Via a text message from Stephanie:
The Pathologization Pandemic: Why youth mental illness is surging
A 2020 Pew survey of over 10,000 Americans found that self-described liberals aged 18-29 were more likely than self-described conservatives of the same age to report suffering psychological problems over the last week. They were also more than twice as likely to say they’d ever been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Furthermore, those who were “very liberal” were more likely than those who were just “liberal” to report poor mental health. The group most likely to report poor mental health was young white liberal females, an alarming 56% of whom reported having received a mental illness diagnosis.
Crucially, controlling for worldview narrowed the gender gap considerably: liberal men were more likely to report poor mental health than conservative women. It would seem, then, that the mental health epidemic among girls and young women is associated with their tendency to have a more Left-liberal mindset than boys and young men — a difference that’s becoming more pronounced over time.
Initially I gave this post the title, “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”. But given the actual content of the article that would have been a stretch. This is the critical thesis of the article:
An analysis of data from 86,138 adolescents found, in line with the Pew survey, that between 2005 and 2018 the self-reported mental health of liberals had deteriorated more than conservatives’, and that this deterioration was worst for girls. The researchers blamed this on “alienation within a growing conservative political climate”. However, the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg debunked this explanation by pointing out that liberals’ mental health woes began while Obama was in power and as the Supreme Court voted to extend gay marriage rights — hardly a conservative political climate.
A more robust explanation lies in the difference in outlook between liberals and conservatives. Central to Leftism is equality, which is best justified by the idea that people’s fortunes and misfortunes are not their own doing, and therefore undeserved. As such, Leftism de-emphasizes the role of human agency in social outcomes, while overemphasizing the role of environmental circumstances. As the West has shifted culturally Leftward — due to most writers and artists leaning Left — the depiction of people as puppets of their environment has become dominant.
I found the article be very insightful and thought provoking. Perhaps a much more healthy was to reduce the political divide in our country is to encourage a change of mindset, of all people, not just those we are politically opposition with:
The solution to pathologization, then, lies not in politics but in psychology.
The polar opposite of pathologization is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Although referred to as therapy, it’s closer to a form of mental training. Based on the Ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism, it teaches a lesson the West has all but forgotten: that our feelings are not always valid, but often deluded and self-destructive. It trains people to overcome harmful emotions by reframing harmful thoughts into alternatives that are more agentic and soluble. So, “That made me angry” becomes “I reacted to that by getting angry.” And “Life sucks” becomes “I feel like life sucks right now.” Where pathologization places problems outside your control, CBT places them within your control. Where pathologization bundles many small issues into one giant insurmountable problem, CBT breaks down giant problems into small manageable pieces.
No approach in psychiatry has been as rigorously tested as CBT, and its effectiveness in restoring agency and reigniting hope is documented by decades of research.
Direct opposition and yelling at each other doesn’t seem to be working. Let’s try something else.
If only we were reducing anxiety in our population with CBT and not CBD.
I know others who disagree, but those marijuana dispensaries popping up all over California like mushrooms after a rain are not good.
Yes, another gateway vector to the destruction of humanity in the west.
As Gavin the Nuisance said, “Sobriety is highly overrated.”
And I have to admit that’s what it must take to live in California with his crew. Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
“Sobriety is highly overrated.”
That’s Not what Governor Brylcreme said when he wanted the support of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
My mind is quite capable of manufacturing its own hallucinogens. I don’t need to spend my hard-earned money or accelerate the process on the Leftist-approved psychotropic drugs.
Ya, he forgot to add that Truth was highly overrated in his book to.
To me, your first conclusion was correct, Joe.
And this is just another PhD. seeking relevance? For the entirety of human existence we have had to protect the young. Why?
Because their a bunch of hormone driven idiots, that’s why. Their synapse works fast, but they lack experience.
If they weren’t young we would put them in asylums. (Eating Tide pods and jump off roofs with a sheet around one’s neck.)
They are insane, but that’s what it takes to grow.
Who teaches them what they learn in those years will give quantifiable results.
Communists have taught them to express their feelings as reality.
Instead of how to use a tool to provide for oneself. Liberalism/communism is a mental disorder. And their training children to stay in that mentally disordered state.
That young girls have more mental issues is a big surprise to whom?
The PhD’s should be pointing out that these things are natural and without them we can’t exist as a species.
Because that’s what it takes to bare children. (No thinking person would voluntarily piss a watermelon, would they?)
A measure of insanity is natural human condition. A study pointing it out the obvious, while interesting, seems to leave one…..lacking.
Maybe I’m missing something?
Please note that Marxism / Woke / Queer Theory / etc of the left actively and deliberately pushes the victim/oppressor dichotomy mindset. It’s not just important, it’s a central dogma to the whole system. Communism literally divorces you from reality and a sense of agency, tries to make you a subsumed part of the whole. Yes, it does drive you insane, because it’s evil. And that is not an accident; it’s deliberate; crazy people are easy to manipulate, because they will try just about anything to relieve the cognitive dissonance and stress it creates in their brain.
Country folk, who have to interact with reality on a regular basis, and get immediate natural feedback from their decisions, tend to be conservative and well-grounded because they know the natural doesn’t care about their feelings. City folk, whose lives are run by rules of man where gaming the system is the only way to get ahead because all the rules are artificial and only randomly enforced, are more susceptible to communism.
I suspect the enormous rise in mental illness is a direct result of the social changes that came from the destruction of the family unit and it’s related societal norms. The left deliberately destroyed the American family and the social constructs that came with it leaving people unanchored and adrift mentally and emotionally. We are seeing the result of that played out as massive increases in mental derangement. The family unit and the social norms attached to it evolved over millenia. Destroying it in one-two generations has had a very destructive effect on young people who NEED structure to adequately grow into adulthood.
minor epiphany: “Where pathologization bundles many small issues into one giant insurmountable problem, CBT breaks down giant problems into small manageable pieces.”
Compare to intersectionality.