15 ms·

Shit life syndrome

397 points by tjpnz 3y ago

walthamstow 3y ago
Sarah Connor really is a fantastic columnist for the FT
- TuringNYC 3y ago
  And infamous for the tweet: https://twitter.com/sarahoconnor_/status/616282747200479232?lang=en https://twitter.com/sarahoconnor_/status/616282747200479232?...
  - roxil 3y ago
    What's the context here?
    - TuringNYC 3y ago
      >> What's the context here? Sarah O'Connor is an FT reporter Sarah O'Connor writes an article about a human dying from a factory robot In the Terminator movies, Sarah Connor leads the resistance and her son is the leader of the future resistance. The machines try to kill her and her child. The whole movie is about robots killing humans and Sarah's efforts to save humanity from robots. Sarah O'Connor the FT reporter appears too young to have watched the movies and/or remember the movies (1984, 1992) gets deluge of Twitter engagement given her article and her name. For whomever hasnt seem the original two Terminator movies, the are absolutely huge culture moments for robotics and AI. Part II is also a cautionary tale about scientists who dont think about the effects of their work.
tetris11 3y ago
I hope there comes a day when the rich and influential look for the next money-making venture in which to invest in, see only a sea of machine-generated uncertainty on the stock market, and decide "actually, the most profitable thing I can do to protect my wealth is to invest it in the public" One day maybe.
- lookboil 3y ago
  Maybe they'll begin investing without expecting fiscal returns, instead focusing on spiritual returns For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36 I won't hold my breath, but it's a nice thought.
- deleted 3y ago
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- Karellen 3y ago
  Ugh. I hope there comes a day when using the money hoarded by the rich and influential to invest in the public, does not depend on the rich and influential choosing to do so out of a desire for maximal profits, or even benevolence. One day maybe.
  - siwatanejo 3y ago
    > One day maybe TBH, I doubt it. Don't get me wrong, I sympathize with your values. Heck, I'm even called 'woke' by most people around me. Yet I understand that in this day in age, thanks to cryptocurrency, money is and will be a private matter. No government will be able to confiscate your wealth, at least to the extent that your wealth doesn't depend on assets related with the government (e.g. real estate is related given that you need to pay taxes to maintain it).
    - s5300 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - siwatanejo 3y ago
        [flagged]
        pjerem 3y ago
        No. But I’m pretty sure that if you don’t pay your taxes although you may buy the law, you will face jail sentence. You can refuse to go in jail but that’s when you get the gun.
deleted 3y ago
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padolsey 3y ago
This is quite darkly hilarious tbh. And consistent with my experience of Blackpool. I once went there on couple-week-long driving course when I was a teenager, hoping but eventually failing to get my license. I was put up in someone's house that was run as a sort of unlicensed b&b. The entire place, the curtains, the linen, the pillow,.. all smelled of old nicotine and damp. On my first evening I went out by myself to a fish-and-chip shop, feeling like a silly city boy in a greasy gritty concrete town. Stuck out like a sore thumb. I remember walking, late evening, lonely, on a bridge over the railtrack. The entire place felt deserted, metallic and concrete. I went back to my room and ate the oily chips on my bed. After the first day with an old crusty – but perfectly lovely driving instructor – and a rather large heavy-haulage driver who was renewing a license, we went out for some drinks. Beers. Lots of beer. And they took me to a gay club – of which there are oddly many in Blackpool – because they thought it'd be a laugh. It was actually a massive spectacle for me. It was the first time I saw older men kissing, right there, by the entrance on a old tawdry sofa. I was still on a journey of coming out, so it felt oddly enlightening or validating or something. It was an old-england gay club – the type you hear about in the era of stonewall. The entire town was like a time capsule to a poorer apocalyptic britain. Betting shops, cheap nail salons, boarded up derelict buildings everywhere! Even the beach was deserted. It reflected the same depressing crumbling economy of coastal towns all over the UK. It felt like a shadow of its former self, but somehow, there was a old english magic to it that I can still feel. My nostalgia is probably getting the better of me, but I remember it fondly. So yeh I think I understand this SLS thing. In places like Blackpool – forgotten remnants - you can feel the depression in the paving stones – the grey withering vitality – swallowing you whole.
- louthy 3y ago
  Your description of Blackpool is both eloquent and absolutely spot on! I suggested to my friend that we go there for his stag do; and even for the debauchery of a stag do it felt a bit too grim! To the point that I felt guilty for suggesting it.
- hkt 3y ago
  Beautifully put, an answer approaching literature. I have the same feelings about Blackpool. Coastal towns really are monuments to another time. The houses are beautiful, too - a two bedroom flat in one of the old guesthouses on the sea front with bay windows is a steal in most towns, if you can cope with the town itself. Scarborough is another one. It was clearly so much more full of life than it is now, but its status as an elder resort is part of its charm. The poverty, so much not.
_8j50 3y ago
This is so weird. Is it another way of saying "being poor is expensive"? Or poor people get sick more? If so then this some next level captain obvious stuff. Or do the authors have such a nice societal experience that this seems very peculiar to them? I mean, this is one if the top reasons people want money right? At least they have NHS in the UK, in most of the world and most of human history people either adapt or die. The only problem I have with this is the name, it isn't shit life, it is poverty. It's not like rich people with alcoholism or depression maker the cut for this supposed syndrome. Not calling it poverty allows policy to be centered around anything but giving people cash. Give the addicts, the hobos and and the mentally unstable cash and good information/guidance on their options.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  Sometimes the only way to get people to notice a problem is to reframe it using new language. Yes, it's poverty all the way down, but most should be able to make that link without much help.
  - _8j50 3y ago
    Reframing it abstracts away the root cause and shifts the focus to symptoms and intermediary causes rather than the root cause: money! The people that can make a difference (policy makers) will look at this and try to find a "complex multi-faceted soution" or whatever that shoves the problem under the rug and polishes it up and fixed some symptoms here and there. This actually made me rethink of socialized health care and other social programs in europe because in tech at least the salaries are horrible there, it seems the line of thinking is that the government should take more money from everyone and support social programs to solve all kinds of issues, which until now I thought was a good idea but it seems it isn't just more taxes, the salaries there and job opportunities are not good. Even on HN you hear about companies in tech struggling because of the investor mindset there. My new opinion is that while I support socialized programs to care for those who can't care for themselves, it does not absolve policy makers' responsibility to make that support in form of better income and opportunities as much as possible and even direct cash and tax credits, not more programs and bureaucracies but more jobs and better paying jobs and more rewarding jobs with job security.
the-dude 3y ago
In The Netherlands there were no foodbanks before the year 2000. edit: looked it up, it is 2002 actually.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  To what extent are they necessary if one is already receiving welfare services and resources?
  - dazc 3y ago
