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Transmission of Mental Disorders in Adolescent Peer Networks

77 points by Luc 2y ago

kayodelycaon 2y ago
It’s interesting that “schizophrenia spectrum disorders” were the first to be correlated. That makes me suspect they aren’t measuring transmission at all. Given they account for the general population around the schools, it may be the classroom environment or greater awareness causing the differences. The latter was mentioned as a factor they couldn’t measure.
- 77pt77 2y ago
  Reminder that there is no quantitative test for schizophrenia despite the field overtly stating to be searching for one for over a century. Not even close.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > greater awareness causing the differences I'm extremely skeptical of this study because (a) the authors explicitly say they can't rule out greater awareness of mental disorders as being responsible for the difference, but then (b) they decided to go with their "transmission" theory anyway, probably because it makes for a better story. To be clear, I have no idea if either theory is more likely for the data they examined. But I would have trusted this study a lot more if they had presented both options as equally plausible.
  - faeriechangling 2y ago
    Awareness, transmission, what precisely is the difference? Sounds to me like mental health awareness campaigns are just another transmission vector. Do we have any reason to believe that “mental health awareness” doesn’t CAUSE mental illness? To me, there’s a pretty direct line between the increase of mental health awareness campaigns and self-reported mental health. Usually this is framed in the framing “oh, the mental health issues always existed, and we just became aware of them, so things are better now since we can address them” and I am unconvinced. I mean, look at this study, eating disorders spiked, are we suggesting people secretly unknowingly had an eating disorder they only became aware of through social media? It’s nonsense! I honestly and sincerely believe there is no reason to believe that the changes to mental health understanding have not been making people sicker and sicker every year for what somewhere around 2 decades now which is around when we saw things like suicidality bottom out. We’ve seen addiction and self-harm rising and let’s not forget eating disorders. Mental health is the only field of medicine I can name where outcomes have declined over the last few decades and I find the lack of scepticism to be well - insane!
    - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
      > there’s a pretty direct line between the increase of mental health awareness campaigns and self-reported mental health This seems like an obvious and intended result. I don't think this is suspicious. If you tell more people about something, more people will have words to describe it. I think in your comment there are multiple places where you conflate reported mental health and actual mental health, for example saying mental health is declining. Is it declining, or are reports increasing due to awareness? The answer would be non-obvious, and even if mental health was declining, I suspect that other factors like declining economic outlooks for the average person would be more likely causes than "mental health awareness campaigns".
    - DavidPiper 2y ago
      There has been research into the fact that student Doctors often report symptoms to their own doctors of the diseases they're currently studying - a kind of psychological awareness temporarily manifesting as physical symptoms. Or the belief of physical symptoms. Sort of like the phantom phone buzz in our legs that many of us get occasionally. These symptoms aren't actually the disease - just like our legs are not actually our phones. > there’s a pretty direct line between the increase of mental health awareness campaigns and self-reported mental health "Self-reported mental health" is very different from clinically diagnosed and treated mental health. > I mean, look at this study, eating disorders spiked, are we suggesting people secretly unknowingly had an eating disorder they only became aware of through social media? It’s nonsense! This is a nonsense line of thinking because "only became aware of" is not the mechanism. There is plenty of research out there about how social media actively changes mental and behavioural patterns - especially in young people - because that is what it is DESIGNED TO DO in order to increase engagement and revenue. Changing your physical behaviour severely enough to become sick is a thing. Changing your mental behaviour severely enough to become sick is a thing. Mental health might be getting worse, but simply "awareness of mental health issues" is not the mechanism.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      > Awareness, transmission, what precisely is the difference? In the first one you see issues in yourself or someone else that you learn later match some diagnosis. In the second one you gain those issues that you didn't have earlier. I've been diagnosed and improved my life exactly because enough people discussed some symptoms that I could say "hey, that's the same as my problems! (that existed for decades before)" I'm sure you could gain some issues, and empathic illnesses are a thing. But disregarding the difference here would be harmful.
  - boomboomsubban 2y ago
    The study seems to say there's a transmission of diagnosis, which would allow the transmission being caused by a greater awareness.
    - kayodelycaon 2y ago
      Transmission implies it is causing more mental disorders than would otherwise be present, regardless if they were identified or not.
      - boomboomsubban 2y ago
        I wouldn't assume that, particularly when the study is very careful to always say it led to an increase in diagnosis. And really, 'I dislike the term they used to describe how diagnosis spread' is fairly nitpicky.
        hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
