"More of today's US youth have serious mental health issues"

[The Grim Squeaker]

Study: More of today's US youth have serious mental health issues than previous generations
By Martha Irvine (CP) – 1 day ago
CHICAGO — A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students in the U.S. are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues than youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era.
The findings, culled from responses to a popular psychological questionnaire used as far back as 1938, confirm what counsellors on campuses nationwide have long suspected as more students struggle with the stresses of school and life in general.
"It's another piece of the puzzle - that yes, this does seem to be a problem, that there are more young people who report anxiety and depression," says Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor and the study's lead author. "The next question is: what do we do about it?"
Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external - from wealth to looks and status - has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.
Pulling together the data for the study was no small task. Led by Twenge, researchers at five universities analyzed the responses of 77,576 high school or college students who, from 1938 through 2007, took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI. The results will be published in a future issue of the Clinical Psychology Review.

Overall, an average of five times as many students in 2007 surpassed thresholds in one or more mental health categories, compared with those who did so in 1938. A few individual categories increased at an even greater rate - with six times as many scoring high in two areas:
-"hypomania," a measure of anxiety and unrealistic optimism (from 5 per cent of students in 1938 to 31 per cent in 2007)
-and depression (from 1 per cent to 6 per cent).
Twenge said the most current numbers may even be low given all the students taking antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, which help alleviate symptoms the survey asks about.

The study also showed increases in "psychopathic deviation," which is loosely related to psychopathic behaviour in a much milder form and is defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don't apply to you. The percentage of young people who scored high in that category increased from 5 per cent in 1938 to 24 per cent in 2007.
Twenge previously documented the influence of pop culture pressures on young people's mental health in her 2006 book "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before." Several studies also have captured the growing interest in being rich, with 77 per cent of those questioned for UCLA's 2008 national survey of college freshmen saying it was "essential" or "very important" to be financially well off.
Experts say such high expectations are a recipe for disappointment. Meanwhile, they also note some well-meaning but overprotective parents have left their children with few real-world coping skills, whether that means doing their own budget or confronting professors on their own.
"If you don't have these skills, then it's very normal to become anxious," says Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City who hopes the new study will be a wake-up call to those parents.
Students themselves point to everything from pressure to succeed - self-imposed and otherwise - to a fast-paced world that's only sped up by the technology they love so much.
Sarah Ann Slater, a 21-year-old junior at the University of Miami, says she feels pressure to be financially successful, even when she doesn't want to.
"The unrealistic feelings that are ingrained in us from a young age - that we need to have massive amounts of money to be considered a success - not only lead us to a higher likelihood of feeling inadequate, anxious or depressed, but also make us think that the only value in getting an education is to make a lot of money, which is the wrong way to look at it," says Slater, an international studies major who plans to go to graduate school overseas.
The study is not without its skeptics, among them Richard Shadick, a psychologist who directs the counsellingcentre at Pace University in New York. He says, for instance, that the sample data weren't necessarily representative of all college students. (Many who answered the MMPI questionnaire were students in introductory psychology courses at four-year institutions.)
Shadick says his own experience leaves little doubt more students are seeking mental health services. But he and others think that may be due in part to heightened awareness of such services. Twenge notes the MMPI isn't given only to those who seek services.
Others, meanwhile, say the research helps advance the conversation with hard numbers.
"It actually provides some support to the observations," says Scott Hunter, director of pediatric neuropsychology at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital. Before his current post, Hunter was at the University of Virginia, where his work included counselling a growing number of students with mental health concerns.

While even Twenge concedes more research is needed to pinpoint a cause, Hunter says the study "also helps us understand what some of the reasons behind it might be." He notes Twenge's inclusion of data showing that factors such as materialism among young people have had a similar upswing. She also noted that divorce rates for their parents have gone up, which may lead to less stability.
Amid it all, Hunter says this latest generation has been raised in a "you can do anything atmosphere." And that, he says, "sets up a lot of false expectation" that inevitably leads to distress for some.
It's also meant heartache for parents.
"I don't remember it being this hard," says a mother from northern New Jersey, whose 15-year-old daughter is being treated for depression. She asked not to be identified to respect her daughter's privacy.
"We all wanted to be popular, but there wasn't this emphasis on being perfect and being super skinny," she says. "In addition, it's 'How much do your parents make?'
"I'd like to think that's not relevant, but I can't imagine that doesn't play a role."
On the Net:
Twenge's site: http://www.jeantwenge.com/

Interesting. Won't matter to the people harping about "today's youth", but interesting. (Proof of the phonemna at least, though dealing with it seems pretty much impossible )

[Simon_Jester]

How do they screen out the false positive/false negative problem, though? In the 1930s, being diagnosed with a mental illness was a big deal with an enormous stigma attached to it, and the "treatments" for mental illness were barbaric. So mental health issues may be "more common" today partly because people are less afraid of the diagnosis, or because the definition of the conditions has gotten wider.

