Study: More of today's US youth have serious mental health issues than previous generations

By Martha Irvine (CP) – 1 day ago

CHICAGO — A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students in the U.S. are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues than youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era.

The findings, culled from responses to a popular psychological questionnaire used as far back as 1938, confirm what counsellors on campuses nationwide have long suspected as more students struggle with the stresses of school and life in general.

"It's another piece of the puzzle - that yes, this does seem to be a problem, that there are more young people who report anxiety and depression," says Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor and the study's lead author. "The next question is: what do we do about it?"

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.

Read more here http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gBI4SQOMnufssMGrc6v-pd6P-iLw

Or they handled it better?

as illnesses, not as character flaws - which makes it easier to admit you need some help.

people have to deal with and some people can deal with it and some people need help dealing with it. During the depression people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and dealt with it. Nowadays people need help dealing with it because we teach them all that if they have anxiety they're crippled and can't function.

and were told to shut their dumb poor asses up.

The MMPI was first widely used in 1938. It was revised and re-normed in 1989 (MMPI-2) but in such a way as to maintain continuity with the older form of the test. I have interpreted the results of literally thousands of those things.

'to do' inside the house eclipses going outside to visit neighbors or to make valid life-long friends.

Plus the 'pulse' of the world today must be confounding to young people vs. a more laid-back approach I, or we, contended with. And yes, that was pre-'puters and all that entails/entailed.

and it's a big however,

I wonder how much of it is also due to the fact that in days gone by the people that were in college came from wealthier, better educated families (or, at least, were better educated people), as opposed to now, when entrance into a college (except the really good ones) is basically a given and they'll take anybody, AND that even the lower economic rung have (thank God) access to a college education.

All of which is to say that, in the olden days, the sample group (for this type of survey) was a pretty small microcosm of the entirety of the United States, whereas the sample group now is a pretty fair representation of the entirety of our cultural/social fabric.

On the snarky side, though a good majority of me does actually believe it: my answer to the question, "How do we solve this?" is "Get rid of Republicans (at least the teabaggers, freepers, and Limbaugh fans) and the prosperity gospel Christians, and that will solve a hell of a lot of our problems".

You'd need facts and figures to back up your assertion.

What a joke. You state a claim based on personal observation, then have the gall to actually state I should come up with facts and figures for stating a FACT.

To compare today to the 1930s is apples and oranges.

Wake em up, drop them off, take them when they are sick. Babies, toddlers, children all institutionalized from the get go?

Parents harried and never getting a rest either?

Apples and oranges comparison. If we had the same mental health infrastructure in place during the Great Depression as had today, I guarantee the results would be about the same for both eras.

I can't believe I wasted my time with some clown like you.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/timeline/index.html
http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/research/res_topics_health_mh_timeline.shtml
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=11509775
http://books.google.com/books?id=vo46Jqvu_8oC&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=mental+health+facilities+in+the+1930s+as+compared+to+today&source=bl&ots=n1sYjUl2ot&sig=hVJo2nXRahWTQCqnDFEVSJiI3Os&hl=en&ei=yj5NS7KEM4jklAe8iPWNDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=&f=false
http://health.howstuffworks.com/lobotomy3.htm
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~natalieb/sociwelfare.htm

with similar mental health infrastructure.

All you did is point out there were different kinds of infrastructure.

but then, my Mom was a daycare teacher & may of the kids would call her "Mom", so........

Too many important developmental tasks delegated to churches and daycare.

authority, guidance to another to do.

i agree.

their responsibility to provide parental guidance, translated that into something like "I will MAKE this child right" probably out of a sense of ownership (and usually belated ownership at that point), when, IMHO, the appropriate developmental task is to HELP the child discover HOW to be whatever, right/good/ethical, themselves, because as Kahlil Gibran says in The Prophet, your children do not belong to you. They aren't yours to make into somekind of image of yourself. They have their own lives to live.

the key to parenting.

and 100% more effective.

the given is we have NO control over the child. we cannot MAKE anyone do anything.

the best we can do is provide the foundation, structure, .... teach and hopefully the child will make the choice to do.

s, how to Love (everyone/anyone), how to grow . . . I'm sure you can think of more.

If they can't live without leaning on others too much for _______________, they are maladapted, which adds up to dangerous dysfunction on a social scale and. ultimately, even extinction, no matter how good things might look on the surface of it all at any given point. There's real research on this from the likes of Stanley Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo and others.

norm: one's parents &/or inlaws would live with the kids & grandkids, aunts & uncles would be nearby as well. There was an uptick in anxiety & depression among women in the 1950s that I suspect was a result of being disconnected from her family after marriage.

.. that doing a real study like this is impossible. Back in the 30s, there were no psychiatric medications. If you were anxious, there was no reason to go to a doctor about it because what could he do, prescribe Jack Daniels?

I think lots of people endured these things back then and now everyone runs to the dr at the first sign of an issue. And I know for a fact that psychiatrists will prescribe medication after 1 visit. Diagnosis consists of a 15 minute interview.

I don't doubt there is more mental illness now, I just doubt it's 5 times worse.

In the Depression if you had anxiety you would go out and blow off some steam with some Jack Daniels with your buddies and read a book.

Now if you have anxiety...you get pills. And you never just DEAL with the anxiety.

Sure, its possible there is more anxiety nowadays, maybe. But there are also pharmacuetical (sp?) companies spending billions of $$$ trying to convince people that they are anxious and the only way to not be anxious is with a magical pill.

a society, continually.

look at the depression era. hungry, without money. but the scheme of things, very well protected too.... (and many children are watching loss of job, no money, cant keep roof over head today too), but in those times, kids were unaware of much of the world. truly was a simpler time.

they had a whole family support system, not to mention community. many living in same less populated area all their lives.

today children are raised in a half hazard way

i can easily see....

also seemed like in the past we raised our kids to self sufficient then they stepped into the world to process. today we seem to give them the whole adult world as children, but not the tools to self sufficiency. leaving them with a great handicap


* had this article early today. my post from it.

responsible for helping the young process that stuff are capable of actually doing that.

people may not usually pass beliefs, and hence VALUES, on by personally explicitly naming and explaining their actual beliefs, the totality of their actual identification with their OWN beliefs and values affects what the young learn, whether that is ever articulated or not. If they don't, at least intuitively, know what they believe nor why, no matter how many "spirit filled" highs the young experience, they will be rootless and empty.

Personally, I'm beginning to think, on the average, churches interfere with this process. Something external gets substituted for the individual identification piece.

I was bombarded with ads, like many gen xers, showing that you needed money and nice clothes, a nice car to be a success. We were shown that material things were all that was important and if you dont have these things you are a loser. When lots of us gave up on that lifestyle we were ridiculed as slackers. I was depressed with how shitty a world was that you were judged by your clothes and your car and not by your character. Once I stopped caring I felt a lot better.

is empty, others . . . not so much.

"The study also showed increases in "psychopathic deviation," which is loosely related to psychopathic behaviour in a much milder form and is defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don't apply to you. The percentage of young people who scored high in that category increased from 5 per cent in 1938 to 24 per cent in 2007." so smoking reefer and not giving a damn that it is illegal means that I think stupid rules do not apply to me. Speeding on the highway would be the same. I guess I have that deviation.