        The title of this study is "Transmission of Mental Disorders in Adolescent Peer Networks". The "Meaning" section states "The findings of this study suggest that mental disorders might be socially transmitted within adolescent peer networks." I can't believe any plain read of that would imply they're talking about increased diagnosis of already-present mental illness due to greater awareness.
- SubiculumCode 2y ago
  I don't care for the sensationalist title and interpretation by the authors. Awareness of mental disorders, application of knowledge to one's mental experience and symptomology, and to a much lesser extent, but probably real, assuming the identity of the disorder that your friends have assumed for themselves or were legitimately diagnosed with, is still not transmission of a disorder.
peepeepoopoo73 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
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ClassyJacket 2y ago
[flagged]
- XMPPwocky 2y ago
  > And the big one that's everywhere today that you can't talk about. If you're not going to say what you actually think, why hint at it?
  - causality0 2y ago
    Playing along by pretending there's nothing to mention is a step further than feeling you're not allowed to say exactly what you mean. That's the why. Why aside, if you care about the subject either way you already know what he's talking about, and if you don't know then you likely wouldn't care. He may be quite incorrect in his judgment of the subject, but, as demonstrated by the flagging, he's correct that he's not allowed to talk about it in many settings, including this one. There's a fair chance I'm not allowed to talk about him not being allowed to talk about it, either.
    - angra_mainyu 2y ago
      I agree, it is most definitely ironic
    - XMPPwocky 2y ago
      I have a really good counter-argument to everything you've said, but I'm too scared to mention it- as you can see, my original post got downvoted
  - tarxvf 2y ago
    It's more fun trying to guess. Personally I think they're talking about Apple fanboys. Or EV enthusiasts. Hard to tell.
zug_zug 2y ago
I'm not sure how they jump from correlation to causation. Like maybe having classmates who have a disorder means, just for a wild example, there's some contaminant in your local water (several have been linked to mental disorders), and that you're also drinking that water and that you may or may not be diagnosed with that problem for decades. I also think it's possible that seeing people around you being comfortable acknowledging the ways their brain acts differently may make others more comfortable getting a diagnosis. To justify a conclusion this big I feel that you'd want clearly prove that it's not diagnosis that's contagious but the actual disorder.
- braiamp 2y ago
  > Increased risk remained after adjusting for an array of parental, school-level, and area-level confounders. Is in the abstract. They literally removed confounding variables. The only variable I can think of is that they are more acute to self check due past experiences.
  - zug_zug 2y ago
    I mean I'm not gonna pretend I read that whole paper (and I'd be surprised if any commenter did), a thousand papers like this get posted on HN every year and completely forgotten (by HN and academia). Another thing I'm not sure about -- I think some schools intentionally group troublemakers/slower-students into similar classes either officially or unofficially. I'm not gonna read the whole thing and see if they're accounting for that. Another weird thing is that "behavioral disorder" isn't contagious if there's 1 other person who has it, but IS with 99.9% confidence if more than 1 other has it. The whole chart of P-values seems a bit odd, tbh. I don't mean to entirely discredit this paper, but what I've learned is that a lot of academics LOVE datasets that they download and analyze without ever meeting a single person in that dataset (it's the quickest way to get papers out). This CAN be useful, but it can also be garbage-in garbage-out. Over my career I've learned that data, like code, should be presumed broken until proven otherwise.
  - XMPPwocky 2y ago
    If you look further down in the paper, they mention the variables they adjusted for: > [..] all models were adjusted for sex, birth year, area-level urbanicity, area-level morbidity, area-level educational level, area-level employ- ment rate, school class size, school’s ninth grade size, parental educational level, parental income, and parental mental health. So a contaminant or other environmental factor that didn't correlate perfectly with those factors wouldn't be corrected for. How could it be, without knowing what it is?
hanniabu 2y ago
People that spend a lot of time together tend to transmit and share microbiome species. I'm confident most illnesses, including mental, are rooted in our microbiome makeup. Most with gut issues would likely agree with this because it makes it more obvious. Such as developing allergies, food sensitivities, skin diseases, mental issues, eye and hearing issues, hair loss, high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety, etc after their gut has gone haywire.
- Slava_Propanei 2y ago
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alekseiprokopev 2y ago
If you go to the same school, you are more likely to be from the same social and circumstantial strata, which may be a bigger factor in openness to diagnosis and development of mental issues.
- ImaCake 2y ago
  Yes, and people who have a certain mental architecture tend to associate with others who have similar brains. ADHDers tend to have friends with ADHD at least partly because they are more forgiving of some of the challenges of having ADHD. This study is junk. There is no dataset or study design that is feasible for untangling the complexities of "like minds attract" to allow for an examination of the memetic spread of psychiatric disorders.
