4 ms·

One has to wonder how often things went wrong in the past and just didn't get reported on. Or were just shrugged off. I don't think people of the 19th century

by arp242 1y ago

One has to wonder how often things went wrong in the past and just didn't get reported on. Or were just shrugged off. I don't think people of the 19th century were fundamentally better than they are today. Things like (sexual) abuse happened. There was probably a lot more of it than today: big taboo on anything related to sex, women couldn't even vote, fewer investigative tools (fingerprints, cameras, DNA). Well, it probably wasn't great. Today if a child would see a friend blow up in front of him people would be talking about PTSD, (life-long) trauma, etc. During the war my grandfather had a friend blow up in front of him. "Well, you didn't get any help in those days, you just had to deal with it, haha!" In the past lots of things like this were under-represented. Today they're probably over-represented.

kbelder 1y ago
>"Well, you didn't get any help in those days, you just had to deal with it, haha!" I can't help but wonder sometimes if that's healthier. Probably better for some people in some circumstances and worse in others.
- wat10000 1y ago
  You can tell that people in the past were healthier mentally, from all the wars, slavery, physical abuse, etc.
- twodave 1y ago
  Having dealt with mental health issues in adulthood after stuffing them for decades, the consequence being that they came raging to the surface at the risk of breaking apart my family, and then shortly afterwards parenting children whose trauma was able to be noticed and cared for as a result (and with great success), this comment has me somewhat riled.
  - necovek 1y ago
    The comment you are responding to is wondering about what might be "healthier" in general? It even acknowledges that it could work "worse in others". I do not think it's a stretch to say that some people deal with adversity and misfortune better than others, and not everyone ends up with mental health issues after very similar experiences! So without getting riled up, my response to the GP would be: "no, it wouldn't, because even if that works with simple majority of the population, it might leave 49% of the people messed up — let's not move away from the individual approach!" (I don't have actual numbers).
    - sillysaurusx 1y ago
      The problem is that attitudes like GP’s are why mental health is so disregarded. It’s tempting to believe that people should just man up and deal with it, and presto: you have both toxic masculinity and also a reason not to bother taking mental health seriously. After all, if 51% of the population can handle it, is it really a societal problem worth bothering with? (They can’t, and it is.) The idea that it’s healthier to internalize trauma is wrong in well over 90% of cases. Most people have lots of problems as adults due to trauma they got when they were kids, usually by emulating a dysfunctional parenting model, and they don’t even realize it. I lost my best friend when my issues flared up, and I was blind that I even had a problem at all. My actions felt healthy, and they were anything but. Please don’t minimize mental health. If not for yourself, then for your future children.
      - fredfish 1y ago
        It's clearly a serious problem that GPs ignore things that will surface but it is also a problem that experts surface things that don't need to be surfaced and in the worst cases even did not exist but fit a fad theory. One should be very careful with measures claiming things like 90% as GPs defer to experts for these measures.
        djur 1y ago
        What fad theories are you thinking of?
        fredfish 1y ago
        The "satanic panic" was certainly an extreme example, but in general the entire industry spent a few decades inducing false memories. Because of the nature of trust in authority few people question when they are pressured to have a trauma and psychological effects from events that never occurred. On the lesser end, I think many of the consumer oriented psychologists will take you in this direction with events that did occur but are probably typical experiences and only actually effect specific personalities.
  - sh34r 1y ago