    They are mostly not. Unlike most people who comment on such issues I actually know of two people who use food banks on a regular basis. One spends £20 a day on tobacco, the other drinks himself into intensive care whenever he has the opportunity. I have a friend who lives in the same building (it's like an old folk's home but with independent apartments and on-site care). The 'managers' of this council funded facility have the authority to refer anyone to a food bank and they have told my friend several times that he only has to ask. There are 60 residents in this one building and only know 6 of them to speak to, so go figure.
    - felurx 3y ago
      First of all, that's not a representative sample. It might be that that is really how it is for everyone who uses food banks, or it might be completely different. A sample of two doesn't give enough information to know. But mostly: If there are people depending on the food banks to get food because of their addictions, isn't that a sign that (at least for these people), food banks very much are neccessary? Unless one assumes that people would change their spending behaviour under enough pressure, but from what little I personally know, that would very much just be an assumption.
      - dazc 3y ago
        Yes, you're right, if someone's addictions are so severe that they would otherwise not eat. I don't know any such people but I don't doubt they exist. I think you know I was making a valid point initially though. I was giving an example of how readily available these schemes are to people who don't really need them. There is a perception that people have to qualify for such help when, in reality, they just need to know the system. You may say there is always going to be minor abuse of such schemes and I will just say that I think otherwise.
deleted 3y ago
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paganel 3y ago
> Sarah O'Connor's 2018 article for the Financial Times "Left behind: can anyone save the towns the economy forgot?" on shit life syndrome in the English coastal town of Blackpool won the 2018 Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils Funny that the FT should complain about some of the evil effects of capitalism, too bad they’re only using it for white-washing, as in: “see, we’re the good capitalists! we care!”
lordnacho 3y ago
https://www.ft.com/blackpool https://www.ft.com/blackpool Seems like it's not paywalled. FWIW Blackpool looks like a heck of a lot of seaside places in the UK. Whatever problems are described in this article are problems all the way around the coast. Visit a seaside town here and it often feels like you're back in the early 90s. There's a certain style that hasn't been updated. Arcades, chip shops, betting shops. Ok the betting shops look modern. A lot of high streets in nice towns are even starting to look like they're made entirely of charity shops and betting shops, and starbucks/costa.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  From an Australian perspective the idea that "seaside" towns are especially susceptible to economic decay and being left behind seems quite odd - even in parts of country without year-round beach weather, coastal localities here are usually the desirable places to live with subsequently healthier economies. Are there other countries that have experienced similar patterns of development to the UK?
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    Ex industrial cities in the north perhaps?
  - rwmj 3y ago
    It's a whole lot warmer in Australia. Here in Britain there are very few days when it is pleasant to sit on the beach in Blackpool, let alone go swimming in the sewage-filled sea. Cheap flights make it easy to go abroad to the warmer and nicer environment of Italy or Spain.
    - wizofaus 3y ago
      Were seaside towns in the UK in the past particularly dependent on tourism though? And has a similar phenomenon occurred in other cooler-climate countries, in Europe or elsewhere? Tasmania's climate isn't so far off the UK's, yet I'm not aware of any hollowing-out effect among coastal towns there (Hobart has roughly the population of Blackpool, and was doing just fine last time I visited).
prima-facie 3y ago
First time i heard about SLS was from this DW documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK68yyrKUOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK68yyrKUOA which i found very good
- jordanrobinson 3y ago
  I'd love to know the rationale for why they geoblock the UK from watching this particular documentary.
  - prima-facie 3y ago
    That's very odd. Here's a mirror: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/phqh8xnpb2gwk3qwhk47x/Poverty-in-Britain-Why-are-millions-of-Brits-so-broke-DW-Documentary-BK68yyrKUOA.webm?rlkey=7perggsqq5zowjxcweitmt8eg&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/phqh8xnpb2gwk3qwhk47x/Poverty...
  - cwales95 3y ago
    Same here. The Dropbox link in the other comment was useful. Makes you wonder if there’s a conspiracy to stop those of us in the UK watching it even though we know how awful it is at times.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    They probably have bits of footage from British TV companies, who are fine licencing them to be shown abroad, but have either already sold an exclusive licence for UK broadcast or want to keep that option available to them.
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    The programme almost certainly includes content from a UK broadcaster that was licensed on the basis that it would only be used outside the UK.
throaway_12345 3y ago
Hi, speaking from small-town India. Poverty is extremely harsh on people. And when I was much younger (<15), like many adults now think, I used to think that poverty is the lack of power of buying expensive things. But as I have grown up, I realized that poverty is extremely harsh. For example, relevant to the submission, is healthcare. Healthcare in India is theoretically free in government hospitals. But in most places the state of these hospitals is horrific, and getting treatment is very hard due to corruption. But the bigger issue is opportunity cost. People who live based on daily earnings, cannot afford to go to hospitals abandoning their work as they cannot ensure next day's food. So, unless it happens to be someone young, people don't seek treatment at all. And visiting a proper doctor and buying meds take away ~10 days' income. Really unaffordable for poor people. So, even people in their forties and fifties decide to wait it out, and easily curable ailments get chronic and beyond cure. Women fare worse than men. Real victims are old people, and nobody bothers to spend money and weeks of their time to get them to treatment. They wither, and die without treatment. I have seen at least a dozen people die like this. I think, the cause of SLS is opportunity cost. People often die, and more often suffer for decades from easily curable diseases because they cannot really afford either the time or money to get treatment. I also know at least a dozen people who have something chronic, but get no treatment at all because they cannot afford it.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Thanks for the note on life around you. I think something you touch on here is physical health. But my reading of the Wikipedia article is SLS profoundly about mental well being and the toll of neglect, abuse, and crushing poverty has on overall health and quantity of life due to the lack of well being. Would you mind expanding your story of life in your area on that dimension? How does this harshness play out for the people as people, less about their ability to get physical health care, but how does the harshness degrade their lives as humans?
  - svnt 3y ago
    Personally I think that aspect is more locked in to the aging of the post-World power great expectations of “up and to the right.” If people have never had decent health care, and their classmates from school haven’t either, then how are they meant to move into something as rarefied as self-assessed mental health? That is something that people with too much time and not enough existential threat get up to.
ricardo81 3y ago
The UK has typically had the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. A previous Prime Minister had been quoted 'A pound spent in Croydon is far more of value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde', Croydon being in London and Strathclyde being an administrative area in West Scotland that ceased to exist in 1975. The quote was from 2012. WFH has allowed me to continue working from rural Scotland, to be honest I thought COVID would radically transform society's thinking and our requirement to be in high GDP areas for certain lines of work. Doesn't seem to have had quite the impact it was supposed to.