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    Yeah this is an error people make about transgender people all the time. Parents say "my child started hanging out with a bunch of trans people and then they told me they are trans, but they never told me anything about this before so I think they became trans because of those people" and it's like, no the child was attracted to the group of trans people because something about that group resonated with the child, and having spent some time seeing their perspective they felt that transition would better resolve some internal tension they may never have understood or had words to express. Being friends with trans people didn't make the child trans, it just showed them a new perspective they had been seeking when they decided to become friends with those people. Similarly, people with various mental health conditions may have some attraction to others in the same boat, as they can find mutual understanding, learn coping skills, and vent about the other people who don't understand. You could just as easily say mountain biking is socially transmitted because all these mountain bikers are hanging out together.
    - throwaway22032 2y ago
      I don't think that your explanation leads to the conclusion that these things are not socially transmitted. Mountain biking as a sport would not be possible for the average person without the community. Sure, someone could be, and had to be, "the first" MTBer, make knobbly tires, build a suspension, go without a trail, etc, but that sort of spontaneous "new sport discovery" process is not going to happen at anything like the rate that people are attracted (via social transmission!) to the existing sport with everything in place. The question seems to be whether being transgender, or being a mountain biker, is something that can exist purely in the mind, in the absence of the ability to realise it. In some ways it feels like an unanswerable question because normal gender roles are socially transmitted anyway, so we can't even say whether "being a man" exists in isolation.
tiahura 2y ago
[flagged]
jhawleypeters 2y ago
This study focuses on adolescents because they have data available for a large cohort. I’m curious what one would find with adults. I’m morbidly curious what the world’s various intelligence (espionage) outfits have attempted, studied, and concluded in terms of manipulating large numbers of people via the internet. Many negative tropes I see repeated ubiquitously online make me think about mass demoralization, anger, hopelessness, etc. I realize this may seem off topic to some, this is just where my mind goes when I see a title like this one. Edited
- lambdasquirrel 2y ago
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- 23B1 2y ago
  The internet is the largest psychological attack surface ever invented. It's exactly the right response to have.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    In general, I don't think it is that simple... but horrible people do tend to be more memorable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTUrdJ6atRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTUrdJ6atRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgXlN0x--u8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgXlN0x--u8 Have a great day =3
    - 23B1 2y ago
      I'm not blaming individual people I am talking about emergent behaviors.
      - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
        Dr. John Calhoun did many experiments with mammalian behavioral shifts with population growth. Some seem upset by his works findings, but it does seem to predict developmental stages of aggression, the "Beautiful Ones", and cognitive deterioration in social mammals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U I would recommend getting out for an early walk everyday (especially when you don't feel like it), as spending too much time around news/catastrophe nonsense is bad for your health. Have a great day, and I just found a surprise ice-cream cookie bar in the freezer I forgot about... hope your day gets that awesome too. =3
abalone 2y ago
Correlation over causation. The study actually notes, “One plausible mechanism is the normalization of mental disorders through increased awareness and receptivity to diagnosis and treatment when having individuals with diagnosis in the same peer network.” Thus the study uses “transmission” in a specific technical sense of greater likely of diagnosis, not literally that you can catch a mental disorder from a peer where none existed before.
- ImaCake 2y ago
  Then its a shame the editorialised title implies contagion.
jmpman 2y ago
Weed? Kids who smoke weed are more likely to have friends who smoke weed. Weed triggers mental disorders. Did they control for that?
angra_mainyu 2y ago
Anecdotally, I have noticed heavy TikTok usage to later on cause a person to performatively manifest behaviors related to a given disorder to fit in.
- hypertele-Xii 2y ago
  Such as non-binary genders.
ryukoposting 2y ago
Here's a thought: kids going through similar life experiences are likely to experience similar traumas, and thus develop similar disorders.
jojobas 2y ago
[flagged]
Slava_Propanei 2y ago
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keiferski 2y ago
The philosopher Charles Taylor has an idea that because modern societies aim to be open to all religious/ethical ideas, it results in the atrophying of debating skills and the ability to intelligently critique things. This openness doesn’t result in a free exchange of complex formed opinions, resulting instead in a kind of formless relativism where people have a feeling that they disagree with something but lack the ability to do so. In a very related way, I feel like the same thing has happened with regards to the focus on individualism and the individual identity, at the expense of group identity. People have become so obsessed with individualism that they forget how humans are still, additionally, a social species. This results in the ignoring of how group social dynamics work, which means that it’s much easier for bad group behaviors to take root - no one thinks they’re important or even exist at all. In other words, when we pretend that something doesn’t exist - but it continues to exist - we lose the ability to engage with it intelligently.
- hackit2 2y ago
