Well, I’m back in Minnesota now, but I’ve got a couple of more posts about the information I shared during the teacher training in Dallas last Saturday. I talked a bit about the Hardwired to Connect report, using some passages from a sermon I gave last year. Here’s the gist of it:
According to Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities (a report by The Commission on Children at Risk), the “mental and behavioral health of U.S. children” is deteriorating.
We are witnessing high and rising rates of depression, anxiety, attention deficit/conduct disorders, thoughts of suicide, and other mental, emotional, and behavioral problems among U.S. children and adolescents.
According to the report, these “rising rates of mental and emotional problems among American young people raise a red flag about how well we are nurturing our kids.”
While many American young people are thriving, many more are not, and there are worrisome signs that as a society we are losing rather than gaining ground. Notwithstanding sustained increases in material well-being and important medical advances in the ability to treat depression and other mental disorders, the rate of serious mental and emotional disorders among American children and youth has been rising steadily. Eight percent of high school students have clinical depression, 20 percent report having seriously considered suicide during the past year, and, according to the Surgeon General, 21 percent of 9- to 17-year-olds have a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder that will cause at least minimum impairment. A recent study of mental health problems among college students at a large Midwestern university found that over the past 13 years, the number of students being seen for depression doubled, the number of suicidal students tripled, and the number of students seen after a sexual assault quadrupled.
“Numerous studies,” says Madeline Levine, author of The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, “show that privileged adolescents are experiencing epidemic rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse–rates that are higher than those of any other socioeconomic group of young people in this country.”
I’ll say more tomorrow about ways we can remedy this situation. But for now, here’s one of those “me in action” shots I’ve been promising…
6 comments
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August 21, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Steve Caldwell
Phil,
I’m wondering if the increases in depression, suicide, substance abuse, etc are due to improved social networking opportunities now available to our youth.
A friend of mine who recently retired from the Veterans Administration as a mental health nurse said that group therapy was often very good for helping those who did not have mental illness problems learn how to manifest them. After a few sessions of group therapy, a vet with no combat time in his service history would have convincing PTSD symptoms and a PTSD history just from hearing PTSD stories of other vets during group therapy.
I’m not saying that all mental illness is maligering.
However, I am saying that we may be unintentionally providing opportunities for people to learn how to have convincing symptoms who otherwise would not have this opportunity. And this may provide an easy way to escape from daily life responsibilities.
Social networking opportunities would include both online (myspace, facebook, etc) and offline (group therapy, meeting online friends offline) situations.
The economic class privilege that allows one to have mental health issues isn’t available to everyone. This is indirectly commented on in the latest issue of UU World:
Not my father’s religion
http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/36467.shtml
The mental health issues that one sees in families of privilege may be happening because our families allow “failure” (academic, substance abuse, mental health problems, etc) as an option.
As Doug Mulder says in his UU World article about this:
“Let’s throw one more idea into the mix: Second chances. Rich kids, professionals’ kids—they get them. If your parents have money, the door never completely closes on you. Don’t worry if you flunk out of two or three colleges. It’ll work out. Children of the very rich and powerful don’t have to get serious until they’re 40. The sky is still the limit.
In the working class it’s not that way. Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” asks: What if you had one shot? To a professional-class kid, imagining that you get only one shot is a way to add drama to your life. But in the working class, the fantasy is that you get one shot. What if you had one shot? You wouldn’t blow it, would you?”
August 22, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Connected Communities « Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie
[...] a very quick summary of the results of the Hardwired to Connect report I’m mentioned in my last post. The authors claim they are making a “New Scientific Case for Authoritative [...]
August 22, 2007 at 9:01 pm
psdlund
Great comment, Steve. Yes, social networking may in some odd way be transmitting symptoms. And yes, I can see mental health issues not being allowed in some classes because so much mental and emotional energy is spent in merely surviving. As far as failure goes, second chances are inherent in nurturant parent morality (I mean, that’s what we believe as Universalists, isn’t it–God never gives up on anyone?). Strict father morality has more of a “sink or swim” attitude toward offspring, although when there’s money available for treatment, etc., even the strictest of strict fathers (and mothers) would probably find it hard to tell their children, “No More!” Again, some great comments, Steve. Thanks!
August 23, 2007 at 12:12 am
Dana
Do we really think mental illness never occurs in lower-class people who maybe don’t get those second chances? That’s kind of silly. I live in a poor neighborhood and I promise you, there is more than enough mental pathology to go around here. If mental illness didn’t happen in the working-class and poor populations then that sure doesn’t explain how abuse and neglect and other bad things occur.
There probably *is* something to the idea that people can pick up mental illness symptoms by being around mentally ill people. We’re very much a “monkey see, monkey do” animal, picking up attitudes and behaviors of people around us. This is true whether they’re in person or on TV, I think.
I’ve also heard interesting things about how our society invests far too much in segregating people by age groups and how this prevents young people from truly being able to learn from their elders and youngers, and how locking them away in schools for thirteen years or so prevents them learning how to be useful in their communities. I think a lot of what we’re seeing is simply them being bored and not being able to find purpose in their lives. Society insists on them remaining children until they are old enough to leave home and then suddenly, they’re adults. This needs to change.
August 23, 2007 at 12:59 am
psdlund
I don’t think that anyone is saying that mental illness “never” occurs in lower-class people. However, they may not have the luxury of getting it diagnosed and treated. Nor do they have the expendable income (or insurance) to send their children to therapists. I agree, there’s probably more than enough mental pathology to go around–all over the place. And I totally agree about segregating people in age groups. It probably is very harmful in terms of human development. And it’s one of the prime ways target marketers target us.
September 11, 2007 at 1:24 am
Mental Health Thoughts
[...] In response to a recent post on mental health at Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie: [...]