6 ms·

The rates of people diagnosed with depression. Things that were once taboos, had stigma attached to them, or were poorly defined may once have been more often k

The rates of people diagnosed with depression. Things that were once taboos, had stigma attached to them, or were poorly defined may once have been more often kept under wraps. See ADHD or ASD diagnosis rates, for example.

Julesman 3y ago
Depression is not a disease for most people.
- sgift 3y ago
  In the context of the article - and in most conversations - depression is short hand for "clinical depression" or "major depressive episode", i.e. the form where it is a disease, not the normal feeling of short-term depression after a bad event.
MattGaiser 3y ago
History of left handedness: https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedness-in-the-us-stigma-society/ https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedn... Nothing caused the population of left handed people to soar. We just stopped hitting them in schools for using their left hands.
- olalonde 3y ago
  Not a big fan of this comparison. Just because it was true of left-handedness doesn't mean it's true for other things. It also shows that hitting left-handed kids in schools was actually working, whereas it's not possible to "cure" depression or sexual orientation this way.
  - NopeSlide 3y ago
    Actually sexual orientation is fluid and can be adjusted through acclimatization, it's how pedophilia is treated, it just doesn't work on unwilling participants. People who are straight occasionally do become bi or gay, and vice versa.
    - Mezzie 3y ago
      It's debatable whether that is true for everyone. I know I've tried to make myself like men on several occasions. I was definitely willing and not doing it out of self-hatred.
      - NopeSlide 3y ago
        I'm the opposite, I found that certain mental tools I'd developed in order to overcome my fear of heights and such, had inadvertently also allowed me to adopt just about any sort of sexuality (save for things involving sharp incongruity because my adhd pulls me out of it) with about two weeks to a month of conditioning. I did this a couple of years ago to increase the number of races I'm attracted to, in order to increase my potential dating pool.
        Mezzie 3y ago
        Have you tried with acts you don't like or just physical characteristics? I found that I could see attractiveness in men, but I could never engage in PIV intercourse or give them oral. (Which pretty much rules dating them out because that's a shitty thing to do). I can condition myself into most things, but men seem to be one of my sharp incongruities. I'd bet that a substantial portion of humans are naturally bi and shaped by their environment but there are some humans that really are Kinsey 0s or 6s. We're just rarer. I'd also guess the reputation that conversion therapy has for not working is because anybody in such a hostile environment with even a smidge of opposite-sex attraction is going to act 'straight' and the only people sent off to the conversion camps are the people for whom it wouldn't work.
    - olalonde 3y ago
      It depends what you mean by sexual orientation. For example, I don't think adult pedophiles ever stop being sexually aroused by children. They just learn not to act on their urges. > People who are straight occasionally do become bi or gay, and vice versa. Past puberty? Do they really change sexual orientation or do they realize they were X all along? And is it really the result of acclimatization or the result something else, like a biological process? I admit I didn't know that was a thing. Also, a problem is that most of this research is based on self-reporting, which is notoriously unreliable. Ideally researchers would find ways to measure sexual arousal directly, but I guess it would be more difficult to find participants and setup experiments.
  - MattGaiser 3y ago
    Did it work or did left handed people just learn to work around it, like many LGBTs from religious environments or men who are told to "man up" do?
dimitrios1 3y ago
I still think this is a overall net increase. The stigma wasn't preventing people from getting diagnosed and treated Zoloft was Pfizer's second best selling drug during most of the 90s. So people were still going to get diagnosed and treated despite the stigma. They just wouldn't tell anyone about it, other than their therapist.
- petercooper 3y ago
  The diagnosis of "hysteria" dropped by two thirds in the mid twentieth century with the diagnosis of "depression" replacing it. People may well have been going to the doctor, but they were not necessarily being diagnosed with the conditions we now associate with their symptoms. To your final paragraph, that also highlights the flaws in Gallup style polling. Even if people were being diagnosed in equal number, it doesn't mean they would admit to it in a poll.
olalonde 3y ago
The observed increase could be attributed to two key factors: 1) The rate may have been constant over time, but we're only now observing the "true" rate because societal taboos have decreased. 2) The diagnostic criteria may have lowered over time. Thus, we may now be diagnosing people who wouldn't have previously met the criteria for diagnosis. I've been wondering the same about the notable rise in self-identified LGBT+ individuals across generations[0]. Are we witnessing this surge merely because societal acceptance has improved, enabling more people to openly identify as LGBT+? Or could it also be because the definition of what it means to be LGBT+ has broadened and it's increasingly desirable for young people to identify as such? [0] https://www.statista.com/chart/18228/share-of-americans-identifying-as-lgbt/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18228/share-of-americans-iden...