  I take the different stance the push to individualism has postponed apathy of Western society as a whole. Look at societies that are still highly nationalistic or collectivism they're either in-decline or being exploited by the West. The power of individualism is it allows society to exploit individuals who're at the end of the population bell curve.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    I don’t think individualism is entirely bad or even bad at all - the issue is the exclusive focus on it, as it leaves you unable to deal with the group social phenomena that will continue to exist regardless. And in the reverse way, societies that are too group-focused find themselves unable to deal with the phenomenon of individuals- see the USSR, for example. IMO the societies doing the best globally have a solid balance between individual and group identity.
    - hackit2 2y ago
      I agree how-ever you cannot be a individual within a collective how-ever a individualistic society allows people to voluntarily choose to balkanize along ethnic or cultural tribes. Which is your inherit statutory right as a individual.
Jerrrrry 2y ago
[flagged]
- pests 2y ago
  No, I don't. What Syrian event are you duscussing? What happened weeks later? What about videos being different? People are willing to debate and have a conversation but it seems that is not what you want.
  - Jerrrrry 2y ago
    >No, I don't. What Syrian event are you duscussing? What happened weeks later? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_civil_war#Public_opinion_on_Syrian_refugees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_civil_w... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack#Russian_assessment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack#Russian... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad#Chemical_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad#Chemical_attac... This is what a failed false flag regime coup attempt looks like in a third world country. In our's, we get January 6th. >What about videos being different? The obvious juxtaposition between supposed "viral videos" and the organic ones. Now that art has been refined, MSM will cover organic ones as well - signal to noise, manufactured consent. Kinda what a nation state would do. >People are willing to debate and have a conversation but it seems that is not what you want. The people cannot debate what the phone doesn't allow them to see.
- smallnamespace 2y ago
  > Remember when everyone was expected to have an opinion on Syrian children, within 24 hours? Honestly, no, I think I may be in a different filter bubble than yours.
rysertio 2y ago
The data basically says, if you have someone diagnosed with a mental health disorder in a class, it's more likely that other students from that class will be diagnosed with that mental health disorder later on.
dzink 2y ago
Mood, anxiety or eating disorders and having 2 or more peers increases risk by 18%. What about the following considerations: 1. Kids trying to pursue similar goals (applying to college, perusing sports or boys, playing video games late which causes sleep deprivation) are more likely to have similar side effects. 2. Knowing someone who has treated a mental illness successfully makes you more likely to pursue treatment - they counted diagnosis, and most had it within a year.
throwaway22032 2y ago
I would expect prior to any study that least some disorders have to be correlated with the signals one gets from society. Eating disorders are the first thing that comes to mind.
Uptrenda 2y ago
Transmission? I mean, in the history of mental illness there have been many instances of psychiatric contagion. E.g. the laughing plague of 1962, the sleep sickness of 2010 in Kazakhstan, and I suppose you could say that 'suggestibility' is a form of transmission (the most famous case for multiple personality disorder has been said to be based on the suggestions of the treating physicians.) It's known that when there are celebrity deaths (caused by their own hands) an uptick in the average rate in the population follows media coverage. The mind can make you ill. This much is uncontroversial in psychiatry. The flip-side is the mind can make you better. There is the classic concept of placebos. A story I recall comes from war times when doctors ran out of pain killers and administered saline instead. Just the presence of the doctors reassuring treatment was enough to bring about relief in the patient. This is in an instance where someone had a gun shot wound. So the placebo effect (and our belief) is strong enough that it can be on par with drugs like morphine. I'd say that this explains many cases of faith healers. They really are 'healing' the patient but not via any magical means. The placebo effect is pretty fascinating but it gets even more twisted. It would seem that the effect can be observed even if the doctor tells the patient they're receiving a placebo. The doctor says 'I'm giving you nothing.' And the patient hears: well, you're the doctor, you know what's best. They feel relived in some way from that more than nothing. Effectively, the mind makes it real. Then you have things like classical conditioning being used to reduce highly toxic drug side effects. A toxic (but beneficial drug) can be conditioned with a stimulus (like a bell.) Then the dosage of the drug is reduced while the bell is sounded. The body responds as if it were given the full dose but without all the side effects. Really neat research. I do think many unexplained illnesses could be the result of negative ingrained conditioning. I think a perfect example of physical effects caused by psychiatric symptoms is anxiety. People who have anxiety usually don't describe it all with emotional terms. They say things like 'my heart is racing', 'im breathing too fast', 'my muscles are twitching.' A person could go to a doctor for a digestive issue only to find out that they're just 'anxious.' If psychiatric contagion exists and psychiatric illness can cause physical symptoms. Then (what appears to be) physical illness is transferable. That's really intense if you think about it.
renewiltord 2y ago
We're going to look back on therapy as a vector of mental disease rather than a cure. It's a weaponized mental virus. Like MRSA out of hospitals, the therapist is where you'll go get mentally ill.

