Posted on 06/12/2005 1:43:01 PM PDT by neverdem
THE release last week of a government-sponsored survey, the most comprehensive to date, suggests that more than half of Americans will develop a mental disorder in their lives.
The study was the third, beginning in 1984, to suggest a significant increase in mental illness since the middle of the 20th century, when estimates of lifetime prevalence ranged closer 20 or 30 percent.
But what does it mean when more than half of a society may suffer "mental illness"? Is it an indictment of modern life or a sign of greater willingness to deal openly with a once-taboo subject? Or is it another example of the American mania to give every problem a name, a set of symptoms and a treatment - a trend, medical historians say, accentuated by drug marketing to doctors and patients?
Changes in societies over time, and differences across cultures, make it extremely difficult to compare prevalence levels of mental illness, even today. Levels of depression in China were thought to be very low, for example, until the Harvard anthropologist Dr. Arthur Kleinman found in the 1980's that many Chinese did not think or talk about mood disorders the way Westerners do. They came to doctors or healers with physical complaints - dizziness, headaches and other pains that were treated as such, though in many cases they could be diagnosed as depression. A World Health Organization survey published in 2004 found that 2.5 percent of Chinese reported a mood disorder in the last year, compared with a rate of 9.6 percent in the United States.
In Japan, too, reported levels of depression tend to be low - just over 3 percent reported a mood disorder in the last year, in the W.H.O. survey - in part because of a culture of stoicism, said Dr. Laurence Kirmayer, director...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
According to my ex I am, but according to all my friends I'm OK!! They are known to be a little warped at times thou.
All seven of my personalities are in agreement that I am not mentally ill.
This is very serious news - this means that the Dems have a chance!
Neither, although some want to see these illusory things. It is a part of the State institution of law, which includes corrections, hospitals, and police. That there is more illness being identified is the State asserting more authority over the citizens.
That this is a NYT article could be evidence that the Liberals at the NYT are doing everything they can think of to increase the power of the State and reduce individual freedom, hardly a liberal attitude.
SPeaking of mental illness:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1421505/posts
But if the majority of the voters are crazy, then the state is.
That actually seems to be their position after Bush won.
And the weird thing is, most of the people I know who really are mentally ill think they are just fine. They think everyone else is crazy.
That's not a joke.
The red X is a picture of my ex how did you get it??
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
And it is an excellent short list of, well, prominent people with issues...
>>>And the weird thing is, most of the people I know who really are mentally ill think they are just fine. They think everyone else is crazy.
And they're probably right.. a lot of people who are considered mentally ill actually have a better grasp of essential truths than people who are "normal" and spend their lives fretting over trivialities. Now, that's crazy.
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