- louthy 3y ago
  Although Croydon is a London borough, it's quite far outside of central London, to the point that it doesn't really feel part of London. It's also quite a deprived area. So that quote is weird on a number of levels!
  - comprev 3y ago
    Perhaps the intended message was "Both Croydon and Strathclyde are shit places, but Croydon is a little less shit. By spending that pound in Croydon we can hopefully avoid it becoming Strathclyde"
  - ricardo81 3y ago
    I think his general idea was that money invested in London was of greater economic benefit to the whole country than investing the same amount elsewhere.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    The average "Index of Multiple Deprivation" [1] for Croydon is about 14,000, where every area (of some equal population size) is ranked from 1 to 32,884. Very roughly average for England. Scotland isn't included, so I can't compare Strathclyde, but Blackpool's average is 5,900 — and includes 8 of the 10 most deprived places in the country. Only one bit of London (part of Haringey) makes the top 1000. Only 106 bits of London (out of 4685) make the top 10%. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-...
dougmwne 3y ago
I think that poverty really is a state of mind, and so SLS, as a thing separate from mental health, inadequate health care or material deprivation makes a lot of sense to me. Once you start seeing life as shit, something where no good change is possible and no effort is rewarded, you really are stuck in the shit reality. On the other hand, it’s possible to be materially very poor, but totally happy. To see life as full of abundance, good purpose and to find joy in it.
- dwb 3y ago
  This is the sort of rhetoric that harms poor people. Being poor can cause states of mind, but is not a state of mind in itself — it is clearly and simply an economic position. The article is not talking about people thinking of themselves as simply poor and therefore unhappy or unhealthy, but a much more complex relationship.
  - fellowmartian 3y ago
    On individual scale you’re right, but on the collective level I think both you and GP are right, it’s a feedback loop. Places become poor for different reasons: shifting economic realities, fall of the previous civilization (eg USSR, which is my experience), etc. Places remain poor when people feel trapped inside vs consciously deciding to call the place home.
    - dwb 3y ago
      I sort of acknowledged that when I said it was a complex relationship. I'm sure there are feedback loops set up where experiencing poverty makes you more likely to stay poor, and so on. But to say poverty is simply a state of mind seems drastically and dangerously wrong to me.
- wiseowise 3y ago
  > To see life as full of abundance, good purpose and to find joy in it. Given that most (if not all) enjoyable things in life involve some kind of a fee (however small), that’s hard to do.
yosito 3y ago
I'd say my hometown in middle America is significantly affected by Shit Life Syndrome. Thanks to my career in tech I broke out of that and moved away, but I've definitely had my seasons back at home where I get sucked into the Shit Life Syndrome around me. I had some post-Covid health issues and spent a month back in my hometown to recover. But after a month I couldn't stand to be around so many struggling people while I was struggling myself. So I went back to my cosmopolitan life and surrounded myself with people who are doing well. I still have my health issues, but surrounding myself with people who are doing well has been much more tolerable for me than sitting stuck in Shit Life Syndrome in my hometown. I don't know what the solution is for places that have SLS, but for individual people, the best advice I can give is, to the best of your ability, surround yourself with people who are doing well.
- Liquix 3y ago
  Crabs in a bucket :( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
- ip26 3y ago
  I don't know what the solution is for places that have SLS I don’t have a real solution either, but it seems like it would either need to involve a managed wind-down of towns in gradual, permanent decline, or somehow propping them up in perpetuity. Some towns may just not make sense anymore. But for one reason or another, whether the problem is disappearing economic opportunity or changing climate, there’s no way to cleanly move on. There’s some discussion of this concept now under the moniker “managed retreat”, but we still need to figure out how to avoid stranding the most vulnerable.
tycho-newman 3y ago
In the US, we call this phenomenon "the social determinants of health."
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, eh?
mensetmanusman 3y ago
I’ve always wondered if a brute force approach to this is to money bomb these areas and let people get large amounts of funds to leave the area and go somewhere where they are slightly more likely to have positive interactions.
- tete 3y ago
  Or UBI to make people have some way to actually think about what they wanna do. I see the pattern that people are too busy with their lives to realistically start thinking about how to come out of it. But I don't think that will ever happen, because it lowers power of other people. If you have someone that is too busy with the life (job, maybe children, etc.) you get cheap labor that and work force that is just above slavery. It would also make stuff like involuntary (if there is a voluntary one) prostitution, cheap apartment cleaning, etc. But then the power that people have over other people would be severely cut, so short of a revolution giving people the power to get out of a shit life isn't likely gonna happen. People having the means to have meaningful lives or simply things they want will reduce that power. Of course it won't remove workforce or reduce productivity. That's been proven in many studies. The opposite is true. But it also means that if you right now have some kind of workforce that ruins their physical and/or mental health for you they'll at the very least ask for adequate compensation. The reason is that people do strive for more. So even if they have enough to come by they will want that car, that vacation, that travel, that iPhone, etc. So they'll work. But they are less likely to damage themselves in the process, if they have air to breath, to think about stuff, or bluntly to have options.
- saulpw 3y ago
  I'm reading Small Is Beautiful[0] (1972) and they make the point that the modern economy incentivizes interlocking problems of smart, healthy people leaving ~rural areas to move to urban areas, and subsequent disinvestment in rural, which creates a dual economy. The solution cannot be bringing the modern economy to non-urban areas, which would be like building a skyscraper in a farmtown. Your solution would just drain the area of any remaining talent. The remaining people would be the elderly, disabled, and stubborn--and SLS would be even worse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful
CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
haha, poor Blackpool. Really though, anything north or east of and including Bristol is pretty depressing.
_dain_ 3y ago
This is the original article that won the award: https://www.ft.com/blackpool https://www.ft.com/blackpool There's an interesting dog-that-didn't-bark: the word "meth" does not appear. The drug is still not common in the UK[1]. Blackpool has precisely the demographic makeup where, if it were in America, it would be flooded with meth dealers and addicts, and become magnitudes worse than it already is. I dread the day that drug finally makes landfall here. It will sweep through our urban underclass like the Black Death. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7jdd8/uk-british-dont-use-meth https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7jdd8/uk-british-dont-use-m...
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Whats the cocaine/crack situation, also other stimulants like Ritalin etc?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Earw0rm 3y ago
  Nor fentanyl. Probably because while heroin is a thing, it tends to stay in its rather particular niche. I'm not a believer in gateway drugs generally, but the prescription opioid hell that exists in the US never really took off here. A problem yes, but not a society-wrecking scale. Mostly because doctors are much less free-and-easy with prescribing the stuff, and can't easily be bribed by drugco's to do so as they were in the US.