77 points by Luc 2y ago

It’s interesting that “schizophrenia spectrum disorders” were the first to be correlated. That makes me suspect they aren’t measuring transmission at all. Given they account for the general population around the schools, it may be the classroom environment or greater awareness causing the differences. The latter was mentioned as a factor they couldn’t measure.

77pt77 2y ago
Reminder that there is no quantitative test for schizophrenia despite the field overtly stating to be searching for one for over a century. Not even close.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
> greater awareness causing the differences I'm extremely skeptical of this study because (a) the authors explicitly say they can't rule out greater awareness of mental disorders as being responsible for the difference, but then (b) they decided to go with their "transmission" theory anyway, probably because it makes for a better story. To be clear, I have no idea if either theory is more likely for the data they examined. But I would have trusted this study a lot more if they had presented both options as equally plausible.
- faeriechangling 2y ago
  Awareness, transmission, what precisely is the difference? Sounds to me like mental health awareness campaigns are just another transmission vector. Do we have any reason to believe that “mental health awareness” doesn’t CAUSE mental illness? To me, there’s a pretty direct line between the increase of mental health awareness campaigns and self-reported mental health. Usually this is framed in the framing “oh, the mental health issues always existed, and we just became aware of them, so things are better now since we can address them” and I am unconvinced. I mean, look at this study, eating disorders spiked, are we suggesting people secretly unknowingly had an eating disorder they only became aware of through social media? It’s nonsense! I honestly and sincerely believe there is no reason to believe that the changes to mental health understanding have not been making people sicker and sicker every year for what somewhere around 2 decades now which is around when we saw things like suicidality bottom out. We’ve seen addiction and self-harm rising and let’s not forget eating disorders. Mental health is the only field of medicine I can name where outcomes have declined over the last few decades and I find the lack of scepticism to be well - insane!
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    > there’s a pretty direct line between the increase of mental health awareness campaigns and self-reported mental health This seems like an obvious and intended result. I don't think this is suspicious. If you tell more people about something, more people will have words to describe it. I think in your comment there are multiple places where you conflate reported mental health and actual mental health, for example saying mental health is declining. Is it declining, or are reports increasing due to awareness? The answer would be non-obvious, and even if mental health was declining, I suspect that other factors like declining economic outlooks for the average person would be more likely causes than "mental health awareness campaigns".
  - DavidPiper 2y ago
    There has been research into the fact that student Doctors often report symptoms to their own doctors of the diseases they're currently studying - a kind of psychological awareness temporarily manifesting as physical symptoms. Or the belief of physical symptoms. Sort of like the phantom phone buzz in our legs that many of us get occasionally. These symptoms aren't actually the disease - just like our legs are not actually our phones. > there’s a pretty direct line between the increase of mental health awareness campaigns and self-reported mental health "Self-reported mental health" is very different from clinically diagnosed and treated mental health. > I mean, look at this study, eating disorders spiked, are we suggesting people secretly unknowingly had an eating disorder they only became aware of through social media? It’s nonsense! This is a nonsense line of thinking because "only became aware of" is not the mechanism. There is plenty of research out there about how social media actively changes mental and behavioural patterns - especially in young people - because that is what it is DESIGNED TO DO in order to increase engagement and revenue. Changing your physical behaviour severely enough to become sick is a thing. Changing your mental behaviour severely enough to become sick is a thing. Mental health might be getting worse, but simply "awareness of mental health issues" is not the mechanism.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    > Awareness, transmission, what precisely is the difference? In the first one you see issues in yourself or someone else that you learn later match some diagnosis. In the second one you gain those issues that you didn't have earlier. I've been diagnosed and improved my life exactly because enough people discussed some symptoms that I could say "hey, that's the same as my problems! (that existed for decades before)" I'm sure you could gain some issues, and empathic illnesses are a thing. But disregarding the difference here would be harmful.
- boomboomsubban 2y ago
  The study seems to say there's a transmission of diagnosis, which would allow the transmission being caused by a greater awareness.
  - kayodelycaon 2y ago
    Transmission implies it is causing more mental disorders than would otherwise be present, regardless if they were identified or not.
    - boomboomsubban 2y ago
      I wouldn't assume that, particularly when the study is very careful to always say it led to an increase in diagnosis. And really, 'I dislike the term they used to describe how diagnosis spread' is fairly nitpicky.
      - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
        The title of this study is "Transmission of Mental Disorders in Adolescent Peer Networks". The "Meaning" section states "The findings of this study suggest that mental disorders might be socially transmitted within adolescent peer networks." I can't believe any plain read of that would imply they're talking about increased diagnosis of already-present mental illness due to greater awareness.
SubiculumCode 2y ago
I don't care for the sensationalist title and interpretation by the authors. Awareness of mental disorders, application of knowledge to one's mental experience and symptomology, and to a much lesser extent, but probably real, assuming the identity of the disorder that your friends have assumed for themselves or were legitimately diagnosed with, is still not transmission of a disorder.

