SOURCE: C. B. PEDERSEN & P. B. MORTENSEN ARCH. GEN...Posted on 06/22/2011 5:37:44 PM PDT by neverdem
Epidemiologists showed decades ago that people raised in cities are more prone to mental disorders than those raised in the countryside. But neuroscientists have avoided studying the connection, preferring to leave the disorderly realm of the social environment to social scientists. A paper in this issue of Nature represents a pioneering foray across that divide.
Using functional brain imaging, a group led by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg's Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, showed that specific brain structures in people from the city and the countryside respond differently to social stress (see pages 452 and 498). Stress is a major factor in precipitating psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.
The work is a first step towards defining how urban life can affect brain biology in a way that has a potentially major impact on society — schizophrenia affects one in 100 people. It may also open the way for greater cooperation between neuroscientists and social scientists. "There has been a long history of mutual antipathy, particularly in psychiatry," says sociologist Craig Morgan at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. "But this is the sort of study that can prove to both sides that they can gain from each others' insights."
Meyer-Lindenberg works on risk mechanisms in schizophrenia, and previously focused on the role of genes. But although a dozen or so genes have been linked to the disorder, "even the most powerful of these genes conveys only a 20% increased risk", he says. Yet schizophrenia is twice as common in those who are city-born and raised as in those from the countryside, and the bigger the city, the higher the risk (see 'Dose response?').
SOURCE: C. B. PEDERSEN & P. B. MORTENSEN ARCH. GEN...(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Well that would explain NYC.
IMO, Mental illness is actually physical illness manifested in the brain and personality.
Explains why so much of liberalism eminates from cities. Not just in America, but all over the world.
Some of us are old enough to remember the tail end of the hippy movement, back in 1969-1975 or ‘76, when all the hippies got it in their heads to “move out to the country.” They started communes, built domes and tree houses, got back to nature.
Now they want to force everyone back into cities. More wilderness for them, more misery for all the rest.
I’ve always been curious about this. Does city living make people crazy, or do crazy people gravitate towards cities?
Finally real proof that liberals are crazy!
I've seen several MSM stories recently about how baby boomers are leaving the suburbs and moving downtown for retirement. I know absolutely ZERO people who have done this. I think it's total B.S. or maybe just in NYC and Wash DC where the MSM all live.
So will city dwellers now be considered handicapped, under the auspices of the ADA? Reparations one way or another.
Well it would explain why liberals on the coasts think the folks in the rural areas (especially in fly-over country) are backwards. The reality is that the majority of city dwellers are nuts. No common sense at all. Maybe that also explains why the Washington DCers become so loony after awhile. I think the mental illness actually does have a name - Potomac Fever.
Sorry, but this was too good to pass up.
That is true, and it is smart, of course not many retirees are boomers.
LOL.... I sure didn’t need a neuroscientist to tell me that you city folks were crazy.
I think it's some of both.
There is a lot more infrastructure to deal with mental illness in cities. Plus, there are a lot more "kindred spirits." Misery loves company.
Great quote! One for my file.
No surprise to us country folk.
An astute student of history and human nature, Thomas Jefferson, predicted what we see happening here in America. While a strong case can be made that the French aristocracy brought it upon themselves, as ambassador in France, he witnessed the run up to the FIRST socialist/communist revolution there. He penned the following observations concerning what would happen HERE should that socialism come to the United States. He CORRECTLY predicted that we would become an increasingly contentious and litigious people as we shouldered one another out of the way to get OURS from the public trough and the trough would soon be empty.
He also knew where the bulk of the problem would originate.
That whirring noise you may hear coming from that mountain in Charlottesville, Virginia is Mr. Jefferson getting up to around 3600 RPM.
(A 6 minute video with this information may be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypLu49pq3bI)
As I understand it, at the time of the drafting of the Declaration, Mr. Jefferson originally wrote “…Life, Liberty and PROPERTY…” (meaning that one’s right to freely acquire, use and dispose of his property – to the extent doing so did not violate the same to others – was a Creator endowed right. Because slavery viewed humans as property, the phrase “Pursuit of Happiness” was adopted instead to avoid – at least for the time being — the inevitable debate on that subject.
“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230
“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers 12:442
“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.” —Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
“Our cities... exhibit specimens of London only; our country is a different nation.” —Thomas Jefferson to Andre de Daschkoff, 1809. ME 12:304
“Everyone, by his property or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs and a degree of freedom which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:401
“An insurrection... of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth... has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:402
“I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England.” —Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:120
I lived in NYC many years ago for about a year and a half and it made me go crazy - I hated it!
Interesting, only an ocean and half a century separate these two paintings. Urban isolation can be very disturbing to the psyche.
|
· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe · |
|||
Antiquity Journal & archive Archaeologica Archaeology Archaeology Channel BAR Bronze Age Forum Discover Dogpile Eurekalert LiveScience Mirabilis.ca Nat Geographic PhysOrg Science Daily Science News Texas AM Yahoo Excerpt, or Link only? |
|
||
|
· Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword · |
|||
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