29athrowaway 3y ago
Many people there have to choose between food and heating. And use pre-paid power meters.
bandyaboot 3y ago
Blackpool. How is it that these towns are so perfectly named?
virtuous_sloth 3y ago
Capitalism-induced shit-life syndrome.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Compared to what? Being a peasant under communism?
  - felurx 3y ago
    Just because another system would fail these people too doesn't mean that our current system in how it works isn't failing these people. And just because big bad communism is another shit extreme, that doesn't mean that there are no other economic systems, or if you prefer, potentially variants of our current economic system, that would be better. I won't pretend to know the solution, but either capitalism in general or the capitalism we currently have, with for example its misaligned incentives, exploitation and death traps people live in, sure seems to be a huge part of the problem.
User23 3y ago
This sounds oddly similar to the systemic dysfunction seen on reservations in the USA.
helveticar 3y ago
Brit Boomer. I grew up in a single parent family near the bottom of the heap in England. What kept us going and saved me from early death or a life of crime or drug dependency was the welfare state. The NHS, free school meals and host of other measures meant that there was a safety net in place, even so much was done by charities like the NSPCC. Later there were grants, with tuition fees paid, to go to higher education. For me, seeing how the other 50% or so lived was truly eye opening. Post Thatcher, the safety nets have been allowed to fall into disrepair if not discarded entirely. Modern Britain is not a place to grow up poor in.
- dazc 3y ago
  I disagree, if you are going to be poor then there are far worse places. I had a similar upbringing btw, single mother with 3 siblings.
  - mafuy 3y ago
    Doubtlessly there are worse places now and then. But the parent writer found that the situation here became worse than it was, and that's sad and reason for a critical view.
coldtea 3y ago
The journalist Sarah O'Connor, linked to in the Wikipedia article for her "Left behind: can anyone save the towns the economy forgot?" article in the Financial Times, is also known for this: https://abc11.com/sarah-oconnor-connor-terminator-killer-robots/826034/ https://abc11.com/sarah-oconnor-connor-terminator-killer-rob...
HL33tibCe7 3y ago
See also the “Glasgow Effect”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect#:~:text=The%20phenomenon%20is%20defined%20as,for%20the%20disparity%20found%20in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect#:~:text=The%2...
HPsquared 3y ago
Seaside towns would seem good places for the evening or weekend relaxation/unwind. Spain etc. is too far to go several times a month, but the seaside towns could be suitable. Need the right facilities and transport links.
LorenPechtel 3y ago
Even without poverty in the picture you still have the problem of the medical system failing pretty badly with the complex cases. Everything is geared towards short appointments, that simply doesn't give the doc enough time to see a complex picture. Unless you can afford to go outside the system to docs who actually have the time you're not likely to get good answers.
- Earw0rm 3y ago
  Short appointments on the front end, specialisation on the back end. Both of them doing a remarkably good job in the circumstances, but the front end doctor's job is to figure out which specialist you need or send you home with basic painkillers or antibiotics. And the specialists deal with their area, as such perhaps more concerned with the body part or system rather than the patient and their circumstances. Not a good fit for complex cases or those whose root cause falls outside the scope of strictly medical.
  - LorenPechtel 3y ago
    And not a good fit for problems caused by the interaction of issues.
karaterobot 3y ago
More of this coming, and much more broadly. And it'll have consequences outside just economics and public health. Demagogues, riots, drawbridges being pulled up around the world. People need a reason to live, you can't just take that away from them and expect that everything will be fine.
toastercat 3y ago
> Blackpool exports healthy skilled people and imports the unskilled, the unemployed and the unwell. As people overlooked by the modern economy wash up in a place that has also been left behind, the result is a quietly unfolding health crisis. I used to date someone from a small city in Northeast United States, and when I visited and met her friends and extended social network, this was the impression I got. The ambitious and privileged ones aspired to leave and never look back, while others remained to make the best of their city while taking care of aging loved ones. Half of the people I met had some awful family story (alcoholic and/or abusive parents, drug-addicted siblings, father in prison, etc.) Job prospects were dire. Monuments to that were abandoned and sometimes burned down factories that lined some of the streets in parts of the city. It's all very sad.
prepend 3y ago
> But they [doctors] believe the causes are a tangled mix of economic, social and emotional problems that they — with 10- to 15-minute slots per patient — feel powerless to fix. Would more time by doctors solve this problem? I expect not. People suffering from SLS need case workers, and training, and mental health workers, and something. But they probably don’t need doctors performing this task. It’s a hard problem to solve. There’s an expression “they need Jesus” that I think fits, but not in a religious sense. People need help, but it’s a wicked problem because they really need a social support network. I’m not sure what the secular version of church is, but I think people need it to break out of a downward spiral by not having friends and family to help make good decisions and support when needed.
ThrowawayP 3y ago
There is an earlier claim to coining of Shit(ty) Life Syndrome not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry, a ha-ha-only-serious parody diagnosis in a medical humor collection named "Placebo Journal": https://authenticmedicine.com/2019/08/did-i-discover-the-concept-of-social-determinants-of-health/ https://authenticmedicine.com/2019/08/did-i-discover-the-con... Skip down to the "Diagnosis: SLS (classical type)" section for the meat of the parody if you don't want to go through the miscellanea that goes with a clinical visit report, although those bits are interesting in their own way.
xnxjsjagzuxk 3y ago
The end of this article really rings true for me. A while ago I was dealing with a lot of shit in my life and I wasn't coping well, so I engaged the mental healthcare system. I tried telehealth therapy and was told 'your needs are beyond what telehealth can handle, good luck'. The number of times I've been told 'good luck' by a mental healthcare provider as they're dismissing me makes me feel sick. Psychiatrists were no better, they only want to talk about medication. There's no time for discussion of anything else. Group therapy was a joke, no matter how much I failed at being a responsible adult I was told that I'm doing my best. Well, if doing my best means not being able to hold a job or support myself, then it's not good enough. In the animal world, individuals that are too depressed to support (feed) themselves die. Things aren't much different for a person living in the USA. I engaged the mental healthcare system because I started failing at life and wanted help succeeding again, but instead of making me a person able to succeed I was told to reframe my failures as successes. Maybe that works if you have wealthy family to fall back on, but for the rest of us being able to earn a living doing productive work is vital to wellbeing. Telling a poor person that it's ok not to work because of their mental condition just traps them in a shitty life forever and they will never be able to be happy regardless of how many prozac they take. The fix is as simple as looking at Maslow's pyramid. Make it so no one is worried about having a warm bed or enough to eat. Give opportunities for meaningful work that earns money and contributes positively to the world. Make it easy to become part of a social hierarchy and positively interact with other people. But all that isn't feasible, so let's give people pills to fix 'shit life syndrome' while leaving them with a shit life and no hope of improving it.

