Slashdot Mirror
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).'"
unrealistic optimism
Isn't that just "The American Dream"?
Ah, the obligatory bigoted luddite anti-medical "ADHD doesn't exist" comment. They're popular in Slashdot.
For the record, ADHD is aneurodevelopmental disorder. It can certainly _cause_ many mental health issues if left undiagnosed and untreated, which it would be if it was up to agressive anti-evidence based medicine spiritualists like you. You disgust me and I hope you never have children you can hurt.
Children today are encouraged to speak their feelings, to elaborate on their dreams and their worries, the technology and culture to do so are omnipresent.
Women didn't suddenly develop personal politics the instant the 19th amendment was passed, they were simply more allowed to exercise it.
Children are more deep, complex, disturbed, ADD, Autistic, sexual, etc etc, because they are allowed to communicate in a more meaningful way than they were before.
In a "Don't speak unless spoken to" culture, it takes a fool to wonder why nobody knew what children were thinking.
All hail the experts. People like this are responsible for the hell that can sometimes be 21st-century childhood.
Make no mistake: Though clothed in the garb of positivism, this kind of language reveals a hypocritical, raving, megalomaniacal True Believer.
Apparently only certified, licensed evidentialists are qualified to "adjust" children. Not only does their evidence tell them all about the physiological nature of pathology, but it also somehow reveals exactly how we should feel about (and value) the information in order to act upon it. We now can see that there is only One True Path for dealing with such calamities. Scientism has spoken, and it is more Mystical than we ever knew!
The stunning irony is how this "evidence" worshiper has arrived at such astonishing and illogical conclusions about what the parent post is trying to say. If that's how we treat evidence, we're in big trouble.
It is quite easy for intelligent students to excel in many US undergraduate programs with minimal effort. Many students can succeed without lots of studying.
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.
Awesome. I hope this becomes a standard treatment. Karl Marx said it well, "The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain." Heavy physical exertion quickly takes the mind off of its own self-serving merry-go-round.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Things aren't everything. America is pretty much "dead man walking" as a viable culture today.
The food that most kids eat often contains flavor enhancers such as aspartame, sucralose, splenda, and MSG (aka 'autolyzed plant protein,' 'hydrolyzed plant protein') that have powerful neurological effects (that's why they are effective in stimulating the tongue nerve cells). Unfortunately, though, many of these substances also have toxic effects on nerve cells due to overstimulation or other means. Other neurotoxins in widespread use (compared with 1938) include solvents, lead, cell phone radiation, mercury, drugs, and high blood sugar (diabetes and pre-diabetes are much more widespread due in part to increased sugar consumption). It's likely that the increased environmental exposure of children to neurotoxins since 1938 has caused much of the increase in mental illness.
>
Ah, great question.
They have more now, because the mental health industry says they have more, so people in the mental health industry can use this to justify even more dollars poured into their worthless hands (psychiatrists and big pharma).
Plus, a lot of new "disorders" have been invented since then, so go figure.
They are almost as bad as the Man-Made Global Warming -- er -- Climate Change -- er -- Global Cooling fear-mongers.