Posted on 06/02/2017 7:59:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
More than 36 percent of teenage girls in America are depressed or have suffered a recent major depressive episode, according to a study published in Translational Psychiatry. For boys, the rate is 13.6 percent. What are we doing to the kids?
It isn't just one study. Research throughout the last several decades has shown a consistent pattern of rising anxiety, depression, suicide and suicide attempts among American adolescents. A 2001 paper published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that the suicide rate tripled between 1950 and 1990.
The rise in depression and other psychological suffering cannot be written off as an artifact of changing definitions. As Psychology Today reported, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a test of psychological well-being, has been administered to large samples of college students throughout the United States going as far back as 1938. A similar test called the MMPI-A has been given to samples of high school students since 1951. The results are unambiguous: Children, adolescents, and young adults have all experienced dramatic increases in anxiety and depression over the past several decades. The rates of these ailments were much lower during the Great Depression, World War II and the turbulent 1970s than they are today. I asked a New England college administrator with many decades of experience what the most notable change was that he saw among the students. I was wondering if perhaps their general knowledge might have declined over the years, or their political tolerance atrophied. What he said surprised me: "The most outstanding thing that has changed is the enormous growth in the number of students with mental health issues."
Nationwide, student health centers are inundated with mental health concerns. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ohio State in the past five years has seen a 43 percent increase in students seeking mental health counseling. At the University of Central Florida, the requests for mental health treatment have increased 12 percent annually for the past decade.
Young people who are not in college are even more prone to depression and anxiety, if less likely to seek help. A Child Trends report suggests that adults 18-29 living below the poverty line were twice as likely as others to report depressive symptoms.
Something is robbing young people of happiness and well-being. Figuring out what it is requires a certain modesty. Still, you will find many a facile explanation accompanying reports of these findings. Time magazine, for example, fingered social media. "It's hard for many adults to understand how much of teenagers' emotional life is lived within the small screens on their phones." An Ohio State therapist who spoke to The Wall Street Journal cited "the economy, the rising cost of tuition, the impact of social media and a so-called helicopter-parenting style that doesn't allow adolescents to experience failure."
There is no doubt that social media brings out the savage in human nature (Twitter is enough to depress me), and surely "helicopter" parents should permit their kids to grow up, but these explanations strike me as wide of the mark.
The most consequential social change of the past several decades is not the dawn of social media but changing family structure, and it turns out that adolescent depression and suicide are closely linked with divorce and single parenting. Teens who live with a single parent have twice the rate of suicide attempts as those who live with both parents. The same is true of other forms of distress and self-harm. To understand why kids are so anxious and depressed, we should look not just to their phones but to their homes.
Still, if a couple has divorced or never married in the first place, all is not lost. One reason family instability is so hard on kids is that the financial, social and work pressures the parents endure tend to make them less available for their kids. Single parents can try to compensate. Even if teenagers are living in a single-parent home, the quality of their relationships with their parents remains critically important to their risk of depression. Adolescents whose mothers were warm and supportive during disagreements, rather than angry or argumentative, showed lower rates of sadness, anxiety and lack of self-control. A study from Israel found that children who were close to their parents suffered fewer psychological effects after being under rocket attack than children who did not receive such support. Adolescents who engaged in activities with their mothers were less likely to commit suicide than those who didn't. Someone coined the term "fragile families" to describe the social experiment we've been undergoing for the past several decades. The suspicion that it has led to fragile psyches is strong.
Technology. Technology keeps them from sleeping, which trashes their health, especially during puberty. Technology connects them to social media, which a giant negative feedback loop and echo chamber from which they never get a break.
I'm sure there are other factors, but these explain a lot.
Was thinking the same thing. These teens are being raised by selfish immature people. That makes any child/teen feel like their life is unstable and unbalanced. The “adults” in their lives don’t behave like adults by setting examples of working thru hardships ( with spouses, jobs, etc) so they have no role model for how to handle the difficulties of life.
In the old days parents would sacrifice to raise their children right( which did not mean giving them everything they wanted). Would get up on Sunday mornings , get dressed neatly and respectfully, go to church, listen to a sermon explaining how God wanted them to believe and act, come home for a nice meal together as a family to connect and talk, and try to follow those rules throughout the week. Now the single mom or deadbeat dad may be too hung over to even get up and make breakfast for the kids.
Very sad
I was thinking more along these lines:
When we were young the future was so bright
The old neighborhood was so alive
And every kid on the whole damn street
Was gonna make it big and not be beat
Now the neighborhood’s cracked and torn
The kids are grown up but their lives are worn
How can one little street
Swallow so many lives
Chances thrown
Nothing’s free
Longing for what used to be
Still it’s hard
Hard to see
Fragile lives, shattered dreams
Do you know it?
All the more reason to Make America Great Again!
Dang Yes- had zepplin on the mind lol- thanks for the correction
The dictatorship of the self and its supposed rights is eating its own.
Not to get too much like Gen Jack D. Ripper, but I’ve heard nasty stories about widespread introduction of soy into young people’s diets and the attendant physical accelerated growth. If girls and young women are maturing physically way faster than their minds, I can’t fathom the attendant mental problems. Throw absentee/narcissistic parents on top of that (see my comment earlier in this thread), and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Actually that’s second. First is to vilify God and remove any mention of Him - good is evil and evil is bad. The rest is easy after that. It’s the same formula the devil has been using over and over since the garden. Now he’s on his last desperate chance before the Day of the Lord arrives here soon.
People are sold a bill of goods that says that if they are not happy, there must be something wrong with them, and it just exacerbates the problem.
Me. I adhere to Frank Zappa’s advice.....”Don’t expect friends, don’t expect fun, don’t expect a good life, don’t expect anything and if you get something, it’s a bonus.”
It works for me.
During one of the many training sessions on PTSD I sat through before I retired they mentioned six risk factors for developing PTSD. One was a traumatic childhood, I asked the instructor could a divorce be be considered traumatic, after much avoidance he finally admitted yes. This led to several Soldiers in the room doing the “not my child” dance.
I have also seen this personally with friends I grew up with. One was a straight A student until his parents divorced in middle school. He drank himself to death at the age of 42.
Not hard to figure out. The children have been deceived by the cultural polluters and followers of the dark one.
1 John 3:7 Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous
Good point! I stand corrected.
Of course they are depressed! Have you seen what passes for music these days!
If I wouldn’t have had Van Halen I would have eaten a bullet myself.
Their culture SUCKS!!!!!!
My apologies if I came across as being “corrective”. I really was only adding more commentary to yours. I just noticed that I messed mine up, it should be “good is evil and evil is good” not “evil is bad”! Duh! LOL!
LOL - no need to apologize! You are absolutely correct. I should have said that it is necessary to sever family ties in order to impose socialism and/or communish, not that it was the first order of business. However, looking at our educational history, it looks like Christianity and families have been under assault about the same time. God does come first though ;)
This social media stuff changes the way people think in my opinion.
Also the ubiquitous and pervasive nature of porn in this era where every phone is a video player/recorder hooked up to the internet probably isn’t too good for society.
Freegards
Leftists will be looking at this and doubling down on stupid by calling for more feminism now.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
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