Shit life syndrome

397 points by tjpnz 3y ago

walthamstow 3y ago

Sarah Connor really is a fantastic columnist for the FT

TuringNYC 3y ago
And infamous for the tweet: https://twitter.com/sarahoconnor_/status/616282747200479232?lang=en https://twitter.com/sarahoconnor_/status/616282747200479232?...
- roxil 3y ago
  What's the context here?
  - TuringNYC 3y ago
    >> What's the context here? Sarah O'Connor is an FT reporter Sarah O'Connor writes an article about a human dying from a factory robot In the Terminator movies, Sarah Connor leads the resistance and her son is the leader of the future resistance. The machines try to kill her and her child. The whole movie is about robots killing humans and Sarah's efforts to save humanity from robots. Sarah O'Connor the FT reporter appears too young to have watched the movies and/or remember the movies (1984, 1992) gets deluge of Twitter engagement given her article and her name. For whomever hasnt seem the original two Terminator movies, the are absolutely huge culture moments for robotics and AI. Part II is also a cautionary tale about scientists who dont think about the effects of their work.

tetris11 3y ago

I hope there comes a day when the rich and influential look for the next money-making venture in which to invest in, see only a sea of machine-generated uncertainty on the stock market, and decide "actually, the most profitable thing I can do to protect my wealth is to invest it in the public" One day maybe.

lookboil 3y ago
Maybe they'll begin investing without expecting fiscal returns, instead focusing on spiritual returns For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36 I won't hold my breath, but it's a nice thought.
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Karellen 3y ago
Ugh. I hope there comes a day when using the money hoarded by the rich and influential to invest in the public, does not depend on the rich and influential choosing to do so out of a desire for maximal profits, or even benevolence. One day maybe.
- siwatanejo 3y ago
  > One day maybe TBH, I doubt it. Don't get me wrong, I sympathize with your values. Heck, I'm even called 'woke' by most people around me. Yet I understand that in this day in age, thanks to cryptocurrency, money is and will be a private matter. No government will be able to confiscate your wealth, at least to the extent that your wealth doesn't depend on assets related with the government (e.g. real estate is related given that you need to pay taxes to maintain it).
  - s5300 3y ago
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    - siwatanejo 3y ago
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      - pjerem 3y ago
        No. But I’m pretty sure that if you don’t pay your taxes although you may buy the law, you will face jail sentence. You can refuse to go in jail but that’s when you get the gun.

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padolsey 3y ago

This is quite darkly hilarious tbh. And consistent with my experience of Blackpool. I once went there on couple-week-long driving course when I was a teenager, hoping but eventually failing to get my license. I was put up in someone's house that was run as a sort of unlicensed b&b. The entire place, the curtains, the linen, the pillow,.. all smelled of old nicotine and damp. On my first evening I went out by myself to a fish-and-chip shop, feeling like a silly city boy in a greasy gritty concrete town. Stuck out like a sore thumb. I remember walking, late evening, lonely, on a bridge over the railtrack. The entire place felt deserted, metallic and concrete. I went back to my room and ate the oily chips on my bed. After the first day with an old crusty – but perfectly lovely driving instructor – and a rather large heavy-haulage driver who was renewing a license, we went out for some drinks. Beers. Lots of beer. And they took me to a gay club – of which there are oddly many in Blackpool – because they thought it'd be a laugh. It was actually a massive spectacle for me. It was the first time I saw older men kissing, right there, by the entrance on a old tawdry sofa. I was still on a journey of coming out, so it felt oddly enlightening or validating or something. It was an old-england gay club – the type you hear about in the era of stonewall. The entire town was like a time capsule to a poorer apocalyptic britain. Betting shops, cheap nail salons, boarded up derelict buildings everywhere! Even the beach was deserted. It reflected the same depressing crumbling economy of coastal towns all over the UK. It felt like a shadow of its former self, but somehow, there was a old english magic to it that I can still feel. My nostalgia is probably getting the better of me, but I remember it fondly. So yeh I think I understand this SLS thing. In places like Blackpool – forgotten remnants - you can feel the depression in the paving stones – the grey withering vitality – swallowing you whole.

louthy 3y ago
Your description of Blackpool is both eloquent and absolutely spot on! I suggested to my friend that we go there for his stag do; and even for the debauchery of a stag do it felt a bit too grim! To the point that I felt guilty for suggesting it.
hkt 3y ago
Beautifully put, an answer approaching literature. I have the same feelings about Blackpool. Coastal towns really are monuments to another time. The houses are beautiful, too - a two bedroom flat in one of the old guesthouses on the sea front with bay windows is a steal in most towns, if you can cope with the town itself. Scarborough is another one. It was clearly so much more full of life than it is now, but its status as an elder resort is part of its charm. The poverty, so much not.

_8j50 3y ago

This is so weird. Is it another way of saying "being poor is expensive"? Or poor people get sick more? If so then this some next level captain obvious stuff. Or do the authors have such a nice societal experience that this seems very peculiar to them? I mean, this is one if the top reasons people want money right? At least they have NHS in the UK, in most of the world and most of human history people either adapt or die. The only problem I have with this is the name, it isn't shit life, it is poverty. It's not like rich people with alcoholism or depression maker the cut for this supposed syndrome. Not calling it poverty allows policy to be centered around anything but giving people cash. Give the addicts, the hobos and and the mentally unstable cash and good information/guidance on their options.

tjpnz 3y ago
Sometimes the only way to get people to notice a problem is to reframe it using new language. Yes, it's poverty all the way down, but most should be able to make that link without much help.
- _8j50 3y ago
  Reframing it abstracts away the root cause and shifts the focus to symptoms and intermediary causes rather than the root cause: money! The people that can make a difference (policy makers) will look at this and try to find a "complex multi-faceted soution" or whatever that shoves the problem under the rug and polishes it up and fixed some symptoms here and there. This actually made me rethink of socialized health care and other social programs in europe because in tech at least the salaries are horrible there, it seems the line of thinking is that the government should take more money from everyone and support social programs to solve all kinds of issues, which until now I thought was a good idea but it seems it isn't just more taxes, the salaries there and job opportunities are not good. Even on HN you hear about companies in tech struggling because of the investor mindset there. My new opinion is that while I support socialized programs to care for those who can't care for themselves, it does not absolve policy makers' responsibility to make that support in form of better income and opportunities as much as possible and even direct cash and tax credits, not more programs and bureaucracies but more jobs and better paying jobs and more rewarding jobs with job security.

the-dude 3y ago

In The Netherlands there were no foodbanks before the year 2000. edit: looked it up, it is 2002 actually.