- Mezzie 3y ago
  One change is that bisexual people are more likely to come out. This has actually had some interesting effects on queer spaces over the past 30 years: Most of them used to be populated by homosexuals but now most queer spaces seem to be mostly bi/pan. Basically a lot of people who either only date or settle down with the opposite sex can be openly queer now whereas before there was no social benefit to telling someone you're bisexual. I still find it weird when queer spaces are full of people in hetero relationships but the demographics make sense.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Young people now identify as LGBT+ at rates comparable to historic rates of same sex experience.[1] [1] https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/historical-report-diversity-of-sexual-orientation.php https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/historical...
shipscode 3y ago
Depression isn't taboo or stigmatized anymore? There's plenty of government forms you'll have to check a box and explain if you've been depressed still. Maybe it's more of a lack of awareness of the taboo and stigmatization.
- the_af 3y ago
  Depression definitely still has a stigma associated to it. Both "it's not a real disease, you are not dying of something" and "it's not real, just snap out of it!".
  - NopeSlide 3y ago
    There's a third option: depression is not a real disease, it is the correct response to what has been done to you, and there are people who should be held responsible for that.
    - the_af 3y ago
      I don't think that's a real option though, because many people suffering from depression haven't been "done" anything to by anyone, or if they have, it's not out of the ordinary or different to what's been done to other people who are not depressed. Like losing your job, or splitting up with your spouse, or simply just existing. Some people react with depression to a serious grievance or ill inflicted upon them (this is the form of depression other people are most likely to understand), and some react with extreme depression to the most ordinary and mild of life's occurrences.
      - deathanatos 3y ago
        Even if they have had something done to them by someone, … they're still depressed? Holding people accountable is nice (though I agree that not all causes of depression are necessarily from acts we'd consider needing accountability), but the post above seems akin to saying "we need to hold the shooter responsible, but we don't need to treat that gunshot wound"?
ndiddy 3y ago
I think this is false, as the suicide rate has also gone up.
- petercooper 3y ago
  It's right in the article: "The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%" To your point on suicide, though. The OECD has some data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Suicide-deaths-per-100000-trend.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/... .. It's hard to say. US is flat. Norway is up a bit. Most countries are down or flat. I don't see any particular upward trend over the past 60 years.
  - bobmaxup 3y ago
    here is the last some years from wikipedia (WHO suicide + mental health per 100k starting @ 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...) 16.4 16.9 17.3 17.1 17.2 17.1 17.5 17.7 18.1 18.1 18.5 18.9 18.9 18.8 19.2 19.9 21.2 22.5 21.8 22.4 and OECD (per 100k intentional self harm starting @ 2010 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?ThemeTreeId=9 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?ThemeTreeId=9) 12.8 13 13.2 13.4 13.8 14 14.2 14.8 15 14.7 14.1 (USA, if not implied)
  - grumpy-de-sre 3y ago
    Wow those numbers are counter-intuitive and in stark contrast to the mainstream zeitgeist. I think it's fair to say rates are up somewhat in the US (along with many other social ills) but for many other western countries they have been stable. Breaking down the US statistics into demographics makes for some disturbing yet interesting reading https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db433.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db433.htm. Seems like the bulk of the growth has been older men (trending down) and women aged 15-24 (a shocking 87% increase from 2007).
sieongioetnio 3y ago
Suicide rates have been rising rapidly since 2000. They are now the highest they've been since WWII. Granted, suicide is also under-reported due to stigma, but it's another data point.
pwpw 3y ago
There could be numerous factors not normally considere for increases in ADHD diagnosis rates such as the decline of tobacco usage in society that ADHD users were self-medicating with[0]. I also believe that ADHD still carries a stigma in the workplace. I wouldn’t personally discuss it in an interview. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2758663/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2758663/

Julesman 3y ago

Depression is not a disease for most people.

sgift 3y ago
In the context of the article - and in most conversations - depression is short hand for "clinical depression" or "major depressive episode", i.e. the form where it is a disease, not the normal feeling of short-term depression after a bad event.

