4 ms·

I always wonder when an "epidemic" gets reported if things really have changed or if we just recognize it better. When I grew up, we had a lot of kids (includin

I always wonder when an "epidemic" gets reported if things really have changed or if we just recognize it better. When I grew up, we had a lot of kids (including myself) with problems like depression or not fitting in in other ways. Back then they were just labeled as "slow", "stupid" or "difficult". Nobody thought about mental illness or ways for addressing these issues.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
astrea 3y ago
Actually glad you said that. One of my recent shower thoughts that I was sure no one would understand. I distinctly remember growing up, people being "slow" or "different" or "<something now consider offensive>". Gender identity and mental health issues have been around forever, they're just now actually getting brought to the forefront.
SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
Also it used to be the case that beating your own kids was normal. Of course now we got studies about how that screws kids up, but it was ubiquitous in my generation. And now that we can identify that children can be harmed from physical violence, we actually have ways to diagnose that sort of thing in teenagers. I wonder what our baseline trauma is supposed to be!
Spivak 3y ago
And it's such a good thing that we're finally paying attention to this stuff and treating it (insert graph of left-handedness over time). But then everyone is out here trying to figure out what must be wrong with the world today when Boomers and Gen X are traumatized as hell and full of undiagnosed mental illness. But they grew up in a culture where unless it was life-debilitating or presented in exactly the stereotypical manner it was ignored and pushed down.
- brnaftr361 3y ago
  Conversely, were over-diagnosing and now everyone is ill. Which necessarily follows because the closer you look the fewer people are "normal". In fact I'd go so far as to posit that everyone is aberrant, to nobody's surprise. And of course this is all derivated from a basis of largely qualitative soft-science which had ought be treated as an art than it is a science, however there are pressures which force both practitioners and researchers to justify it as a science. I'm sure there's some "law of self-awareness" as well. The closest analogy I have is the January Effect which describes an even in the market, a pattern of sell-off in the later year to mark a loss, and subsequent repurchase in January. Upon this pattern being disclosed, the market adapted strategies to exploit it which ultimately resulted in a complete silencing of the effect. In a sense more applicable to this, being diagnosed with some mental illness can also be leveraged to gain favor, I mean I can get a prescription for pharmaceutical grade amphetamines for fidgeting for instance; or excuse my bad behavior with some other diagnosis. My position is that it's all very unclear. I'm lazy and don't care to dig it up but there was a study from the UK that observed the measurable effects from school based, non-individual interventions and it found their effects to be significantly detrimental for some students - to the extent that they negated the aggregate benefits - which I think supports this position because treatment can exacerbate things. And that's without mentioning pharmacological interventions which are... Interesting.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Okay so to summarize, casual dismissal of an entire field of medicine, insinuation that patients are faking mental illness to "look cool," justify their selfish behaviors, or get access to drugs, and that interventions for severe symptoms of mental illness either don't work or make things worse. It really does feel like I was bred in a lab to exist as the counterexample for all this. I was diagnosed with ADHD in middle school and my parents thought exactly as you did and refused treatment. For a long time I held this as a point of pride and thought of my parents as saving me from those cruel teachers that just wanted to keep me down, any