Obscurity4340 3y ago
To what extent are they necessary if one is already receiving welfare services and resources?
- dazc 3y ago
  They are mostly not. Unlike most people who comment on such issues I actually know of two people who use food banks on a regular basis. One spends £20 a day on tobacco, the other drinks himself into intensive care whenever he has the opportunity. I have a friend who lives in the same building (it's like an old folk's home but with independent apartments and on-site care). The 'managers' of this council funded facility have the authority to refer anyone to a food bank and they have told my friend several times that he only has to ask. There are 60 residents in this one building and only know 6 of them to speak to, so go figure.
  - felurx 3y ago
    First of all, that's not a representative sample. It might be that that is really how it is for everyone who uses food banks, or it might be completely different. A sample of two doesn't give enough information to know. But mostly: If there are people depending on the food banks to get food because of their addictions, isn't that a sign that (at least for these people), food banks very much are neccessary? Unless one assumes that people would change their spending behaviour under enough pressure, but from what little I personally know, that would very much just be an assumption.
    - dazc 3y ago
      Yes, you're right, if someone's addictions are so severe that they would otherwise not eat. I don't know any such people but I don't doubt they exist. I think you know I was making a valid point initially though. I was giving an example of how readily available these schemes are to people who don't really need them. There is a perception that people have to qualify for such help when, in reality, they just need to know the system. You may say there is always going to be minor abuse of such schemes and I will just say that I think otherwise.

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paganel 3y ago

> Sarah O'Connor's 2018 article for the Financial Times "Left behind: can anyone save the towns the economy forgot?" on shit life syndrome in the English coastal town of Blackpool won the 2018 Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils Funny that the FT should complain about some of the evil effects of capitalism, too bad they’re only using it for white-washing, as in: “see, we’re the good capitalists! we care!”

lordnacho 3y ago

https://www.ft.com/blackpool https://www.ft.com/blackpool Seems like it's not paywalled. FWIW Blackpool looks like a heck of a lot of seaside places in the UK. Whatever problems are described in this article are problems all the way around the coast. Visit a seaside town here and it often feels like you're back in the early 90s. There's a certain style that hasn't been updated. Arcades, chip shops, betting shops. Ok the betting shops look modern. A lot of high streets in nice towns are even starting to look like they're made entirely of charity shops and betting shops, and starbucks/costa.

wizofaus 3y ago
From an Australian perspective the idea that "seaside" towns are especially susceptible to economic decay and being left behind seems quite odd - even in parts of country without year-round beach weather, coastal localities here are usually the desirable places to live with subsequently healthier economies. Are there other countries that have experienced similar patterns of development to the UK?
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Ex industrial cities in the north perhaps?
- rwmj 3y ago
  It's a whole lot warmer in Australia. Here in Britain there are very few days when it is pleasant to sit on the beach in Blackpool, let alone go swimming in the sewage-filled sea. Cheap flights make it easy to go abroad to the warmer and nicer environment of Italy or Spain.
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    Were seaside towns in the UK in the past particularly dependent on tourism though? And has a similar phenomenon occurred in other cooler-climate countries, in Europe or elsewhere? Tasmania's climate isn't so far off the UK's, yet I'm not aware of any hollowing-out effect among coastal towns there (Hobart has roughly the population of Blackpool, and was doing just fine last time I visited).

prima-facie 3y ago

First time i heard about SLS was from this DW documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK68yyrKUOA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK68yyrKUOA which i found very good

jordanrobinson 3y ago
I'd love to know the rationale for why they geoblock the UK from watching this particular documentary.
- prima-facie 3y ago
  That's very odd. Here's a mirror: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/phqh8xnpb2gwk3qwhk47x/Poverty-in-Britain-Why-are-millions-of-Brits-so-broke-DW-Documentary-BK68yyrKUOA.webm?rlkey=7perggsqq5zowjxcweitmt8eg&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/phqh8xnpb2gwk3qwhk47x/Poverty...
- cwales95 3y ago
  Same here. The Dropbox link in the other comment was useful. Makes you wonder if there’s a conspiracy to stop those of us in the UK watching it even though we know how awful it is at times.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  They probably have bits of footage from British TV companies, who are fine licencing them to be shown abroad, but have either already sold an exclusive licence for UK broadcast or want to keep that option available to them.
- jdietrich 3y ago
  The programme almost certainly includes content from a UK broadcaster that was licensed on the basis that it would only be used outside the UK.

throaway_12345 3y ago

Hi, speaking from small-town India. Poverty is extremely harsh on people. And when I was much younger (<15), like many adults now think, I used to think that poverty is the lack of power of buying expensive things. But as I have grown up, I realized that poverty is extremely harsh. For example, relevant to the submission, is healthcare. Healthcare in India is theoretically free in government hospitals. But in most places the state of these hospitals is horrific, and getting treatment is very hard due to corruption. But the bigger issue is opportunity cost. People who live based on daily earnings, cannot afford to go to hospitals abandoning their work as they cannot ensure next day's food. So, unless it happens to be someone young, people don't seek treatment at all. And visiting a proper doctor and buying meds take away ~10 days' income. Really unaffordable for poor people. So, even people in their forties and fifties decide to wait it out, and easily curable ailments get chronic and beyond cure. Women fare worse than men. Real victims are old people, and nobody bothers to spend money and weeks of their time to get them to treatment. They wither, and die without treatment. I have seen at least a dozen people die like this. I think, the cause of SLS is opportunity cost. People often die, and more often suffer for decades from easily curable diseases because they cannot really afford either the time or money to get treatment. I also know at least a dozen people who have something chronic, but get no treatment at all because they cannot afford it.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Thanks for the note on life around you. I think something you touch on here is physical health. But my reading of the Wikipedia article is SLS profoundly about mental well being and the toll of neglect, abuse, and crushing poverty has on overall health and quantity of life due to the lack of well being. Would you mind expanding your story of life in your area on that dimension? How does this harshness play out for the people as people, less about their ability to get physical health care, but how does the harshness degrade their lives as humans?
- svnt 3y ago
  Personally I think that aspect is more locked in to the aging of the post-World power great expectations of “up and to the right.” If people have never had decent health care, and their classmates from school haven’t either, then how are they meant to move into something as rarefied as self-assessed mental health? That is something that people with too much time and not enough existential threat get up to.

ricardo81 3y ago

The UK has typically had the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. A previous Prime Minister had been quoted 'A pound spent in Croydon is far more of value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde', Croydon being in London and Strathclyde being an administrative area in West Scotland that ceased to exist in 1975. The quote was from 2012. WFH has allowed me to continue working from rural Scotland, to be honest I thought COVID would radically transform society's thinking and our requirement to be in high GDP areas for certain lines of work. Doesn't seem to have had quite the impact it was supposed to.