I mean, when you're talking about one fourth of students suffering from "psychopathic deviation... defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don't apply to you," you've just taken the least responsible quarter of the population and defined them as mentally ill. Seventy years ago, they wouldn't have been called insane; they'd have been called "in need of a good whupping" or something like that.

[Tasoth]

I mean, when you're talking about one fourth of students suffering from "psychopathic deviation... defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don't apply to you," you've just taken the least responsible quarter of the population and defined them as mentally ill. Seventy years ago, they wouldn't have been called insane; they'd have been called "in need of a good whupping" or something like that.

If their behaviors fit the defined pattern, then there is no reason not to diagnose it as such. But the cause is, most likely, derived from the parents, as the article says in the body. Which is strange, as I can't fathom what a parent can do that lets a child turn out in such a manner. Always thought it was their job to make sure their child can function in society.

Also, I wonder if they defined financial successful to the kids or let them define it themselves. I would think a vague term like that could have many meanings.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I mean, when you're talking about one fourth of students suffering from "psychopathic deviation... defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don't apply to you," you've just taken the least responsible quarter of the population and defined them as mentally ill. Seventy years ago, they wouldn't have been called insane; they'd have been called "in need of a good whupping" or something like that.

If their behaviors fit the defined pattern, then there is no reason not to diagnose it as such. But the cause is, most likely, derived from the parents, as the article says in the body. Which is strange, as I can't fathom what a parent can do that lets a child turn out in such a manner. Always thought it was their job to make sure their child can function in society.

Twenge previously documented the influence of pop culture pressures on young people's mental health in her 2006 book "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before." Several studies also have captured the growing interest in being rich, with 77 per cent of those questioned for UCLA's 2008 national survey of college freshmen saying it was "essential" or "very important" to be financially well off.
Experts say such high expectations are a recipe for disappointment. Meanwhile, they also note some well-meaning but overprotective parents have left their children with few real-world coping skills, whether that means doing their own budget or confronting professors on their own.
"If you don't have these skills, then it's very normal to become anxious," says Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City who hopes the new study will be a wake-up call to those parents.
Students themselves point to everything from pressure to succeed - self-imposed and otherwise - to a fast-paced world that's only sped up by the technology they love so much.
Sarah Ann Slater, a 21-year-old junior at the University of Miami, says she feels pressure to be financially successful, even when she doesn't want to.
"The unrealistic feelings that are ingrained in us from a young age - that we need to have massive amounts of money to be considered a success - not only lead us to a higher likelihood of feeling inadequate, anxious or depressed, but also make us think that the only value in getting an education is to make a lot of money, which is the wrong way to look at it," says Slater, an international studies major who plans to go to graduate school overseas.
...
She also noted that divorce rates for their parents have gone up, which may lead to less stability.
Amid it all, Hunter says this latest generation has been raised in a "you can do anything atmosphere." And that, he says, "sets up a lot of false expectation" that inevitably leads to distress for some.

[Ziggy Stardust]

And more people had "serious mental health issues" between 1890 and 1950 than between 1830 and 1880, not because modern society was making people go crazy, but because the causes and symptoms of mental illness were increasingly better understood, and treatable. Here is a good article about the history of mental health in the United States, outlining a number of possible reasons for an observed increase that have nothing to do with more people actually being crazier.

[Simon_Jester]

I mean, when you're talking about one fourth of students suffering from "psychopathic deviation... defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don't apply to you," you've just taken the least responsible quarter of the population and defined them as mentally ill. Seventy years ago, they wouldn't have been called insane; they'd have been called "in need of a good whupping" or something like that.

If their behaviors fit the defined pattern, then there is no reason not to diagnose it as such.

The trouble is that this leads to a circular definition: saying that people are mentally ill because they behave in pattern X, which we have defined as a mental illness.

If we're going to talk about something as an illness, not merely a personality trait, it should meet a couple of secondary criteria:
-It needs to seriously impair their ability to cope, and
-It needs to be extreme enough that we can easily identify who doesn't have it, to know who is truly depressed and who is merely a chronic grumbler, for instance.

Not all counterproductive traits are mental illnesses, unless we wish to redefine "mentally ill" as "possesses one or more character defects." In which case mental illness is a term so broadly defined that it becomes useless, because everybody is mentally ill and there's no way to cure it because there's no way to make a person absolutely free of character defects.

That's why I take exception to definitions of "psychopathic deviation" that include a quarter of the population. It's possible that one quarter of the country suffers from some sort of mind-warping condition that seriously impairs them and is extreme enough that we can easily tell it apart from the norms of human behavior. But it isn't all that likely a priori. To me, it seems more likely that someone just lined up the population in order from most to least anti-authoritarian, then lassoed the 24% of people who were most anti-authority and said "these people are mentally ill because they are so anti-authority."

But the cause is, most likely, derived from the parents, as the article says in the body. Which is strange, as I can't fathom what a parent can do that lets a child turn out in such a manner. Always thought it was their job to make sure their child can function in society.

