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US Youth Have Serious Mental Health Issues
Ant writes "Google News carries a Canadian Press report that 'a new study has found that five times as many high school and college students in the United States are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues than youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era. ... Pulling together the data for the study was no small task. Led by [San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge], researchers at five universities analyzed the responses of 77,576 high school or college students who, from 1938 through 2007, took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI. The results will be published in a future issue of the Clinical Psychology Review. Overall, an average of five times as many students in 2007 surpassed thresholds in one or more mental health categories, compared with those who did so in 1938. A few individual categories increased at an even greater rate — with six times as many scoring high in two areas: 'hypomania,' a measure of anxiety and unrealistic optimism (from 5 per cent of students in 1938 to 31 per cent in 2007), and depression (from 1 per cent to 6 per cent).'"
Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external - from wealth to looks and status - has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.
And also:
The study is not without its skeptics, among them Richard Shadick, a psychologist who directs the counsellingcentre at Pace University in New York. He says, for instance, that the sample data weren't necessarily representative of all college students. (Many who answered the MMPI questionnaire were students in introductory psychology courses at four-year institutions.)
I have a cute anecdote about a friend who graduated with a psychology degree and left her job as an assistant to become a grade school teacher because most of the psychologists at the Manhattan practice had more psychological problems than their patients.
Emphasis mine. Now, another interesting thing about Jean Twenge is that the books she writes aren't universally accepted by her peers:
"Generation Me" inspired a slew of articles in the popular press with headlines like "It’s all about me," "Superflagilistic, Extra Egotistic" and "Big Babies: Think the Boomers are self-absorbed? Wait until you meet their kids."
Ms. Twenge is working on another book with W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, this one tentatively called "The Narcissism Epidemic."
However, some scholars argue that a spike in selfishness among young people is, like the story of Narcissus, a myth.
"It’s like a cottage industry of putting them down and complaining about them and whining about why they don’t grow up," said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist, referring to young Americans. Mr. Arnett, the author of "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens through the Twenties" (2004, Oxford University Press), has written a critique of Ms. Twenge’s book, which is to be published in the American Journal of Psychology.
Granted you could claim that this is just one example of two camps infighting in a field that plagues even physics and hard sciences but I think it's important to realize that this study might be a little self serving. Personally I share two concerns. The first being similar to Shadick's in that I'm not sure how these two studies were normalized samples and the second questioning if we have any idea what the 'norm' is for these 'diseases.' How subjective is this test and would a variance of 1% to 6% for depression be unrealistic if we knew that it's been as high as 10% at other points in time between 1938 and 2007?
... but sometimes I encounter a youth who says, "My boyfriend just broke up with me and now I sit in my room and listen to depressing music." And they (or their over protective parents) think they need medication for that. They don't. Sounds to me like they need to be picking rock and bailing hay to help take their mind off that. We're overmedicated as it is. If Ms. Twenge continues to push this idea it might just get worse. How many people read news of this study and though "maybe my kid needs to see a psychologist for depression?" It's hard to look past this and assume the motives for this study are pure.
The curmudgeon in me wants to chalk this up to kids having it too good these days. No polio to worry about, no eight hour shifts to support the family and more information swarming them. A lot of today's youth have the luxury of being diagnosed with hypomania. Now I know that there are serious cases of depression and always have been
My work here is dung.
This isn't funny, it's probably true. My father went through the Hungarian revolution, and he has stories of the entire family of 5 splitting one egg for a meal. He has a thing about cleaning off plates. He still (literally!) licks his plate clean at home.
While searching for a job, I've discovered that many companies desire this "unrealistic optimism." A recruiter I was using sent me a list of questions the company was going to ask me, and "mistakenly" included the correct answers. Questions like, "How important is it for you to be the best?" have answers listed as, "Very important to be the best, not just 'do my best.'" Another question asks, "Are you a perfectionist?" and then lists, "must say yes," as the correct answer.
I think kids have such "unrealistic optimism" because it's desired in today's society. Unfortunately for me, I found college to be a very humbling experience, and I fear these kids will too.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
An interesting article from The Atlantic discusses a new view of children with genetic dispositions to "flawed" personality traits, such as ADHD. Much of it is based on a long-term study of a captive colony of rhesus monkeys.
