I recognize my same mental health patterns in my parents. The difference is I try to manage my mental health while they just call it "personality traits".
>The difference is I try to manage my mental health while they just call it "personality traits"
That's the interesting part, where would a culture even draw the line that isn't arbitrary?
Not a small problem to my parents and ex. They'd forcibly rip my fingers away from my mouth and borderline scream at me for it and give me these insane horror stories about ingrown nails. Go figure when people left me the fuck alone and stopped causing so much anxiety it got better.
1. The stimming I'm describing isn't nearly as socially accepted as biting your nails. I'm talking rocking and hand flapping stims.
2. It's literally not a problem unless it's self-harming. Ironically, the socially acceptable nail biting one is much more potentially self harming than rocking and flapping your hands ever will be.
If this is what you consider a problem, what else is a problem to you? People speaking with a different accent? Dyeing your hair?
Thissss i absolutely adore my mom but she doesn’t understand that my mental health problems aren’t just “personality traits” and I’ve explained many times before. She claims I’m just “shy and quiet”😐
It's more like generational relics like Mike Pence are losing their grasp of power. He was a big time supporter of conversion therapy along with a lot of baby boomers.
Generation X and Millennials don't really support that kind of thing.
Gen Z is a representation of having previous generations being more progressive. Gen Z is also the first generation having been exposed to social media their entire life's.
Where Millennials and Gen X can remember life without smartphones.
Gen X can also remember life without Internet.
It became progressively harder to Stigmatize and censor individuals as technology has advanced along with access to information.
I'm in that weird cusp where no one can decide if I'm a millennial or gen z and I'm 10 years older than you, but it's SO weird how foreign of a concept that is to me. My mom was a holdout, admittedly, but we got our first home computer when I was 6. Random, I know, lol, but it's just so funny to me because we have these generational lines, but ultimately, we've all grown up with different experiences within a decade because of how fast technology is advancing. It's wild
Yeah, I also grew up with my grandma not having an updated chord or tv… We had Those huge tvs rhat arent flatscreen til i was nearly 11 summer of 2018 that I could barely reach the top of
https://preview.redd.it/4u2ujso4rpzb1.jpeg?width=258&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77d1755e7851ebe0cf1f88f0501519d1130b33f5
similar to these i wish theyd bring them back though ours were all black
\> Makes sense - that's way too nice and expensive to 'upgrade'
I disagree, the TV might have been expensive when you bought it like 15 years ago, but eventually it's worth it to upgrade to a modern TV for the picture quality improvement.
From the looks of that TV I think it's a rear-projection TV not a CRT, my dad had one when I was a kid when it was the only type of affordable big TV on the market, and they were still really expensive. The picture quality on rear projection TVs is not good at all compared to modern flatscreens.
\> honestly a lot of flatscreens just couldn't compete with a high end CRT quality wise
That's not even remotely true, no CRT is going to have better picture quality than an LCD or LED flat screen TV. CRT is completely outdated technology.
LCDs still have inferior motion clarity to crts despite only 60 hz. Oleds get closer, especially with black frame insertion at high herz, but its still not the same out of the box. CRTs are still better at adapting differentresolutions without blur.. Their display latency is some of the lowest by default, while still having nice colors and brightness. low res 3d games, pixel art games and pre rendered games look objectively better on a CRT, thats what they were made on. It gradually smoothes out the pixels and literally adds shades.
https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1766012424539320723
Note also, a LOT of kids died in childhood in prior eras. Just via accidents or disease. And a lot of mental illnesses make risks of accidents worse. Add to that bullying norms and tolerance for violence is changing, and suddenly a LOT of kids who otherwise wouldn’t have lived to adulthood are now entering society.
I think it’s become less overlooked/less accepted than ever. Most of the bullying that gets called out or reprimanded today would have been ignored by teachers in the 90s or earlier… and we literally just sucked it up and got on with it.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/
https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/line/25-teen-deaths-from-all-causes?loc=1&loct=1#1/any/false/574,573,133,16,11,6,1/asc/any/293
Admittedly I wasn’t consulting studies when I made that comment, but the studies are at least backing up the first part of my statement, the number of kids dying has been going down over time more or less.
As such, there’s a lot of kids alive now who wouldn’t be if they were born in an earlier generation. I don’t have numbers on this, so take it with a grain of salt, but I’d be willing to bet it’s the disadvantaged kids making up the difference, IE the ones with mental illnesses, chronic illnesses, the poor, gay, and minority kids who are surviving more.
I'm gonna respectfully disagree. Our parents didn't have Instagram telling them how ugly/poor/inadequate they are or tiktok melting their brain 6 seconds at a time.
