America Has Reached Peak Therapy. Why Is Our Mental Health Getting Worse?
America Has Reached Peak Therapy. Why Is Our Mental Health Getting Worse?
The U.S. has hit peak therapy. So why isn't national mental health improving?
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It's because it begins very young. I've seen my friend hit her SIX MONTH OLD because they reached out to grab glasses that she puts in front of her. To train up a child? some bullshit religious "child training" program is often used in religious communities.
More frequent parental punitive discipline was significantly associated with smaller dorsal striatal volume in children, consistent with research demonstrating striatal differences following exposure to severe early life stress. Moreover, these results are consistent with a growing body of research linking normative variation in parental care with children’s brain structure. They align more specifically with recent work linking negative parenting (e.g., aggressive behavior, hostility) with reward processing neuroanatomy in adolescents and frontal-striatal functional connectivity in children.
Smaller dorsal striatal volume was significantly associated with higher depressive symptoms in children, consistent with previous work that has mainly focused on MDD in adolescents or adults. Thus, this study extends previous work by showing similar associations in a community sample of children who did not have psychiatric diagnoses. These findings suggest that changes in striatal morphology may precede the onset of MDD, [Major depressive disorder] which typically occurs in adolescence or adulthood
Parental Punitive Discipline and Children’s Depressive Symptoms: Associations with Striatal Volume
People are literally damaging their children's brain by using punitive discipline / stressors.
"I got spanked and I'm ok" just is not true.
People were far more abusive to their kids in the past, so that doesn't really explain why depression is getting worse now.
Because they were depressed and had a litany of other issues. Since it was taboo to talk about (and confront) those issues they developed fucked up coping mechanisms. Like hitting their kids/spouse. Explosive tempers, or just being an asshole. Drinking, gambling, cheating, etc.
Two of my grandparents were hardcore alcoholics that drank themselves to death after attempting suicide multiple times (which I only heard about as an adult). The third succeeded in hanging themself. The fourth lived to old age and was one of the nastiest, most narcissistic people I've met.
Sure, so then why are mental health issues appearing to get worse, despite the fact that people were so depressed they beat their kids all the time in the past?
Simple, we're just better at diagnosing and treating it now, and people are more comfortable admitting to it now.
We're not worse mental health wise, we're a hell of a lot better than in the past. People are just more willing to talk about it now, and not try to have a stiff upper lip like with past generations.
Actually that makes sense. studies show epigenetic gene expression and its connections to depression. Conflicts like world war 2, that happened 80 years ago could be affecting us today. Abuse our parents, grandparents, great grandparents had to deal with could be the reason why we are more depressed.
I come from a family who lived in okinawa in 1945, my grandparents was part of children who were made to fight/work by the japanese imperial navy. They came here to the US for a better life. It was better but that didn’t change the fact that my grandparents went through that.
My entire family (3 generations) suffers from depression. My kids have never been abused so they don’t have depression but they are one stressful event away from being depressed.
We're not more depressed now, we're just more open about it and seeking help. Sure out grandparents had a rough go of it, but so did their parents, and their paretns parents, and on and on throughout history.
Before World War 2, you had the Great Depression. Before that World War 1 and the Spanish Flu. Before that you had colonialism, slavery, and horrific working conditions. Before that you had the black death. Before that you had less than a 50% chance of reaching adulthood.
People were definitely more depressed in the past, they were just shamed into having a stiff upper lip and not talking about it.
Back then everyone smoked 100 cigarettes everyday.