why would I question them? I have no other frame of reference and was marked "different" by my teachers and other kids so all of my struggles were just framed in terms of that. And so it went with my anxiety and depression, I didn't have an illness, I was a worrier that just needed to calm down. I didn't have depression I was lazy, angsty, and logical -- that's why I didn't get out of bed all day, thought everything sucked and existence was pain, and so numb I could give Spock a run for his money. Fast forward to college where I was getting my annual checkup and flu shot and I got my first ever mental health questionnaire. I answered honestly because at the time I genuinely thought that my experience wasn't unusual -- "Doesn't everyone think about killing themselves all the time?" I got referred to a therapist and eventually a psychiatrist for confirmation (because teaching hospital) who both didn't even take an hour to be clock me with all three. I got put on an antidepressant, an anti-anxiety, and a stimulant over the course of about a year and a half and I felt something and then cried for the first time since sixth grade, realized what not having anxiety feels like, and what life is like when you're not constantly in pain from under-stimulation. I just can't bring myself to think it's all quack science when I was so thoroughly dressed down by these two guys so fast and who took a little less than two years to get them all sorted. It was surreal when the psychiatrist just described my whole life experience without even missing a beat. Life changing undersells it so much and it came out of literally nowhere for me.
anon291 3y ago
Not fitting in is not a mental illness. And this attitude is behind the prevalence of many mental illnesses today. We've gone from a society that embraced difference to one that claims to embrace difference while mandating sameness. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc, are all toxic for this reason.
- fennecs 3y ago
  When did society previously embrace difference?
  - anon291 3y ago
    Maybe embrace is the wrong word. Rather, it was hard for your left hand to know what your right was doing so to speak. So you could easily separate parts of your life. Maybe you were totally normal but had some weird hobby that you engaged in with a group of people every third Saturday. You could successfully construct alternate personae for different groups. Nowadays, your entire life has to be bared out for everyone, and this means that everyone wants to do the same things.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  "Not fitting in is not a mental illness. " It causes mental illness like depression and also stunts social development.
levocardia 3y ago
>I always wonder when an "epidemic" gets reported if things really have changed or if we just recognize it better. Suicide and emergency room visits for suicide attempts among teenagers are also up, and also on exactly the same post-2010ish timeline.
jowea 3y ago
Youth suicide rates are going up, I think that's quite objectively measurable. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf Not proof that social media is behind it of course.
- abirch 3y ago
  There seems to be a lot of pressure on the youth today. Growing up I had a lot of unscheduled time but now kids can't play multiple sports due to games, practices, and expectations.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Drastically reduced economic opportunities, housing affordability, and political disenfranchisement seem more proximate causes.
  - bitzun 3y ago
    I think both you and sibling abirch are right in different contexts and I love the contrast in what issues you identify.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  The same agency publishes this other chart that adds quite a bit of context IMHO. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm
  - j-bos 3y ago
    For visibility, youth suicides are up compared to a low period in the 2000s preceded by higher rates than today in the 90s
    - rqtwteye 3y ago
      It's also interesting how much higher the male suicide rate is.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