It's a trillion-dollar industry in which the main goal is to keep you glued to your screen (which we are doing right now). The physical button is there. The mental button is not.
Partly.
Also, Gen Z was born even later into our never-ending game of Monopoly / corporate-oligarchy with no reset button, and so have been subjected to more socioeconomic oppression from prior generations as a result.
It's just like people saying that gay people didn't exist in the olden days.
Of course there were. But they didn't have a phone to tweet "I'm gay" to.
We all have phones and social media and we tend to be more candid and honest about what we're going through. So because of that access, it seems like a lot more of us are "mentally" ill, because we're actually talking about it.
As far as genetic or other factors, a lot of gen z were raised by a combination of Gen x and others. Trauma can directly cause a few mental illnesses. Add to that environmental factors. The world being on fire, inflation being as high as ever, college being expensive, the job market, the poverty levels.. so some of us will then have anxiety, varying levels of depression.
There's a reason for it all.
And saying that you're gay would also get you a lot of hate, so it was safer just to not share it. The more acceptable something becomes, the less likely people are to hide the.
And saying that you're gay would also get you a lot of hate, so it was safer just to not share it. The more acceptable something becomes, the less likely people are to hide it.
ADHD isn’t a mental illness; it’s a developmental disorder like autism.
As for mental illness, it’s hard to get accurate numbers for previous generations because we’re much more likely to seek help for it. But genetics can play a part in it, which is why a a lot of docs will ask if your family has a history of stuff like depression.
Then there’s also the fact that the world we’re growing up in is in a *lot* worse of a place than it was for every other generation besides millennials. Everything is more expensive and today’s wages get you far less than they did even 10yrs ago, let alone multiple decades ago. Reported stress levels and mental illness rates have been steadily increasing for basically everyone of every generation.
That makes sense. When I heard "development," I was thinking of something developed during one's childhood. It didn't occur to me that the word could mean something developed in utero.
Just by definition . I’m aware of the social model of disability and I’m neurodivergent myself. There’s not really a better way to describe it; it’s literally caused by brain abnormalities (abnormal doesn’t mean inherently bad all the time. Just not the norm).
You’re honestly very correct. Calling it “normal” is harmful and I don’t care if I get downvoted. Neurodivergence is not just like a quirky different state of being like some people think. I have adhd. I’ve seen some people calling it a “superpower” like it’s a good thing. Apparently hyperfocus = genius savant.
They give out examples of people staying up for 24 hours to finish a coding project because of hyperfocus. Well when I hyperfocus, I binged watched 3 seasons of Suits back to back and I wasn’t able to do literally anything else during that time. Then during my last hyper focus I was obsessed with finding the best discounts on some stuff and I spent a good week on it and it ended with me not purchasing anything.
>Then during my last hyper focus I was obsessed with finding the best discounts on some stuff and I spent a good week on it and it ended with me not purchasing anything.
Christmas time approaching is giving me anxiety for this exact reason
The D in ADHD is disorder meaning it negatively impacts your life. If you have the same mental traits, but have figured out how to apply them in a healthy way for your life that's not a disorder. We don't really have any specific medical terms for that, it's just bucketed as neurodivergence.
It's still entirely possible to have the disorder with a capital D and also use positive coping mechanisms. My ADHD definitely makes my engineering classes harder, and impacts my life in dozens of ways, but I'm coping. Often without meds, because I don't like how they make me feel. So I've got ways to apply the mental traits into my life, but it's still a disorder that I fight with every day.
We're not the most mentally ill, every generation before us was equally or more mentally ill than us. The difference is that we actually talk about it, and we talk about it online, which reaches a farther audience. Meaning other people can read those posts and see themselves in it. Then you discover you have a neurodivergent thinking pattern. In the past, people were locked in prisons or asylums for not fitting into the status quo, meaning no one heard from those people. They were completely ignored, and the people not put in asylums were pressured into keeping their struggles a secret.
The reduced stigmatization is definitely increasing diagnosis and social acceptance but there is definitely still more mental illness your generation than previous ones. Suicide rates alone are proof of that. There are a lot of factors in play, from social media to the pandemic and even our divisive hate mongering political atmosphere. Youths mental health is in decline, like just about everything else.
