

Post by laratied »

rib3ye wrote: post #56

Probably a vastly unpopular opinion in HN but don’t we think sitting at home alone all day, working remote, could be related? Humans evolved to be physically social, is 100% remote really the right direction for American society?

I think the sitting part is the bigger variable.

It is hard to be happy when your physical condition is a mess.

Personally, I never have quite as good of a day as when I start my day with an hour walk. Literally never and I have performed this experiment over a thousand times now.

Post reply on HN