Cherokee study: As poverty falls, psychiatric problems improve

http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-402615.html

snip

During a study of psychiatric disorders and drug abuse near a Cherokee reservation, Costello said she and her colleagues noticed that some Cherokee families had earnings above poverty level after tribal leaders distributed casino revenues -- about $6,000 per person in 2000. Some of the money is intended for the tribe's children, and is being held in trust funds until they turn 18, she said.

The researchers examined the mental health of 1,420 children -- 350 of them Native Americans -- over eight years to see if poverty was linked to specific emotional and behavioral problems in children, and if that would change if they were no longer poor. The children, ages 9 to 13, were given annual psychiatric assessments to test the theory.

The income supplements lifted 14 percent of the families in the study out of poverty. Another 53 percent of families remained poor, and 32 percent were never technically considered "poor." The psychiatric symptoms in the never-poor, persistently poor and formerly poor children were compared during the four years before and after the casino opened.

The researchers reported finding that families moving out of poverty had a decreased frequency of psychiatric symptoms over the four years. By the fourth year, the psychiatric symptom level was the same among children whose families moved out of poverty as it was for children whose families were never poor. However, increasing the incomes of never-poor families had no effect on the frequency of behavioral or emotional symptoms.

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Figuring out that people have fewer psychological problems when they can afford to meet their most basic needs required a fancy study???


rocknation

But I realize it's important because it combats the wilful, malicious studies supported by conservative organizations such as the Manhattan Institute.

some people (neo-cons) were certain that the reason that there are high rates of mental illness among poor children is that the poor are less mentally stable to begin with, with mental health problems causing the poverty. So yes, this is an important study to refute that theory.

when a child is sick they get to see the doctor...
when a child is hungry they get food to eat...
when a child needs rest and security they have a safe home...
when a child needs love they have a parent who CAN provide...

duhhhh....could any of this have an effect on the childs
mental health?

when a family or individual is resonably wellfed, secure healthy and feeling worthwhile & productive...sure makes it a lot harder for the corporations to control them doesn't it?

Think about where this society is.....we work work work ( more hours & weeks than most European countries per year-with fewer vacations)to buy "things"...medical care is basically not available to a large percentage of the population, if you don't owe and have never had a credit card or bought "on credit" you do not exist in the system, we are brainwashed 24/7 that we need acohol/sex/drugs/to have a certain "look" and to own certain things (car,clothes,house etc etc) ....we have to have a certain amount of money in our "portfolio" to take care of when we "retire"....there is crap spewing at us from the TV 24/7 about what a great country this is and how we need this and should believe that about those "others"..................sigh.....I don't really feel like I belong here anymore.......

Anyhow...I'm glad the N.AM's are getting money from the casinos or where ever that makes their lives easier...an interesting karmic twist, I'd say.....

Peace
DR

Your post made me cry. Would you share with me more of what you feel when you say, "I don't really feel like I belong here anymore......."
as I also have felt that and heard so many say it recently.

All good things to you,

Karenina

It's getting harder and harder to come by these days.

Where's my Lexapro?

This is a long post...

I feel the same as desert rose does.
The market has people in a thrall scrambling.People are so unaware of what's happening around them in the world it's scary.Too many people identify thier own interests with corrupted systems and'leaders' way too much.
I really feel the "market" has become a very sick invention.It profits from human obedience,misery,deprivation,fear,war,
insecurity,sickness,death,hate and dispair too much because it needs deprivation to function.It needs unequality because it is profit driven.Marketers know happy unabused people are harder for business to extract labor,demand obedience and foster addictions out of.So contentment and happiness are the first things to get undermined in the name of profit.The market needs humanity to be empty inside and not know why,agressive to compete,unfufilled to buy,disconnected from empowerment,wanting more,insecure about what they have so they are compulsive and arrogant,always looking for an outside authority to guide them,so they won't be accoutable,so they don't have to be guilty, and the market wants people kept ignorant of themselves looking for a fix/escape to buy to get them out of psychological duress and away from themselves.
This is not a recipie for conditioning a healthy society psychologically.