MattGaiser 3y ago

History of left handedness: https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedness-in-the-us-stigma-society/ https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedn... Nothing caused the population of left handed people to soar. We just stopped hitting them in schools for using their left hands.

olalonde 3y ago
Not a big fan of this comparison. Just because it was true of left-handedness doesn't mean it's true for other things. It also shows that hitting left-handed kids in schools was actually working, whereas it's not possible to "cure" depression or sexual orientation this way.
- NopeSlide 3y ago
  Actually sexual orientation is fluid and can be adjusted through acclimatization, it's how pedophilia is treated, it just doesn't work on unwilling participants. People who are straight occasionally do become bi or gay, and vice versa.
  - Mezzie 3y ago
    It's debatable whether that is true for everyone. I know I've tried to make myself like men on several occasions. I was definitely willing and not doing it out of self-hatred.
    - NopeSlide 3y ago
      I'm the opposite, I found that certain mental tools I'd developed in order to overcome my fear of heights and such, had inadvertently also allowed me to adopt just about any sort of sexuality (save for things involving sharp incongruity because my adhd pulls me out of it) with about two weeks to a month of conditioning. I did this a couple of years ago to increase the number of races I'm attracted to, in order to increase my potential dating pool.
      - Mezzie 3y ago
        Have you tried with acts you don't like or just physical characteristics? I found that I could see attractiveness in men, but I could never engage in PIV intercourse or give them oral. (Which pretty much rules dating them out because that's a shitty thing to do). I can condition myself into most things, but men seem to be one of my sharp incongruities. I'd bet that a substantial portion of humans are naturally bi and shaped by their environment but there are some humans that really are Kinsey 0s or 6s. We're just rarer. I'd also guess the reputation that conversion therapy has for not working is because anybody in such a hostile environment with even a smidge of opposite-sex attraction is going to act 'straight' and the only people sent off to the conversion camps are the people for whom it wouldn't work.
  - olalonde 3y ago
    It depends what you mean by sexual orientation. For example, I don't think adult pedophiles ever stop being sexually aroused by children. They just learn not to act on their urges. > People who are straight occasionally do become bi or gay, and vice versa. Past puberty? Do they really change sexual orientation or do they realize they were X all along? And is it really the result of acclimatization or the result something else, like a biological process? I admit I didn't know that was a thing. Also, a problem is that most of this research is based on self-reporting, which is notoriously unreliable. Ideally researchers would find ways to measure sexual arousal directly, but I guess it would be more difficult to find participants and setup experiments.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  Did it work or did left handed people just learn to work around it, like many LGBTs from religious environments or men who are told to "man up" do?

dimitrios1 3y ago

I still think this is a overall net increase. The stigma wasn't preventing people from getting diagnosed and treated Zoloft was Pfizer's second best selling drug during most of the 90s. So people were still going to get diagnosed and treated despite the stigma. They just wouldn't tell anyone about it, other than their therapist.

petercooper 3y ago
The diagnosis of "hysteria" dropped by two thirds in the mid twentieth century with the diagnosis of "depression" replacing it. People may well have been going to the doctor, but they were not necessarily being diagnosed with the conditions we now associate with their symptoms. To your final paragraph, that also highlights the flaws in Gallup style polling. Even if people were being diagnosed in equal number, it doesn't mean they would admit to it in a poll.

olalonde 3y ago

The observed increase could be attributed to two key factors: 1) The rate may have been constant over time, but we're only now observing the "true" rate because societal taboos have decreased. 2) The diagnostic criteria may have lowered over time. Thus, we may now be diagnosing people who wouldn't have previously met the criteria for diagnosis. I've been wondering the same about the notable rise in self-identified LGBT+ individuals across generations[0]. Are we witnessing this surge merely because societal acceptance has improved, enabling more people to openly identify as LGBT+? Or could it also be because the definition of what it means to be LGBT+ has broadened and it's increasingly desirable for young people to identify as such? [0] https://www.statista.com/chart/18228/share-of-americans-identifying-as-lgbt/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18228/share-of-americans-iden...