louthy 3y ago
Although Croydon is a London borough, it's quite far outside of central London, to the point that it doesn't really feel part of London. It's also quite a deprived area. So that quote is weird on a number of levels!
- comprev 3y ago
  Perhaps the intended message was "Both Croydon and Strathclyde are shit places, but Croydon is a little less shit. By spending that pound in Croydon we can hopefully avoid it becoming Strathclyde"
- ricardo81 3y ago
  I think his general idea was that money invested in London was of greater economic benefit to the whole country than investing the same amount elsewhere.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  The average "Index of Multiple Deprivation" [1] for Croydon is about 14,000, where every area (of some equal population size) is ranked from 1 to 32,884. Very roughly average for England. Scotland isn't included, so I can't compare Strathclyde, but Blackpool's average is 5,900 — and includes 8 of the 10 most deprived places in the country. Only one bit of London (part of Haringey) makes the top 1000. Only 106 bits of London (out of 4685) make the top 10%. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-...

dougmwne 3y ago

I think that poverty really is a state of mind, and so SLS, as a thing separate from mental health, inadequate health care or material deprivation makes a lot of sense to me. Once you start seeing life as shit, something where no good change is possible and no effort is rewarded, you really are stuck in the shit reality. On the other hand, it’s possible to be materially very poor, but totally happy. To see life as full of abundance, good purpose and to find joy in it.

dwb 3y ago
This is the sort of rhetoric that harms poor people. Being poor can cause states of mind, but is not a state of mind in itself — it is clearly and simply an economic position. The article is not talking about people thinking of themselves as simply poor and therefore unhappy or unhealthy, but a much more complex relationship.
- fellowmartian 3y ago
  On individual scale you’re right, but on the collective level I think both you and GP are right, it’s a feedback loop. Places become poor for different reasons: shifting economic realities, fall of the previous civilization (eg USSR, which is my experience), etc. Places remain poor when people feel trapped inside vs consciously deciding to call the place home.
  - dwb 3y ago
    I sort of acknowledged that when I said it was a complex relationship. I'm sure there are feedback loops set up where experiencing poverty makes you more likely to stay poor, and so on. But to say poverty is simply a state of mind seems drastically and dangerously wrong to me.
wiseowise 3y ago
> To see life as full of abundance, good purpose and to find joy in it. Given that most (if not all) enjoyable things in life involve some kind of a fee (however small), that’s hard to do.

yosito 3y ago

I'd say my hometown in middle America is significantly affected by Shit Life Syndrome. Thanks to my career in tech I broke out of that and moved away, but I've definitely had my seasons back at home where I get sucked into the Shit Life Syndrome around me. I had some post-Covid health issues and spent a month back in my hometown to recover. But after a month I couldn't stand to be around so many struggling people while I was struggling myself. So I went back to my cosmopolitan life and surrounded myself with people who are doing well. I still have my health issues, but surrounding myself with people who are doing well has been much more tolerable for me than sitting stuck in Shit Life Syndrome in my hometown. I don't know what the solution is for places that have SLS, but for individual people, the best advice I can give is, to the best of your ability, surround yourself with people who are doing well.

Liquix 3y ago
Crabs in a bucket :( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
ip26 3y ago
I don't know what the solution is for places that have SLS I don’t have a real solution either, but it seems like it would either need to involve a managed wind-down of towns in gradual, permanent decline, or somehow propping them up in perpetuity. Some towns may just not make sense anymore. But for one reason or another, whether the problem is disappearing economic opportunity or changing climate, there’s no way to cleanly move on. There’s some discussion of this concept now under the moniker “managed retreat”, but we still need to figure out how to avoid stranding the most vulnerable.

tycho-newman 3y ago

In the US, we call this phenomenon "the social determinants of health."

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, eh?

mensetmanusman 3y ago

I’ve always wondered if a brute force approach to this is to money bomb these areas and let people get large amounts of funds to leave the area and go somewhere where they are slightly more likely to have positive interactions.

tete 3y ago
Or UBI to make people have some way to actually think about what they wanna do. I see the pattern that people are too busy with their lives to realistically start thinking about how to come out of it. But I don't think that will ever happen, because it lowers power of other people. If you have someone that is too busy with the life (job, maybe children, etc.) you get cheap labor that and work force that is just above slavery. It would also make stuff like involuntary (if there is a voluntary one) prostitution, cheap apartment cleaning, etc. But then the power that people have over other people would be severely cut, so short of a revolution giving people the power to get out of a shit life isn't likely gonna happen. People having the means to have meaningful lives or simply things they want will reduce that power. Of course it won't remove workforce or reduce productivity. That's been proven in many studies. The opposite is true. But it also means that if you right now have some kind of workforce that ruins their physical and/or mental health for you they'll at the very least ask for adequate compensation. The reason is that people do strive for more. So even if they have enough to come by they will want that car, that vacation, that travel, that iPhone, etc. So they'll work. But they are less likely to damage themselves in the process, if they have air to breath, to think about stuff, or bluntly to have options.
saulpw 3y ago
I'm reading Small Is Beautiful[0] (1972) and they make the point that the modern economy incentivizes interlocking problems of smart, healthy people leaving ~rural areas to move to urban areas, and subsequent disinvestment in rural, which creates a dual economy. The solution cannot be bringing the modern economy to non-urban areas, which would be like building a skyscraper in a farmtown. Your solution would just drain the area of any remaining talent. The remaining people would be the elderly, disabled, and stubborn--and SLS would be even worse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago

haha, poor Blackpool. Really though, anything north or east of and including Bristol is pretty depressing.

_dain_ 3y ago

This is the original article that won the award: https://www.ft.com/blackpool https://www.ft.com/blackpool There's an interesting dog-that-didn't-bark: the word "meth" does not appear. The drug is still not common in the UK[1]. Blackpool has precisely the demographic makeup where, if it were in America, it would be flooded with meth dealers and addicts, and become magnitudes worse than it already is. I dread the day that drug finally makes landfall here. It will sweep through our urban underclass like the Black Death. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7jdd8/uk-british-dont-use-meth https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7jdd8/uk-british-dont-use-m...

Obscurity4340 3y ago
Whats the cocaine/crack situation, also other stimulants like Ritalin etc?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Earw0rm 3y ago
Nor fentanyl. Probably because while heroin is a thing, it tends to stay in its rather particular niche. I'm not a believer in gateway drugs generally, but the prescription opioid hell that exists in the US never really took off here. A problem yes, but not a society-wrecking scale. Mostly because doctors are much less free-and-easy with prescribing the stuff, and can't easily be bribed by drugco's to do so as they were in the US.