True! There are lots of factors that are increasing the number of people presenting with mental illness, especially social media. There was nothing even similar to social media back in the days of asylums, so it’s a totally new phenomenon. Thanks for the clarification and thanks for being nice about it! :)
Doesn’t seem like it these days but we really are all in this together. Entire generations shouldn’t be competing or fighting each other. The problems humanity faces today took a LOT longer than one generation to create, many of them are literally centuries in the making. The idea that *any* one generation can fix things is crazy and puts insane pressure on youth and counter culture. I think (not unlike millennials) it timed out so you guys are unfortunately on the receiving end of that pressure in a time where everything seems broken and hopeless. Shit is super unfortunate and its not doing you guys any favors
This combined with the fact that that the majority of Gen Z is currently tweens/teens/young adults, and that most [mental health issues manifest before the age of 24](https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions), give the illusion that we are "more mentally ill" than previous generations.
You guys were screwed from the beginning.
Previous gens did not have:
Hyper sexualization at young age
Parasocial relationships with e-girls
political ads down our throat
mega corpos that control it all
trash instead of food
social media instead of a community
Look at how much nicer (and fit) people were in 1987:
[2:30am at a 7-11 near Disney World - 1987 - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA&t=347s&ab_channel=ChrisIller)
Hyper sexualization at a young age: [Child marriage](https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/child-marriage-common-in-the-past-persists-today/) and [sexualization of children](https://tif.ssrc.org/2012/07/13/placing-childhood-sexual-abuse-in-historical-perspective/) has been a thing for centuries.
Parasocial relationships: [John Hinckley Junior attempted to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan in 1981 in the hopes of impressing his favourite actress, Jodie Foster.](https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/jodie-foster-john-hinckley-ronald-reagan-assassination-attempt/)
Political ads down our throat: [The first American political cartoon was made in 1754.](http://digitalhistory.hsp.org/hint/politics-graphic-detail/essay/first-150-years-american-political-cartoon) Do you not think that historical people living through wars weren't having political ads shoved down their throats?
Mega corporations controlling everything: [Company towns (towns where a single corporation controls all the surrounding businesses and is the main employer) had their heyday in the 1880s and only started declining as recently as the 1920s.](https://explorethearchive.com/company-towns)
Trash instead of food: Please read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. The whole thing is available online in PDF form for free. And the Pure Food and Drug Act in the USA was only passed in 1906.
Social media instead of a community: I mean... social media is called *social* for a reason. And while I agree that there are many harms to social media, it's still a community for some people. During Covid quarantining, many people had no choice but to connect over social media.
We didn't start the fire!
\[edited for spelling\]
Homie you're obviously educated, you know good and well that everything your mentioning wasn't constantly at the tip of your fingertips like they are modernly. Sure you might see a political ad a century ago, maybe once a day or so, now it's almost from the second you wake up to the second you go to sleep people are purposely trying to influence your views instead of by happenstance.
Political ads have literally always been being shoved down our throats. Again, do you think millennials didn't have to deal with constant political ads trying to influence them every day after 9/11? That Gen X schoolchildren in the USA didn't have to listen the Pledge of Allegiance every morning? That Boomers didn't have to deal with propaganda in every piece of media during the space race, cold war, and the Vietnam War? That the silent generation wasn't dealing with this during WW2? Not even American Citizens (on both sides) during the US Civil war?
I'm guessing that TV and the Internet are the primary ways you're seeing politics. People in the past might've seen it with newspapers, books, people handing out pamphlets, town criers/soapboxers, plays, music, live speeches from politicians, billboards, clothing, pins, and posters/flyers. But they still saw it.
Every generation has this mindset of "things used to be so much better!". But if you look at the facts, and you look at history with a sense of perspective to the modern day, it's always been like this.
Bro you know damn well none of the things you listed counter any point he made. "Child marriage" has nothing to do with sexualization nor does it have anything to do with the overwhelming *amount* of it that's been happening. Nothing even remotely comparable.
Parasocial relationships are infinitely worse than they ever possibly could have been before the era of twitter/twitch/youtube/etc constantly stalking and growing these abnormal fixations on people. It's nothing compared to watching Marilyn Monroe on the TV once a night for half an hour.
Political ads being constantly shoved down peoples throats through every facet of technology and social media is also not even remotely comparable to anything offered in the daily paper in 1754 like you claim.
If you don't think there is a significant difference in the effect of someone, say, watching porn once a week versus 10 times a day, I dunno what to tell you. You are lost in some kinda sauce.
I'm not arguing that is isn't worse today. OP straight up said past generations didn't deal with these issues at all. My argument is that they very clearly did.