In the barest of nutshells: while many children are like dandelions, and could survive and even prosper in any environment (poor, lousy parents, bad schools, etc.), others are like orchids. Raised in the wrong environment they become screw-ups. Raised in the right environment they thrive, and the traits that are considered flaws become strengths, even allowing them success beyond their dandelion brethren.
A good read even if you think they're wrong. One nice takeaway from the rhesus monkey study: in the long run, bullies never win.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
You saved me from making this rant. I would have modded you up, but hey, look at your score already!!
Yeah, if I were drugged up and pressured to conform, I'd probably be fighting several mental illnesses. Of, to put it more simply, I'd be stark raving crazy.
Ages ago, I came home from the Navy, and visited with one of my old buddy's sisters. She had a kid in preschool already (I was two years older, and not even married yet) and was giving him his dose of Dilantin. I asked why. The answer was "Without it, he just runs and screams all day!" I asked, "Have you forgotten the way your brothers and I ran and screamed from one end of the county to the other? If we weren't audibly raising hell, our parents came looking for us, because they KNEW we were doing something WRONG!"
Everyone wants a baby, but no one wants a kid these days.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If you want more hardship in your life, go find it. Go join the army or something.
I consider my 'laziness' to be an adult realization that the 'go go go work till you drop' culture in this country is poisonous.
Blar.
QFT, as someone who was actually diagnosed with and is a veritable textbook case for Asperger's can attest. Too many people act like jackasses and lean on the crutch "oh, I've got Asperger's", no, you don't have Asperger's disorder, you have Asshole disorder. I have Asperger's, and the few people who know me IRL say I'm a really nice person, just...a bit kooky.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
They tried to tell me my son needed Ritalin and that he had ADHD because he acted up in class and wouldn’t pay attention. I took him home, busted his little butt and things were fine from then on.
This is a pet peeve of mine. While there are kids that really do need help, too often the system just wants to put a label on the kid and shove a pill down his throat instead od dealing with what is really going on. I had a stepson that was on all that ADHD krud. When we got custody the first thing I did was take him to a new doctor and then started disciplining him when he needed it. He was fine and still is. It is so much easier to not have to deal with a situation, lets just make a generation of zombies and forget about them.
Pay is based on accomplishment and achievements...
No, it is not.
My investment banker counterpart earns about twice what an engineer does, and does even less work. True, the world does not care about your feelings, but the salary you receive is largely dependent on:
The first is usually a matter of education, the second, largely a matter of confidence.
One thing that negotiating a higher salary has taught me is that companies will always attempt to hire at the lowest possible salary. Being able to do a job 10 times better than the other guy doesn't mean a thing (wrt salary) if you don't exhibit confidence during the interview. Confidence goes a long way toward convincing an employer that you are worth more than the average guy.
I realize people *should* be paid in proportion to their ability and work ethic, but that's not how the real world works.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Was this doctor a pediatrician/general practitioner, someone in the education system, or a psychiatrist? I have noticed a trend (albeit anecdotal) of complaints about children on meds being targeted at doctors without proper behavioral/mental health training.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Are you one of those people who refuse to wear a seatbelt?
One of the things I find most annoying about Slashdot is the knee-jerk reflex some people have to respond to any unflattering comparison of the present day to some time in the past with, "Get off my lawn!" Yet strangely, when such mockery is genuinely appropriate in response to most of the comments here, it's nowhere to be seen.
I don't know what parallel universe most of the commenters are coming from -- whether most of them are childless or just get their version of reality from FOX News, I don't know -- but the environment in which my teenager finds herself is highly competitive, not remotely cocooning or coddling, and in many ways significantly more stressful than the one I grew up in. And I don't have her on any medication.
The thing that strikes me about today's kids is how obsessively schedule-driven they are. My daughter never seems to actually stop thinking about school or what she has to do next, and most of her friends are the same way. I suspect that this is at least partly responsible for the level of anxiety and depression in kids today. Far from lacking competition and discipline, the environment in which they move seems to have a surfeit of it, at least compared to my teenage experience in the 1980's, which was notoriously manic in its time but seems comparatively relaxed today.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
(emphasis mine)
I see even you have been sucked into the psychobabble. :)
When I was a kid it was called "acting up" i.e. misbehaving.