29athrowaway 3y ago

Many people there have to choose between food and heating. And use pre-paid power meters.

bandyaboot 3y ago

Blackpool. How is it that these towns are so perfectly named?

virtuous_sloth 3y ago

Capitalism-induced shit-life syndrome.

SoftTalker 3y ago
Compared to what? Being a peasant under communism?
- felurx 3y ago
  Just because another system would fail these people too doesn't mean that our current system in how it works isn't failing these people. And just because big bad communism is another shit extreme, that doesn't mean that there are no other economic systems, or if you prefer, potentially variants of our current economic system, that would be better. I won't pretend to know the solution, but either capitalism in general or the capitalism we currently have, with for example its misaligned incentives, exploitation and death traps people live in, sure seems to be a huge part of the problem.

User23 3y ago

This sounds oddly similar to the systemic dysfunction seen on reservations in the USA.

helveticar 3y ago

Brit Boomer. I grew up in a single parent family near the bottom of the heap in England. What kept us going and saved me from early death or a life of crime or drug dependency was the welfare state. The NHS, free school meals and host of other measures meant that there was a safety net in place, even so much was done by charities like the NSPCC. Later there were grants, with tuition fees paid, to go to higher education. For me, seeing how the other 50% or so lived was truly eye opening. Post Thatcher, the safety nets have been allowed to fall into disrepair if not discarded entirely. Modern Britain is not a place to grow up poor in.

dazc 3y ago
I disagree, if you are going to be poor then there are far worse places. I had a similar upbringing btw, single mother with 3 siblings.
- mafuy 3y ago
  Doubtlessly there are worse places now and then. But the parent writer found that the situation here became worse than it was, and that's sad and reason for a critical view.

coldtea 3y ago

The journalist Sarah O'Connor, linked to in the Wikipedia article for her "Left behind: can anyone save the towns the economy forgot?" article in the Financial Times, is also known for this: https://abc11.com/sarah-oconnor-connor-terminator-killer-robots/826034/ https://abc11.com/sarah-oconnor-connor-terminator-killer-rob...

HL33tibCe7 3y ago

See also the “Glasgow Effect”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect#:~:text=The%20phenomenon%20is%20defined%20as,for%20the%20disparity%20found%20in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect#:~:text=The%2...

HPsquared 3y ago

Seaside towns would seem good places for the evening or weekend relaxation/unwind. Spain etc. is too far to go several times a month, but the seaside towns could be suitable. Need the right facilities and transport links.

LorenPechtel 3y ago

Even without poverty in the picture you still have the problem of the medical system failing pretty badly with the complex cases. Everything is geared towards short appointments, that simply doesn't give the doc enough time to see a complex picture. Unless you can afford to go outside the system to docs who actually have the time you're not likely to get good answers.

Earw0rm 3y ago
Short appointments on the front end, specialisation on the back end. Both of them doing a remarkably good job in the circumstances, but the front end doctor's job is to figure out which specialist you need or send you home with basic painkillers or antibiotics. And the specialists deal with their area, as such perhaps more concerned with the body part or system rather than the patient and their circumstances. Not a good fit for complex cases or those whose root cause falls outside the scope of strictly medical.
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  And not a good fit for problems caused by the interaction of issues.

karaterobot 3y ago

More of this coming, and much more broadly. And it'll have consequences outside just economics and public health. Demagogues, riots, drawbridges being pulled up around the world. People need a reason to live, you can't just take that away from them and expect that everything will be fine.

toastercat 3y ago

> Blackpool exports healthy skilled people and imports the unskilled, the unemployed and the unwell. As people overlooked by the modern economy wash up in a place that has also been left behind, the result is a quietly unfolding health crisis. I used to date someone from a small city in Northeast United States, and when I visited and met her friends and extended social network, this was the impression I got. The ambitious and privileged ones aspired to leave and never look back, while others remained to make the best of their city while taking care of aging loved ones. Half of the people I met had some awful family story (alcoholic and/or abusive parents, drug-addicted siblings, father in prison, etc.) Job prospects were dire. Monuments to that were abandoned and sometimes burned down factories that lined some of the streets in parts of the city. It's all very sad.

prepend 3y ago

> But they [doctors] believe the causes are a tangled mix of economic, social and emotional problems that they — with 10- to 15-minute slots per patient — feel powerless to fix. Would more time by doctors solve this problem? I expect not. People suffering from SLS need case workers, and training, and mental health workers, and something. But they probably don’t need doctors performing this task. It’s a hard problem to solve. There’s an expression “they need Jesus” that I think fits, but not in a religious sense. People need help, but it’s a wicked problem because they really need a social support network. I’m not sure what the secular version of church is, but I think people need it to break out of a downward spiral by not having friends and family to help make good decisions and support when needed.

ThrowawayP 3y ago

There is an earlier claim to coining of Shit(ty) Life Syndrome not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry, a ha-ha-only-serious parody diagnosis in a medical humor collection named "Placebo Journal": https://authenticmedicine.com/2019/08/did-i-discover-the-concept-of-social-determinants-of-health/ https://authenticmedicine.com/2019/08/did-i-discover-the-con... Skip down to the "Diagnosis: SLS (classical type)" section for the meat of the parody if you don't want to go through the miscellanea that goes with a clinical visit report, although those bits are interesting in their own way.

xnxjsjagzuxk 3y ago

The end of this article really rings true for me. A while ago I was dealing with a lot of shit in my life and I wasn't coping well, so I engaged the mental healthcare system. I tried telehealth therapy and was told 'your needs are beyond what telehealth can handle, good luck'. The number of times I've been told 'good luck' by a mental healthcare provider as they're dismissing me makes me feel sick. Psychiatrists were no better, they only want to talk about medication. There's no time for discussion of anything else. Group therapy was a joke, no matter how much I failed at being a responsible adult I was told that I'm doing my best. Well, if doing my best means not being able to hold a job or support myself, then it's not good enough. In the animal world, individuals that are too depressed to support (feed) themselves die. Things aren't much different for a person living in the USA. I engaged the mental healthcare system because I started failing at life and wanted help succeeding again, but instead of making me a person able to succeed I was told to reframe my failures as successes. Maybe that works if you have wealthy family to fall back on, but for the rest of us being able to earn a living doing productive work is vital to wellbeing. Telling a poor person that it's ok not to work because of their mental condition just traps them in a shitty life forever and they will never be able to be happy regardless of how many prozac they take. The fix is as simple as looking at Maslow's pyramid. Make it so no one is worried about having a warm bed or enough to eat. Give opportunities for meaningful work that earns money and contributes positively to the world. Make it easy to become part of a social hierarchy and positively interact with other people. But all that isn't feasible, so let's give people pills to fix 'shit life syndrome' while leaving them with a shit life and no hope of improving it.