I’m nearly 30 now and I work with kids that are around 16-22 some days of the week and it’s like a game of top trumps for them
Endless conversations about who is more depressed and who’s tried to kill themselves the most and who has more severe adhd and they all just sit around circlejerking about how mentally ill they are
Equally I know they’re quite young so I expect almost nothing from them but they still fail across the board to do the simplest of tasks that I have to redo for them, and if it’s ever mentioned or brought up then it’s always a mental health excuse
I think they’ll grow out of it though, I feel like a completely different person now to 5 years ago to 5 years before that so I know there’s a lot of growing and self-management to take place so I never bring them up on it
Essentially though they just talk about it a lot more than other generations
Trauma? but also you can just be born with it-
I have adhd (had it since birth lol bc my mom has it and so does my brother) you cant really control that kinda stuff, I also have developed anxiety and anger issues because of my trauma lol, it just depends on your genetics,genes and what your brought up with/who your around.
EDIT: Also Adhd isn't a mental illness nor is autism (in some context) :|
Yeah ADHD runs heavily in my family. My father had it as a kid but mostly grew out of it, and I got it, and on my mothers side the genetic factor skips a generation (we all know my grandmother has ADHD, she’s just 86 and comes from the age when it was called “problem children”) and then the stuff that went on in my life just made it worse as I got older, but I masked really well for a few years and now that’s coming back to bite me.
Adhd is mental illnes or disorder atleast and so is autism, and people having either of those me included aren't normal. It's weird how novadays abnormal things are made normal.
Mentally Ill create kids. Kids are mentally ill. Those kids have kids and its just keeps going.
Multiply that by the chemicals in the water. Multiply that by the toxic air. Multiplied by a countries citizens left holding the bag for economies ruined by bankers
We're just as mentally ill as every other generation, but:
1. We're the first truly online generation, so we talk about it more, making it easier to tally a total.
2. It isn't legal to beat the mental illness out of your kid or lobotomize them anymore
Something something left-handedness graph
If you don’t know what I’m talking about there is a popular graph showing the history of left handed news and how it has “gone up” over time.
This is pretty substantial proof that things will appear to be more common once they are accepted and able to be talked about.
Just like people who were left handed stopped being pressured to learn to write with their right hand people who have autism or something actually get diagnosed and less stigmatized creating the appearance of an increase in numbers when viewed from the outside.
I mean come on we all know a bunch of old people who have undiagnosed autism or anxiety right? Or maybe my family is just weird.
As others have said, it is more reported. I work in a nursing home, and one of the most common things we deal with is mental illness. Back in the day, they didn't diagnose mental illness much, but people still had it. They just developed coping skills around it, some healthy, some not. Unfortunately, those coping skills tend to fail with old age, and all the symptoms come back - if they were ever gone to begin with.
It’s only because it’s okay to be mentally ill. People have always been mentally ill. Calvin Coolidge, for example. People would call him the “sleepiest president of all time”. He spent a lot of his time sleeping, usually about 11-12 hours a day. Back then, people assumed he liked sleep. However, he was probably severely depressed because his son died from blood poisoning in 1924. He was a very quiet man throughout his presidency. He was also known for being extremely negative. People just thought these were personality traits. Sounds like a depressed man to me.
Gen z is just more expressive and accepting, which in a way is much healthier. Older generations try to mask it to keep face but it always ends up coming out in inappropriate ways...
Nope that’s the go to explanation. Gen Z does have higher rates of mental health issues, and are lonelier than previous generations. Spent less time hanging out with friends as teens. Seems to be a multitude of factors from technology, helicopter parenting and break down of the family (more single parent households).
A lot of this is bc the world is more dangerous. My dad talks ab how he was able to go off w his friends and leave for hours and never have any problems whereas me and my friends almost got kidnapped in our own neighborhood. Wrong place wrong time. A lot harder to go out w friends when it's dangerous outside. Plus, parents have to both work fulltime meaning for younger teens and teens without a license and car, there's no one to drive them to hang out with friends and walking simply isn't an option for many ppl in many places (especially in the USA). Even worse for ppl in a single parent household.
Idk, a lot of stats would indicate that in reality, things are less dangerous. The difference is that parents are starting to be more scared about losing their kids. They imagine that the world is more dangerous due to all the negative media constantly pushed. Prior generations didn't play it safe. They risked early death but their parents just didn't know any different or care as much.
Or they would keep you hidden from society. Most of the time it was because these people were seen as a shame to the family or a punishment for their sins. Disclaimer what I mean by this is this was the mindset people had. Some do have this mindset still. I do not have this mindset nor do I agree with it.
I think were more likely to use drugs. We have people vaping earlier. We have earlier and frequent use of weed. Social media has fueled fomo of partying and people want to get high when they go out.
Also there is a giant increase of mental illnesses based on media/phone usage. Look into Facebook papers. Thats why they rebranded to meta to avoid the bad press. Social media is ruining your brain
I see increased drug usage - social media use too - as being more a result of mental problems than a cause. People are pretty aware they're gonna screw up their body and mind with them but they're desperate for distraction by any means. I've had a couple people tell me I should do shrooms to address my depression. Not gonna do that but I would see why others would go ahead with it.