I really think as a species we are committing planetary anthrocide and for the most part it kicks up realizations this is true from the unconsious,maybe that's one of the reasons that's why depression is so rampant in our society. Don't expect a study to prove this because it would undermine the companies agendas who fund studies.We have been warned by the best and brightest of the dangers of this civilization for years, there have been calls to stop this all consuming 'progress', to find alternate fuels,curb product consuption,treat the poor and vunerable people better,and become consious.. yet we don't listen to the world's suffering and ignore signs of envioronmental breakdown/We shut down our empathy, close our ears, we don't share,we hoard,hide and 'grow' our profits instead.The "market" is leading the way to the end,and our leaders would rather destroy the world in M.A.D.nuclear tempertantrum than give up this insidious control of our hearts,children,labor,wealth,bodies,beliefs and minds.

I don't belong here because so many people seem to be on a different wavelength than me.
And when you bring up issues of profit and it's link to destruction,pollution,mental illness povery injustice in public people hate you for it,they brand you a kook, and will not listen to it.It's like they know the situation that civilization as we do it now has caused is dire,it's nuts, it's making us sick, killing the Planet they still defend the corrupted system that abuses the planet like a battered wife defending the bastard that punches her in the face when he's drunk or a hostage with stockholm syndrome telling everyone how his captor was a good guy.It's a social psychological problem that has been exploited by hierarchical unequal civilizations since the dawn of time,That stockholm syndrome like problem in our civilization is the elephant in the livingroom of every human brain.

It's like human civilization has become cancerous to the world,to the human spirit,the Earth and her creatures. Yet we do what the boss and market demands even if it kills us.We condition our kids to live as we do no matter how unhappy we are with how we live now and can see the annilation this way of life leads us. The market has made an unbalanced social situation hideously self-destructive greedy and vicious.

When will more people seek to undermine the marketplace morality that corrupts and destroys the good parts of human hearts,? when will more people make the changes of heart to say No and resist when money dominates our lives and profit is permitted to determine our ethical values for us and direct the collective values of our culture ? The market isn't alive, it can't feel pain,or cry or love..The stocks don't care about encoraging limits on greed or fostering sharing amongst freinds or communities. It's all about growth profit and taking away from others. Sharing what we have with each other without scamming for selfish gain will stop the greed machine destroying us all. Here's an example of how powerful simple sharing is..

P2P networks became a threat to the 'music' industry because it was based in people sharing what they bought before with each other, it was not for profit.It was ok when these networks were small time.But when the idea caught on that sharing could be a viable alternative to profit,the shit hit the fan.The music industry has made ill gotten gains at the expense of artists before but people have forgotten that.Look at the history of black musicians in the 50's and see how they got shafted by record companies,it's appalling.CD stores still sell concert bootlegs and rip offs ,some have even been busted for it(See yodelin'pig) and they have the audacity to bitch about P2P networks eating up thier profits as if sharing with others is evil incarnate. They arrest 12 year olds to stop people from sharing what they already paid for with each other...What's wrong with this picture? People haven't realized that profit in of itself is the true theft.
The market morality has no social consience.Sharing reinforces social consience.Greedy people hate to share.

In our society wealth comes with no strong social expectation of sharing or giving back to communities when people get wealth and 'sucess'. This is a HUGE flaw in our thinking and we don't see it.The fool republicans who still postulate this 'trickle down' voodoo fantasy theory of economics and goodwill greed haven't gotten honest enough with themselves and thier own greediness to figure out thier penchant for selfishness ,domination,unbridled competition,privatization,ambition and greed doesen't know when to stop taking on it's own,it knows no moderation until it's all gone.Sharing on the other hand makes sure everyone has some because it's not based in depriving people or scamming for profit.

Societies are ALWAYS made up of individuals and each person in a society can color the way societies behave by excercising thier consiences and determining how much they are willing to risk to stand by thier consience. Each of us ARE responsible for what this society and it's government does and does not do because we could stop them if we really wanted to and really decided to risk it..The "chain of command" ends and begins with your own consience and your own inner ethical sense it always has,always will. People hate hearing this.

I feel I don't belong here because my character is different than most of societies seems to be.Survival isn't my highest law.