peepeepoopoo73 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ClassyJacket 2y ago

[flagged]

XMPPwocky 2y ago
> And the big one that's everywhere today that you can't talk about. If you're not going to say what you actually think, why hint at it?
- causality0 2y ago
  Playing along by pretending there's nothing to mention is a step further than feeling you're not allowed to say exactly what you mean. That's the why. Why aside, if you care about the subject either way you already know what he's talking about, and if you don't know then you likely wouldn't care. He may be quite incorrect in his judgment of the subject, but, as demonstrated by the flagging, he's correct that he's not allowed to talk about it in many settings, including this one. There's a fair chance I'm not allowed to talk about him not being allowed to talk about it, either.
  - angra_mainyu 2y ago
    I agree, it is most definitely ironic
  - XMPPwocky 2y ago
    I have a really good counter-argument to everything you've said, but I'm too scared to mention it- as you can see, my original post got downvoted
- tarxvf 2y ago
  It's more fun trying to guess. Personally I think they're talking about Apple fanboys. Or EV enthusiasts. Hard to tell.

zug_zug 2y ago

I'm not sure how they jump from correlation to causation. Like maybe having classmates who have a disorder means, just for a wild example, there's some contaminant in your local water (several have been linked to mental disorders), and that you're also drinking that water and that you may or may not be diagnosed with that problem for decades. I also think it's possible that seeing people around you being comfortable acknowledging the ways their brain acts differently may make others more comfortable getting a diagnosis. To justify a conclusion this big I feel that you'd want clearly prove that it's not diagnosis that's contagious but the actual disorder.

braiamp 2y ago
> Increased risk remained after adjusting for an array of parental, school-level, and area-level confounders. Is in the abstract. They literally removed confounding variables. The only variable I can think of is that they are more acute to self check due past experiences.
- zug_zug 2y ago
  I mean I'm not gonna pretend I read that whole paper (and I'd be surprised if any commenter did), a thousand papers like this get posted on HN every year and completely forgotten (by HN and academia). Another thing I'm not sure about -- I think some schools intentionally group troublemakers/slower-students into similar classes either officially or unofficially. I'm not gonna read the whole thing and see if they're accounting for that. Another weird thing is that "behavioral disorder" isn't contagious if there's 1 other person who has it, but IS with 99.9% confidence if more than 1 other has it. The whole chart of P-values seems a bit odd, tbh. I don't mean to entirely discredit this paper, but what I've learned is that a lot of academics LOVE datasets that they download and analyze without ever meeting a single person in that dataset (it's the quickest way to get papers out). This CAN be useful, but it can also be garbage-in garbage-out. Over my career I've learned that data, like code, should be presumed broken until proven otherwise.
- XMPPwocky 2y ago
  If you look further down in the paper, they mention the variables they adjusted for: > [..] all models were adjusted for sex, birth year, area-level urbanicity, area-level morbidity, area-level educational level, area-level employ- ment rate, school class size, school’s ninth grade size, parental educational level, parental income, and parental mental health. So a contaminant or other environmental factor that didn't correlate perfectly with those factors wouldn't be corrected for. How could it be, without knowing what it is?

hanniabu 2y ago

People that spend a lot of time together tend to transmit and share microbiome species. I'm confident most illnesses, including mental, are rooted in our microbiome makeup. Most with gut issues would likely agree with this because it makes it more obvious. Such as developing allergies, food sensitivities, skin diseases, mental issues, eye and hearing issues, hair loss, high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety, etc after their gut has gone haywire.

Slava_Propanei 2y ago
[dead]

alekseiprokopev 2y ago

If you go to the same school, you are more likely to be from the same social and circumstantial strata, which may be a bigger factor in openness to diagnosis and development of mental issues.