Now, its called "acting out", as if any misbehavior at all
is caused by deep-rooted emotional problems
that are too painful for the child to express directly. So
the child "acts them out" indirectly through inappropriate
behavior. Often it is accompanied by a
subtle suggestion of past abuse or neglect to guilt out the parents.
And hence, you miss the OP's point entirely.
Each individual restriction has some benefit, and may have even saved some people some misery. And each one may make sense - depending on how much you value freedom vs safety.
As a kid, I had a pocket knife and a bb gun (later a .22). I worked for local farmers and rode (on the public road) on top of hay wagons and in the backs of pickup trucks. My folks let me wander off some pretty long distances without them. Much of what I did as a kid would not be allowed today for safety reasons. And that has probably saved somebody some grief, or maybe even their life.
But if I'd grown up in the same situation today, I imagine I'd probably have spent all day with the TV and Playstation. I'd have been safe, but out of my mind with boredom.
Mod parent down for grossly exaggerating. Cases of over diagnosis/treatment are rare in the real world. Any doctor worth a damn will only medicate kids with a real problem. i think you're reacting to something that isn't as real as you think it is. We have a tendency to hear/think about negative things far more than positive. You won't hear about the 10 kids whose lives radically improved after being treated, only about the 1 kid that was misdiagnosed. If that rare misdiagnosis twists your panties you're going to think about it every time the matter appears (and ignore pounds of case files about proper treatment).
Some kids DO have these conditions. Some kids will cope, others will spend their lives struggling. Our prisons are packed with people who have these conditions and weren't diagnosed or treated. My own life could have been radically different if i had been diagnosed. i went to school under people who "think" like you do. So i was "undisciplined and lazy". With treatment i could have earned the grades to go to college with scholarships instead of doing four years in the USAF followed by borrowing $30K.
Much of this cavalier attitude you're showing comes from ignorance backed by a religious belief that humans are meat occupied by spirits. That all we do is a matter of choice and will. When the reality is that we're only meat. With the addition or removal of this or that chemical we can make a person more or less violent, attentive, horny or whatever. We can herd the cats in people heads to help them deal with a world that doesn't care if someone keeps changing the channel in their head. Consciousness can only do so much.
i'd love to be as disciplined and awesome as you are, but my brain works like a radio in scan mode. Ever few seconds the channel changes without any input from me. Without medication sleep i get about 4 hours of sleep per day because the noise will not stop. But the rest of the world is like you, they don't get it, and they don't give a shit. They don't care that i'm reliving conversations from 15 years ago while they are talking to me. All they care about is that i forgot what they said. If only i could be as attentive and perfect as you!
As for helmets... brain injuries are often permanent and life altering. It is a risk that just isn't worth taking. A helmet is tiny thing to require. Do you wear your seatbelt or are you so tough that you could just walk it off after slamming your head into a windshield at 50 MPH? Wow, you are so cool.
i will agree with you that some parents are over protective and paranoid with regards to kidnapping and molesters and the like. i was allowed to range far and wide as a kid. i didn't have to go far to encounter a molester, he was right next door which is more typical than the "guy in the van". Kids should be allowed a long enough leash to learn how to handle themselves.
On the matter of cocooning and protecting them from challenge, i agree. Giving kids challenges and allowing them to make decisions is usually great for their development. As long as some responsible adult is there to make sure it's not TOO stupid.
The third sentence from the end highlights your ignorance with a search light and flashing neon arrows. You say that they shouldn't be taking medication for anything less than a physical problem. ADD, ADHD, Aspergers and the like ARE PHYSICAL PROBLEMS. Your brain is part of your body. Those conditions are as physical as diabetes.
The last sentence makes me wonder if you're trolling. It's so unhinged that it seems like satire or concern trolling.
Become less ignorant:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9679423
http://www.crimetimes.org/02b/w02bp1.htm
http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm
http://enhs.umn.edu/current/6120/bicycle/index.html
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
If ever there was a post i wish i could mod up...
I believe we are seeing a large-scale, mental health version of the tragedy of the commons that has gone completely unregulated and will likely end even worse than the unregulated financial mess we're dealing with now. An ever-escalating war for the ever-decreasing attention span our mush-like minds still have left.
