Mental Illness

[dancerjodi]

This http://childrenshospitalblog.org/do-our-youth-really-have-more-mental-health-issues/ is one of the questions I ponder sometimes as I look around at people.

In days gone by, were these issues there and just not mentioned?
Have our lives gotten harder?
Have we become softer?
Is our environment taking its toll on our minds through our bodies?

I'm sure the answer lies in a combination of all of the above, which is why I find psychology and sociology so fascinating. :)

Comments

[christmasjedi.livejournal.com]

I think we're getting better at identifying and diagnosing mental issues. 60 years ago a person was simply Insane, or Crazy. Today they're Paranoid-Schizophrenic and there are medications to help them counteract their mental issues and lead a relatively normal life. It's easier to apply labels, and today there are often benefits to being labeled.

I've always had an anxiety disorder that has caused no end of misery, but it was only officially diagnosed when I got depression on top of it. The anxiety had been survivable, but now I'm on medication that helps and I wish I would have sought help 20 years ago. I can't even imagine how much better my quality of life could have been. (That is, if the drugs had been around back then.)

That said, I think some of today's parents are beyond paranoid - hypochondriacs, I suppose - and some are way too eager to chalk up their misbehaving kids to mental issues rather than take responsibility for being a bad parent. They never managed to teach their kids to behave in public, but chalk the issue up to ADHD and put them on medication, which if the kid doesn't have ADHD, only makes them worse.

I also think they're right about the internet and broader scope of the world today having an effect. Kids aren't as sheltered as they were 30 years ago and definitely have new things to deal with than we did as kids.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

But we recently discovered that a whole slew of mental disorders start much earlier than we thought they did - half of them by age 14 and 3/4 by age 24[1]. So even if the number of people who have mental disorders has stayed the same, simply by recognizing that they start earlier means we start figuring out what those early signs are so we can start treating it early (which is vital since the average delay in treatment across all mental disorders is a decade and untreated mental disorders tend to get both worse and more resistant to treatment[2]). So it's not simply a matter of parental hypochondria - it's a reflection of some really important information about when mental disorders appear and are then (not) treated.

[1] Source (PDF) (no relation ;P)
[2] Source (PDF)

[christmasjedi.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. I did say some. :)