    That word, “healthier,” is doing a lot of lifting in the parent comment. I read it in the maximally-utilitarian viewpoint, in which all the individual harm is completely ignored, and all we’re talking about is the collective health of society. Few people should want to live in a society which completely disregards the individual in favor of the collective. It is an inherently totalitarian worldview. It has inspired some of the worst atrocities in human history, including eugenics in the USA and Nazi Germany, and de-kulakization in Ukraine. In discussing such things with authoritarians, I think bringing up your lived experience just triggers their impulse for cruelty. Instead, I’d point out that totalitarian societies that cover up macro and micro level human rights abuses have always underperformed more “liberal” (as in freedom, not politics) societies in the long run. Ireland was a broken, impoverished backwater, backing in the days of the Magdalene laundries and Catholic theocracy. I’m talking mid-20th century, for those who are not familiar. Now it’s one of the richest countries in the world. It is not a coincidence that America’s least repressed, most godless city, San Francisco, is also its richest. There is a causal link between prosperity and not burying all the skeletons in your closet (individually and collectively).
    - necovek 1y ago
      I wouldn't necessarily go that way: a case in point might be China, who many would characterize as "over-performing" many of the more just societies (like the ones in most of the modern Europe). One could use the same argument for USA vs EU too. I really prefer to decouple care for the individual and their rights from the economic success: really, this is worth paying a cost for, and I am sure many would agree! (I believe the fact that financial benefit was so closely tied to EU membership was why Brexit happened). You do bring up religion a few times: it basically is a psychological framework which does support discussing your challenges with "someone" (be it a priest or "God"), but eventually offers one solution to any issue ("God will balance it out, you just persevere"). I obviously simplify things quite a bit: there's a lot of nuances to all of these.
- nooron 1y ago
  Lot of smoking and drinking oneself to death in those generations.
morkalork 1y ago
I think they just called it shell-shock
mschuster91 1y ago
> Today if a child would see a friend blow up in front of him people would be talking about PTSD, (life-long) trauma, etc. During the war my grandfather had a friend blow up in front of him. "Well, you didn't get any help in those days, you just had to deal with it, haha!" ... and carry that shit for the rest of their lives. A lot of Boomer kids are absolute dogshit parents because they never worked through the trauma they experienced back during their childhood (or during the rest of their lives), and they never learned how to properly manage their emotions (and yes I am talking both about men and women here), plainly because they didn't know better, there was no research, no nothing available. There's a reason why "break the cycle" has become a thing.
wat10000 1y ago
There’s also the incredibly high child mortality rate. Even in 1900, nearly one in four American children died before the age of 5. Imagine nearly everyone having a sibling or three who died young. Imagine nearly every parent having dead kids. I suspect the risk that the mailman would murder your child would pale by comparison.
- eichin 1y ago
  Plus the varied taboos about even talking about it; my mom had stories of having had a brother (in the early 1940's) and then just... not having one, "and noone talked about it". (Some of that is the vagaries of childhood memory, but there was just a lot of widely suppressed trauma in that generation too.)
unnamed76ri 1y ago
I wouldn’t discount the internet’s social contagion effect in a lot of what we see in present day culture related to sexual abuse/deviance. Bad stuff happened in every century. In the 21st century, we spread it like a disease. You might even say bad things go viral.
- Macha 1y ago
  Yeah, between a mix of the lurid details driving clickthroughs and some people feeling that they should publicise it to expose the culprits, it feels like every sex crime in my area makes it to the top of Reddit etc. This has led to some people having the impression that these crimes are on the rise or at elevated levels compared to the past, when the stats say the opposite (apart from a blip during COVID) There's also a sub theme of crimes involving foreigners getting more attention, which has also led to the mistaken impression that foreigners commit disproportionate amounts of sex crime.
reactordev 1y ago
There’s some millennials that definitely watched their friend blow up. The issue is today, with communication technology, it’s more widely talked about. Back in the day, when there were less people, it was shunned and not talked about, not reported, or generally brushed under the rug. Also, news reporting back then was in less supply and had very limited space for words. Population inflation adjusted, I think the ratio of crazy to sane is still the same, maybe 0.001% more crazy.