astrea 3y ago

Actually glad you said that. One of my recent shower thoughts that I was sure no one would understand. I distinctly remember growing up, people being "slow" or "different" or "<something now consider offensive>". Gender identity and mental health issues have been around forever, they're just now actually getting brought to the forefront.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago

Also it used to be the case that beating your own kids was normal. Of course now we got studies about how that screws kids up, but it was ubiquitous in my generation. And now that we can identify that children can be harmed from physical violence, we actually have ways to diagnose that sort of thing in teenagers. I wonder what our baseline trauma is supposed to be!

Spivak 3y ago

And it's such a good thing that we're finally paying attention to this stuff and treating it (insert graph of left-handedness over time). But then everyone is out here trying to figure out what must be wrong with the world today when Boomers and Gen X are traumatized as hell and full of undiagnosed mental illness. But they grew up in a culture where unless it was life-debilitating or presented in exactly the stereotypical manner it was ignored and pushed down.

brnaftr361 3y ago
Conversely, were over-diagnosing and now everyone is ill. Which necessarily follows because the closer you look the fewer people are "normal". In fact I'd go so far as to posit that everyone is aberrant, to nobody's surprise. And of course this is all derivated from a basis of largely qualitative soft-science which had ought be treated as an art than it is a science, however there are pressures which force both practitioners and researchers to justify it as a science. I'm sure there's some "law of self-awareness" as well. The closest analogy I have is the January Effect which describes an even in the market, a pattern of sell-off in the later year to mark a loss, and subsequent repurchase in January. Upon this pattern being disclosed, the market adapted strategies to exploit it which ultimately resulted in a complete silencing of the effect. In a sense more applicable to this, being diagnosed with some mental illness can also be leveraged to gain favor, I mean I can get a prescription for pharmaceutical grade amphetamines for fidgeting for instance; or excuse my bad behavior with some other diagnosis. My position is that it's all very unclear. I'm lazy and don't care to dig it up but there was a study from the UK that observed the measurable effects from school based, non-individual interventions and it found their effects to be significantly detrimental for some students - to the extent that they negated the aggregate benefits - which I think supports this position because treatment can exacerbate things. And that's without mentioning pharmacological interventions which are... Interesting.
- Spivak 3y ago
  Okay so to summarize, casual dismissal of an entire field of medicine, insinuation that patients are faking mental illness to "look cool," justify their selfish behaviors, or get access to drugs, and that interventions for severe symptoms of mental illness either don't work or make things worse. It really does feel like I was bred in a lab to exist as the counterexample for all this. I was diagnosed with ADHD in middle school and my parents thought exactly as you did and refused treatment. For a long time I held this as a point of pride and thought of my parents as saving me from those cruel teachers that just wanted to keep me down, any why would I question them? I have no other frame of reference and was marked "different" by my teachers and other kids so all of my struggles were just framed in terms of that. And so it went with my anxiety and depression, I didn't have an illness, I was a worrier that just needed to calm down. I didn't have depression I was lazy, angsty, and logical -- that's why I didn't get out of bed all day, thought everything sucked and existence was pain, and so numb I could give Spock a run for his money. Fast forward to college where I was getting my annual checkup and flu shot and I got my first ever mental health questionnaire. I answered honestly because at the time I genuinely thought that my experience wasn't unusual -- "Doesn't everyone think about killing themselves all the time?" I got referred to a therapist and eventually a psychiatrist for confirmation (because teaching hospital) who both didn't even take an hour to be clock me with all three. I got put on an antidepressant, an anti-anxiety, and a stimulant over the course of about a year and a half and I felt something and then cried for the first time since sixth grade, realized what not having anxiety feels like, and what life is like when you're not constantly in pain from under-stimulation. I just can't bring myself to think it's all quack science when I was so thoroughly dressed down by these two guys so fast and who took a little less than two years to get them all sorted. It was surreal when the psychiatrist just described my whole life experience without even missing a beat. Life changing undersells it so much and it came out of literally nowhere for me.

anon291 3y ago

Not fitting in is not a mental illness. And this attitude is behind the prevalence of many mental illnesses today. We've gone from a society that embraced difference to one that claims to embrace difference while mandating sameness. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc, are all toxic for this reason.

fennecs 3y ago
When did society previously embrace difference?
- anon291 3y ago
  Maybe embrace is the wrong word. Rather, it was hard for your left hand to know what your right was doing so to speak. So you could easily separate parts of your life. Maybe you were totally normal but had some weird hobby that you engaged in with a group of people every third Saturday. You could successfully construct alternate personae for different groups. Nowadays, your entire life has to be bared out for everyone, and this means that everyone wants to do the same things.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rqtwteye 3y ago
"Not fitting in is not a mental illness. " It causes mental illness like depression and also stunts social development.

levocardia 3y ago

>I always wonder when an "epidemic" gets reported if things really have changed or if we just recognize it better. Suicide and emergency room visits for suicide attempts among teenagers are also up, and also on exactly the same post-2010ish timeline.

jowea 3y ago

Youth suicide rates are going up, I think that's quite objectively measurable. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf Not proof that social media is behind it of course.

abirch 3y ago
There seems to be a lot of pressure on the youth today. Growing up I had a lot of unscheduled time but now kids can't play multiple sports due to games, practices, and expectations.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
Drastically reduced economic opportunities, housing affordability, and political disenfranchisement seem more proximate causes.
- bitzun 3y ago
  I think both you and sibling abirch are right in different contexts and I love the contrast in what issues you identify.
jeffbee 3y ago
The same agency publishes this other chart that adds quite a bit of context IMHO. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm
- j-bos 3y ago
  For visibility, youth suicides are up compared to a low period in the 2000s preceded by higher rates than today in the 90s
  - rqtwteye 3y ago
    It's also interesting how much higher the male suicide rate is.