ImaCake 2y ago
Yes, and people who have a certain mental architecture tend to associate with others who have similar brains. ADHDers tend to have friends with ADHD at least partly because they are more forgiving of some of the challenges of having ADHD. This study is junk. There is no dataset or study design that is feasible for untangling the complexities of "like minds attract" to allow for an examination of the memetic spread of psychiatric disorders.
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  Yeah this is an error people make about transgender people all the time. Parents say "my child started hanging out with a bunch of trans people and then they told me they are trans, but they never told me anything about this before so I think they became trans because of those people" and it's like, no the child was attracted to the group of trans people because something about that group resonated with the child, and having spent some time seeing their perspective they felt that transition would better resolve some internal tension they may never have understood or had words to express. Being friends with trans people didn't make the child trans, it just showed them a new perspective they had been seeking when they decided to become friends with those people. Similarly, people with various mental health conditions may have some attraction to others in the same boat, as they can find mutual understanding, learn coping skills, and vent about the other people who don't understand. You could just as easily say mountain biking is socially transmitted because all these mountain bikers are hanging out together.
  - throwaway22032 2y ago
    I don't think that your explanation leads to the conclusion that these things are not socially transmitted. Mountain biking as a sport would not be possible for the average person without the community. Sure, someone could be, and had to be, "the first" MTBer, make knobbly tires, build a suspension, go without a trail, etc, but that sort of spontaneous "new sport discovery" process is not going to happen at anything like the rate that people are attracted (via social transmission!) to the existing sport with everything in place. The question seems to be whether being transgender, or being a mountain biker, is something that can exist purely in the mind, in the absence of the ability to realise it. In some ways it feels like an unanswerable question because normal gender roles are socially transmitted anyway, so we can't even say whether "being a man" exists in isolation.

tiahura 2y ago

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jhawleypeters 2y ago

This study focuses on adolescents because they have data available for a large cohort. I’m curious what one would find with adults. I’m morbidly curious what the world’s various intelligence (espionage) outfits have attempted, studied, and concluded in terms of manipulating large numbers of people via the internet. Many negative tropes I see repeated ubiquitously online make me think about mass demoralization, anger, hopelessness, etc. I realize this may seem off topic to some, this is just where my mind goes when I see a title like this one. Edited

lambdasquirrel 2y ago
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23B1 2y ago
The internet is the largest psychological attack surface ever invented. It's exactly the right response to have.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  In general, I don't think it is that simple... but horrible people do tend to be more memorable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTUrdJ6atRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTUrdJ6atRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgXlN0x--u8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgXlN0x--u8 Have a great day =3
  - 23B1 2y ago
    I'm not blaming individual people I am talking about emergent behaviors.
    - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
      Dr. John Calhoun did many experiments with mammalian behavioral shifts with population growth. Some seem upset by his works findings, but it does seem to predict developmental stages of aggression, the "Beautiful Ones", and cognitive deterioration in social mammals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U I would recommend getting out for an early walk everyday (especially when you don't feel like it), as spending too much time around news/catastrophe nonsense is bad for your health. Have a great day, and I just found a surprise ice-cream cookie bar in the freezer I forgot about... hope your day gets that awesome too. =3

abalone 2y ago

Correlation over causation. The study actually notes, “One plausible mechanism is the normalization of mental disorders through increased awareness and receptivity to diagnosis and treatment when having individuals with diagnosis in the same peer network.” Thus the study uses “transmission” in a specific technical sense of greater likely of diagnosis, not literally that you can catch a mental disorder from a peer where none existed before.

ImaCake 2y ago
Then its a shame the editorialised title implies contagion.

jmpman 2y ago

Weed? Kids who smoke weed are more likely to have friends who smoke weed. Weed triggers mental disorders. Did they control for that?

angra_mainyu 2y ago

Anecdotally, I have noticed heavy TikTok usage to later on cause a person to performatively manifest behaviors related to a given disorder to fit in.

hypertele-Xii 2y ago
Such as non-binary genders.

ryukoposting 2y ago

Here's a thought: kids going through similar life experiences are likely to experience similar traumas, and thus develop similar disorders.

jojobas 2y ago

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Slava_Propanei 2y ago

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keiferski 2y ago

The philosopher Charles Taylor has an idea that because modern societies aim to be open to all religious/ethical ideas, it results in the atrophying of debating skills and the ability to intelligently critique things. This openness doesn’t result in a free exchange of complex formed opinions, resulting instead in a kind of formless relativism where people have a feeling that they disagree with something but lack the ability to do so. In a very related way, I feel like the same thing has happened with regards to the focus on individualism and the individual identity, at the expense of group identity. People have become so obsessed with individualism that they forget how humans are still, additionally, a social species. This results in the ignoring of how group social dynamics work, which means that it’s much easier for bad group behaviors to take root - no one thinks they’re important or even exist at all. In other words, when we pretend that something doesn’t exist - but it continues to exist - we lose the ability to engage with it intelligently.

hackit2 2y ago
I take the different stance the push to individualism has postponed apathy of Western society as a whole. Look at societies that are still highly nationalistic or collectivism they're either in-decline or being exploited by the West. The power of individualism is it allows society to exploit individuals who're at the end of the population bell curve.
- keiferski 2y ago
  I don’t think individualism is entirely bad or even bad at all - the issue is the exclusive focus on it, as it leaves you unable to deal with the group social phenomena that will continue to exist regardless. And in the reverse way, societies that are too group-focused find themselves unable to deal with the phenomenon of individuals- see the USSR, for example. IMO the societies doing the best globally have a solid balance between individual and group identity.
  - hackit2 2y ago
    I agree how-ever you cannot be a individual within a collective how-ever a individualistic society allows people to voluntarily choose to balkanize along ethnic or cultural tribes. Which is your inherit statutory right as a individual.