Possibly what's happened is that whoever is doing this study (or whoever assembled the criteria this study uses to define mental illness) has decided that the stereotypical rebellious teenager is in fact insane. Which doesn't mean they're right, for reasonable definitions of the word "insane."

[Formless]

Setting aside the issue of false positives and vaguely defined disorders, is it really a matter of there being more mentally ill people in this society * ? Or is psychology just getting better at identifying the mental disorders that were always there?

* insanity is a legal term, people, get it right.

[Tasoth]

To Death:
Yes, I did read the part about modern media being a culprint in this, as well as the children themselves. But shouldn't the parents be imparting means to deal with such incidences?

To Simon_Jester:
I retract my prior statement.

[Sarevok]

Everyone wants their child to reach the top of the pyramid when it would not be a pyramid had everyone reached the top,

[ArmorPierce]

This goes pretty much with my previous response to why richer nations/people tend to be less happy than other. Being well off increases expectations which in turn increases stress and unhappyness.

[Broomstick]

Does anxiety by itself define mental illness? If you're looking at an uncertain future in a devastated economy I would think some anxiety is a normal response. The question (to me) is whether or not that anxiety impairs your ability to function.

[Serafine666]

Setting aside the issue of false positives and vaguely defined disorders, is it really a matter of there being more mentally ill people in this society * ? Or is psychology just getting better at identifying the mental disorders that were always there?

A little from A, a bit from B, and a sprinkling from C. Modern psychiatry and psychology have access to an increasingly sophisticated set of tools to identify actual mental illness and disorders that they didn't have before. For example, there used to be one disorder called "autism" but there are now a whole category of disorders which are collectively called "Autism Spectrum Disorders" and includes the relatively mild (and possibly inheritable) Asberger Syndrome. They are also better able to distinguish one disorder from another and moreover, can treat more disorders than before. At the same time, there is a definite increase in incidence of certain mental illnesses like the ASDs and depression. Then, of course, there is the influence of societal tendency: it is more readily accepted that someone is helpless to control their bad behavior whereas it used to be assumed that most people behave badly out of conscious choice. The third, incidentally, is why the defense of "not guilty due to mental disease or defect" has gotten a really bad reputation: a defense attorney seems increasingly able to save a criminal from punishment by claiming "insane." Which is really a shame because there are quite a few people who are legitimately mentally ill and are genuinely too sick to be responsible for certain otherwise criminal things.

[Surlethe]

If there's some difference that can't be attributed to a change in diagnosis techniques, then might one account for it in changes in other factors, such as increased urbanization? Cities are very, very different from the agricultural environment in which humanity has existed for thousands of years, so there might be some induced stress on all people, with some more susceptible than others.

[Simon_Jester]

Setting aside the issue of false positives and vaguely defined disorders, is it really a matter of there being more mentally ill people in this society * ? Or is psychology just getting better at identifying the mental disorders that were always there?

* insanity is a legal term, people, get it right.

I slipped in using the term "insane," using it in the colloquial sense rather than the legal sense, much as I might use words like "innocent."

Also, I suspect that both of your answers are at least partly true; it's hard to disentangle them because we can't go back in time and reevaluate people's mental health based on modern diagnostic techniques.

But I really don't think the issue of false positives should be set aside, because when it is set aside, the question you ask presents a false choice. If "mental illness" keeps being redefined to include more people, then both these options are misleading. Under the new definition more people are ill than under the old, and more people were always ill than we thought. Both those statements are true, but they tell us nothing about people's health and everything about how we define illness.

[Formless]

I slipped in using the term "insane," using it in the colloquial sense rather than the legal sense, much as I might use words like "innocent."

Personally, I try not to do that when talking about psychology or any other field of science because it invites further misunderstanding down the road.

[Themightytom]

Does anxiety by itself define mental illness? If you're looking at an uncertain future in a devastated economy I would think some anxiety is a normal response. The question (to me) is whether or not that anxiety impairs your ability to function.

Yeah thats what the GAF scale in the DSM tries to establish. Anxiety by itself isn't "healthy" per se, but its sometimes neccesary, the same way a mild cold isn't exactly healthy but its a means to an end in terms of immune response is concerned. The synptoms severity and duration is important to consider by itself, but the GAF is another part of the puzzle.

I feel like this study might be severely compromsied by the eaier degree of accessibility to mental illness terms, the students taking the test nowadays probably have a lot more understanding off what the questions are asking than their predecessors do, and additionally, a wider array of abonormal behavior is permitted in schools today, and dealt with in an entirely different manner.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. On the one hand, they'll let you behave more strangely, so you act more strangely. On the other, I suspect that back in the old days there was a lot of quiet leniency passed around, where nobody talked about things that they already knew were going on because the socially accepted penalties were too dreadful. Which, of course, would mean tremendous underreporting of things that were happening.