Media and advertising companies have incentives to continue to use ever more intrusive tactics to get access to our minds, and now the analytical tools to optimize those tactics. When I lived in LA, i was amazed that in some areas around hollywood I found it actually dangerous to drive, because every now and then BOOM, there's a 100ft tall poster of basically a naked woman advertising some brand of jeans or whatever. Equally potent for men and women -- the jeans you need to wear if you want the guys to want you, ladies, and to the men, a mental cue: this is what you should want.
I am serious. I left the United States in my early 20's for good, and all my mental health problems started going away. I am happy, healthy, less stressed, sleeping good, eating proper food, more successful, and most importantly less paranoid about every little frigen thing around me. It has take years however to repair the damage caused by living in the U.S., but I continue to see it in Americans that leave the United States for good all the time vs. those that are just on vacation. They go through a decompression process that progressively that typically takes at least a couple of years for them to "normalize" when they are adults. When kids move out before the teenage years are over, they are well adjusted, happy, more engaged in the World around them.
American culture is really really one of the sickest cultures I have seen anywhere in the World, and most of the damage is done in the teenage years. Any parent that sends their kids to a U.S. school, should be arrested for child abuse.
Living in Chile
Stop being a bunch of wussies!
I see someone just finished their copy of How To Win Friends and Influence People.
Seriously, kids today have to wear helmets just to ride a bike
Bicycle helmets reduce the severity of head injuries in an accident by 88%, so what's your point?
have some pediatrician putting them on powerful Autism medication if they don't start talking at just the right time
My daughter is 20 months old. Her "best friend" is the same age. My daughter has a huge vocabulary already, her friend doesn't speak at all. The friend was taken to her pediatrician, who FIRST tested to make sure she wasn't deaf. She was then sent to a child psychologist to determine her mental facilities. At that point, she was put into a speech therapy program where she has been taught sign language in order to communicate. That, BTW, is the standard protocol used when a child hasn't started speaking at an appropriate time. Is it true that some pediatricians will resort to medicinal treatments first? Sure, but they are the extreme exception not the norm. Your statement is blatent fear-mongering with no factual basis.
are diagnosed with Asperger's the second they show the least bit of shyness
Pure bullshit.
are taught by teachers who scream "AHDHD--Drug him up!" the first time they act out in class
You must be a farmer, 'cause you're just full of bullshit. First of all, ADHD (you'd think someone who wants to come off as intelligent would have no problem spelling an ACRONYM!) is a very real issue. As someone who has it, my first response to ADHD deniers is to tell you to fuck off. My second is to lambaste you for stupid statements like the above. Teachers have no say in if a child is placed on drugs. Teachers will refer students who are consistently poor performers, not those who simply "act out" once. They're then tested to ensure there are no underlying impediments to learning and if there are, they're treated. I'll break out the important point you're choosing to overlook:
Medicinal treatments for learning disorders are prescribed so that all children, regardless of ability, are given the chance to learn the same as those who do not have the disability.
and come home to parents who think that a child molester is hanging out on ever street corner just waiting to kidnap their kid. *They're* not the ones who are screwed up, it's the adults around them that are screwed up.
On this, we can agree that the chance of a child being kidnapped is less than their chance of being killed in a terrorist attack (which is fairly close to nil itself). That being said, the percentage of parents who spend any real mental effort worrying about such things is even smaller. Yes, as a parent, I've used the resources on the Internet to find out what kinds of sex offenders are close by, but don't check regularly.
JUST LET THEM BE KIDS, for Christ sake! Stop acting like there is something wrong with them because they're not perfect, or act differently than you expect, or make stupid mistakes.
The problem, dear dimwit, is that you have made up a world in which all parents spend all of their time doting on their children and completely missed the point of the article that these same children ARE dealing with significant issues. Your desire to simply ignore the problem in the hopes it will go away is the ignorant position.
BTW, forgot to ask the obvious question: how many kids do you have? I have a feeling it won't be a positive number. People will inane opinions like yours never have kids.
A kid shouldn't be taking medication for anything less than a serious physical problem.
Because of ignorant dimwits like you spreading bullshit like this, the kids in the article are suffering with issues that can easily be treated both by talk therapy and medicine. Your whole point is "parents are ignorant and don't know how to raise their kids", but really it's you who has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
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