by arp242 1y ago

kbelder 1y ago

>"Well, you didn't get any help in those days, you just had to deal with it, haha!" I can't help but wonder sometimes if that's healthier. Probably better for some people in some circumstances and worse in others.

wat10000 1y ago
You can tell that people in the past were healthier mentally, from all the wars, slavery, physical abuse, etc.
twodave 1y ago
Having dealt with mental health issues in adulthood after stuffing them for decades, the consequence being that they came raging to the surface at the risk of breaking apart my family, and then shortly afterwards parenting children whose trauma was able to be noticed and cared for as a result (and with great success), this comment has me somewhat riled.
- necovek 1y ago
  The comment you are responding to is wondering about what might be "healthier" in general? It even acknowledges that it could work "worse in others". I do not think it's a stretch to say that some people deal with adversity and misfortune better than others, and not everyone ends up with mental health issues after very similar experiences! So without getting riled up, my response to the GP would be: "no, it wouldn't, because even if that works with simple majority of the population, it might leave 49% of the people messed up — let's not move away from the individual approach!" (I don't have actual numbers).
  - sillysaurusx 1y ago
    The problem is that attitudes like GP’s are why mental health is so disregarded. It’s tempting to believe that people should just man up and deal with it, and presto: you have both toxic masculinity and also a reason not to bother taking mental health seriously. After all, if 51% of the population can handle it, is it really a societal problem worth bothering with? (They can’t, and it is.) The idea that it’s healthier to internalize trauma is wrong in well over 90% of cases. Most people have lots of problems as adults due to trauma they got when they were kids, usually by emulating a dysfunctional parenting model, and they don’t even realize it. I lost my best friend when my issues flared up, and I was blind that I even had a problem at all. My actions felt healthy, and they were anything but. Please don’t minimize mental health. If not for yourself, then for your future children.
    - fredfish 1y ago
      It's clearly a serious problem that GPs ignore things that will surface but it is also a problem that experts surface things that don't need to be surfaced and in the worst cases even did not exist but fit a fad theory. One should be very careful with measures claiming things like 90% as GPs defer to experts for these measures.
      - djur 1y ago
        What fad theories are you thinking of?
        fredfish 1y ago
        The "satanic panic" was certainly an extreme example, but in general the entire industry spent a few decades inducing false memories. Because of the nature of trust in authority few people question when they are pressured to have a trauma and psychological effects from events that never occurred. On the lesser end, I think many of the consumer oriented psychologists will take you in this direction with events that did occur but are probably typical experiences and only actually effect specific personalities.
- sh34r 1y ago
  That word, “healthier,” is doing a lot of lifting in the parent comment. I read it in the maximally-utilitarian viewpoint, in which all the individual harm is completely ignored, and all we’re talking about is the collective health of society. Few people should want to live in a society which completely disregards the individual in favor of the collective. It is an inherently totalitarian worldview. It has inspired some of the worst atrocities in human history, including eugenics in the USA and Nazi Germany, and de-kulakization in Ukraine. In discussing such things with authoritarians, I think bringing up your lived experience just triggers their impulse for cruelty. Instead, I’d point out that totalitarian societies that cover up macro and micro level human rights abuses have always underperformed more “liberal” (as in freedom, not politics) societies in the long run. Ireland was a broken, impoverished backwater, backing in the days of the Magdalene laundries and Catholic theocracy. I’m talking mid-20th century, for those who are not familiar. Now it’s one of the richest countries in the world. It is not a coincidence that America’s least repressed, most godless city, San Francisco, is also its richest. There is a causal link between prosperity and not burying all the skeletons in your closet (individually and collectively).
  - necovek 1y ago
    I wouldn't necessarily go that way: a case in point might be China, who many would characterize as "over-performing" many of the more just societies (like the ones in most of the modern Europe). One could use the same argument for USA vs EU too. I really prefer to decouple care for the individual and their rights from the economic success: really, this is worth paying a cost for, and I am sure many would agree! (I believe the fact that financial benefit was so closely tied to EU membership was why Brexit happened). You do bring up religion a few times: it basically is a psychological framework which does support discussing your challenges with "someone" (be it a priest or "God"), but eventually offers one solution to any issue ("God will balance it out, you just persevere"). I obviously simplify things quite a bit: there's a lot of nuances to all of these.
nooron 1y ago
Lot of smoking and drinking oneself to death in those generations.

morkalork 1y ago

I think they just called it shell-shock

mschuster91 1y ago

> Today if a child would see a friend blow up in front of him people would be talking about PTSD, (life-long) trauma, etc. During the war my grandfather had a friend blow up in front of him. "Well, you didn't get any help in those days, you just had to deal with it, haha!" ... and carry that shit for the rest of their lives. A lot of Boomer kids are absolute dogshit parents because they never worked through the trauma they experienced back during their childhood (or during the rest of their lives), and they never learned how to properly manage their emotions (and yes I am talking both about men and women here), plainly because they didn't know better, there was no research, no nothing available. There's a reason why "break the cycle" has become a thing.

wat10000 1y ago

There’s also the incredibly high child mortality rate. Even in 1900, nearly one in four American children died before the age of 5. Imagine nearly everyone having a sibling or three who died young. Imagine nearly every parent having dead kids. I suspect the risk that the mailman would murder your child would pale by comparison.

eichin 1y ago
Plus the varied taboos about even talking about it; my mom had stories of having had a brother (in the early 1940's) and then just... not having one, "and noone talked about it". (Some of that is the vagaries of childhood memory, but there was just a lot of widely suppressed trauma in that generation too.)

unnamed76ri 1y ago

I wouldn’t discount the internet’s social contagion effect in a lot of what we see in present day culture related to sexual abuse/deviance. Bad stuff happened in every century. In the 21st century, we spread it like a disease. You might even say bad things go viral.

Macha 1y ago
Yeah, between a mix of the lurid details driving clickthroughs and some people feeling that they should publicise it to expose the culprits, it feels like every sex crime in my area makes it to the top of Reddit etc. This has led to some people having the impression that these crimes are on the rise or at elevated levels compared to the past, when the stats say the opposite (apart from a blip during COVID) There's also a sub theme of crimes involving foreigners getting more attention, which has also led to the mistaken impression that foreigners commit disproportionate amounts of sex crime.

reactordev 1y ago

There’s some millennials that definitely watched their friend blow up. The issue is today, with communication technology, it’s more widely talked about. Back in the day, when there were less people, it was shunned and not talked about, not reported, or generally brushed under the rug. Also, news reporting back then was in less supply and had very limited space for words. Population inflation adjusted, I think the ratio of crazy to sane is still the same, maybe 0.001% more crazy.