Jerrrrry 2y ago

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pests 2y ago
No, I don't. What Syrian event are you duscussing? What happened weeks later? What about videos being different? People are willing to debate and have a conversation but it seems that is not what you want.
- Jerrrrry 2y ago
  >No, I don't. What Syrian event are you duscussing? What happened weeks later? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_civil_war#Public_opinion_on_Syrian_refugees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_civil_w... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack#Russian_assessment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack#Russian... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad#Chemical_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad#Chemical_attac... This is what a failed false flag regime coup attempt looks like in a third world country. In our's, we get January 6th. >What about videos being different? The obvious juxtaposition between supposed "viral videos" and the organic ones. Now that art has been refined, MSM will cover organic ones as well - signal to noise, manufactured consent. Kinda what a nation state would do. >People are willing to debate and have a conversation but it seems that is not what you want. The people cannot debate what the phone doesn't allow them to see.
smallnamespace 2y ago
> Remember when everyone was expected to have an opinion on Syrian children, within 24 hours? Honestly, no, I think I may be in a different filter bubble than yours.

rysertio 2y ago

The data basically says, if you have someone diagnosed with a mental health disorder in a class, it's more likely that other students from that class will be diagnosed with that mental health disorder later on.

dzink 2y ago

Mood, anxiety or eating disorders and having 2 or more peers increases risk by 18%. What about the following considerations: 1. Kids trying to pursue similar goals (applying to college, perusing sports or boys, playing video games late which causes sleep deprivation) are more likely to have similar side effects. 2. Knowing someone who has treated a mental illness successfully makes you more likely to pursue treatment - they counted diagnosis, and most had it within a year.

throwaway22032 2y ago

I would expect prior to any study that least some disorders have to be correlated with the signals one gets from society. Eating disorders are the first thing that comes to mind.

Uptrenda 2y ago

Transmission? I mean, in the history of mental illness there have been many instances of psychiatric contagion. E.g. the laughing plague of 1962, the sleep sickness of 2010 in Kazakhstan, and I suppose you could say that 'suggestibility' is a form of transmission (the most famous case for multiple personality disorder has been said to be based on the suggestions of the treating physicians.) It's known that when there are celebrity deaths (caused by their own hands) an uptick in the average rate in the population follows media coverage. The mind can make you ill. This much is uncontroversial in psychiatry. The flip-side is the mind can make you better. There is the classic concept of placebos. A story I recall comes from war times when doctors ran out of pain killers and administered saline instead. Just the presence of the doctors reassuring treatment was enough to bring about relief in the patient. This is in an instance where someone had a gun shot wound. So the placebo effect (and our belief) is strong enough that it can be on par with drugs like morphine. I'd say that this explains many cases of faith healers. They really are 'healing' the patient but not via any magical means. The placebo effect is pretty fascinating but it gets even more twisted. It would seem that the effect can be observed even if the doctor tells the patient they're receiving a placebo. The doctor says 'I'm giving you nothing.' And the patient hears: well, you're the doctor, you know what's best. They feel relived in some way from that more than nothing. Effectively, the mind makes it real. Then you have things like classical conditioning being used to reduce highly toxic drug side effects. A toxic (but beneficial drug) can be conditioned with a stimulus (like a bell.) Then the dosage of the drug is reduced while the bell is sounded. The body responds as if it were given the full dose but without all the side effects. Really neat research. I do think many unexplained illnesses could be the result of negative ingrained conditioning. I think a perfect example of physical effects caused by psychiatric symptoms is anxiety. People who have anxiety usually don't describe it all with emotional terms. They say things like 'my heart is racing', 'im breathing too fast', 'my muscles are twitching.' A person could go to a doctor for a digestive issue only to find out that they're just 'anxious.' If psychiatric contagion exists and psychiatric illness can cause physical symptoms. Then (what appears to be) physical illness is transferable. That's really intense if you think about it.

renewiltord 2y ago

We're going to look back on therapy as a vector of mental disease rather than a cure. It's a weaponized mental virus. Like MRSA out of hospitals, the therapist is where you'll go get mentally ill.