Mezzie 3y ago
One change is that bisexual people are more likely to come out. This has actually had some interesting effects on queer spaces over the past 30 years: Most of them used to be populated by homosexuals but now most queer spaces seem to be mostly bi/pan. Basically a lot of people who either only date or settle down with the opposite sex can be openly queer now whereas before there was no social benefit to telling someone you're bisexual. I still find it weird when queer spaces are full of people in hetero relationships but the demographics make sense.
pseudalopex 3y ago
Young people now identify as LGBT+ at rates comparable to historic rates of same sex experience.[1] [1] https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/historical-report-diversity-of-sexual-orientation.php https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/historical...

shipscode 3y ago

Depression isn't taboo or stigmatized anymore? There's plenty of government forms you'll have to check a box and explain if you've been depressed still. Maybe it's more of a lack of awareness of the taboo and stigmatization.

the_af 3y ago
Depression definitely still has a stigma associated to it. Both "it's not a real disease, you are not dying of something" and "it's not real, just snap out of it!".
- NopeSlide 3y ago
  There's a third option: depression is not a real disease, it is the correct response to what has been done to you, and there are people who should be held responsible for that.
  - the_af 3y ago
    I don't think that's a real option though, because many people suffering from depression haven't been "done" anything to by anyone, or if they have, it's not out of the ordinary or different to what's been done to other people who are not depressed. Like losing your job, or splitting up with your spouse, or simply just existing. Some people react with depression to a serious grievance or ill inflicted upon them (this is the form of depression other people are most likely to understand), and some react with extreme depression to the most ordinary and mild of life's occurrences.
    - deathanatos 3y ago
      Even if they have had something done to them by someone, … they're still depressed? Holding people accountable is nice (though I agree that not all causes of depression are necessarily from acts we'd consider needing accountability), but the post above seems akin to saying "we need to hold the shooter responsible, but we don't need to treat that gunshot wound"?

ndiddy 3y ago

I think this is false, as the suicide rate has also gone up.

petercooper 3y ago
It's right in the article: "The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%" To your point on suicide, though. The OECD has some data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Suicide-deaths-per-100000-trend.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/... .. It's hard to say. US is flat. Norway is up a bit. Most countries are down or flat. I don't see any particular upward trend over the past 60 years.
- bobmaxup 3y ago
  here is the last some years from wikipedia (WHO suicide + mental health per 100k starting @ 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...) 16.4 16.9 17.3 17.1 17.2 17.1 17.5 17.7 18.1 18.1 18.5 18.9 18.9 18.8 19.2 19.9 21.2 22.5 21.8 22.4 and OECD (per 100k intentional self harm starting @ 2010 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?ThemeTreeId=9 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?ThemeTreeId=9) 12.8 13 13.2 13.4 13.8 14 14.2 14.8 15 14.7 14.1 (USA, if not implied)
- grumpy-de-sre 3y ago
  Wow those numbers are counter-intuitive and in stark contrast to the mainstream zeitgeist. I think it's fair to say rates are up somewhat in the US (along with many other social ills) but for many other western countries they have been stable. Breaking down the US statistics into demographics makes for some disturbing yet interesting reading https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db433.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db433.htm. Seems like the bulk of the growth has been older men (trending down) and women aged 15-24 (a shocking 87% increase from 2007).

sieongioetnio 3y ago

Suicide rates have been rising rapidly since 2000. They are now the highest they've been since WWII. Granted, suicide is also under-reported due to stigma, but it's another data point.

pwpw 3y ago

There could be numerous factors not normally considere for increases in ADHD diagnosis rates such as the decline of tobacco usage in society that ADHD users were self-medicating with[0]. I also believe that ADHD still carries a stigma in the workplace. I wouldn’t personally discuss it in an interview. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2758663/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2758663/