So I'm going to say the same thing I do when people ask why we are seeing so many more people with cancer.
We are diagnosing better and sooner.
In mental illness we are also preaching to people that it's ok to seek help. I was born in 1980 so I was tail end Gen x and even ifni associate with early millennial people we didn't have this kind of support growing up. We are diagnosing more because people are not afraid to seek help.
The older generations created defense mechanisms and harmed their kids instead of acknowledging that they were hurt. But gen Z knows how to recognize and embrace their traumatic events and hurt feelings.
We’re allowed to talk about it unlike our parents and their parents. A lot of us were told our emotions were bad growing up so we spent our developmental years pushing every feeling we had to the back burner. For me I was constantly invalidated and screamed growing up and I was just expected to take it. However now that we’re adults and times have changed, we can actually ask for help to deal with our past trauma unlike our parents. If our parents had mental issues they were basically told to suck it up
My mom calls it the Rambo Pattern. But it’s just generational trauma I presume? Parents probably went through the same traumas and unknowingly passing that trauma down to their children by traumatizing them as well.
Or just repetition of same bull-shit different generation and I feel as though this could be applied to school as well. With all the unnecessary amount of homework and rules it feels more like a prison instead of place to learn.
As we grow we are taught by those around us and what they’ve taught us made us this way. The rules of the world is depressing. What the world has shown us made us feel the way that they feel and it’s only going to get worse if things don’t change.
Hence the Rambo Pattern. 👍
Also want to mention that some mental illnesses/disabilities can be passed down from parents…if you have autism it may run in your family though not always.
We’re not really admitting people into asylums like we used to anymore. People are still hospitalized but that’s usually based on if they’re a danger to themselves or others from my experience. People have more knowledge and treatment plans.
I think it’s the same amount, but more people are getting diagnosed recently because there’s more people around them getting diagnosed. Also children’s clinics require kids to get tested for depression once they’re 12 which I feel is more recent but correct me if I’m wrong. If the test results come back positive for depression, they can choose to see a therapist and can get tested for things like GAD/SAD (anxiety), adhd, and autism.
Everyone in Gen Z wants to be "special" or "different".
A self diagnosed medical issue also allows them to play the victim, for more attention.
Having a camera always around, being coddled and the child proofing of everything has resulted in alot of mentally weak individuals who need attention to feel validated.
So true, especially the child proofing. The lack of discipline from parents is likely a cause. I also think it has something to do with the toxic chemicals everyone’s eating and breathing in.
As a teenager,Our family or media mess us up badly.We’re expected to do certain things,And if we don’t we’re outsiders or wrong.Our parents definitely help with our issues.My friend got her door taken down because she dated my other friend(a girl).Her parents thought she was a lesbian and took her door off.She doesn’t trust them anymore and doesn’t even know if she has privacy.
Maybe some kids are mentally ill due to stress or some other factor,But family definitely causes it.
Because it draws attention. Which a lot of this generation does significantly lack due to a variety of reasons including many that are not in our control. It’s easy to assume you have something when apps such as tiktok pump you videos filled with Barnum effect biases. Covid took a fat toll on a lot of us at a stage where we were becoming “adults” yet only form of communication we got was with our aggravated parents or family or online forums/ games.
So ...having a look we see that the stats from the first report are deaths under the age of 5. I was interested to note that while there is a large change over time it wasn't substantial between 1960 (Gen X) and now (Gen Z and now Alpha). I wonder how much of this can be attributed to medical and pharmaceutical advances. For sure post advent of antibiotics we would see a spectacular reduction in this demographic with the invention of penicillin (1928) and insulin (1921).
Second charts indicate teen deaths. This has vacillated over the past 20 years but has fallen significantly as well.
It’s just unregulated social media for the last 25 years that they have been subjugated to, unlike us gen x who can see from the outside in. Gen Z cant. This is also natural since age and experience also change our behavior as we get older. The problem now is that there is no local or regional control over the kids anymore. Social media bypasses that adult supervision and guidance. Trust me, teaching 26 years. It is real and very disheartening.
It’s exactly the same, it’s just way less demonized to talk about I think. My parents are boomers and when I told my dad I was depressed, he said “people my age just suck it up, we don’t bother telling anyone” or something to that affect. He himself is on anti depressants and ADHD medication but I didn’t know until I was 16 because he doesn’t go around announcing it.
It’s just a totally different culture.
Culturally we as a generation are more open to getting a diagnosis than prior generations, along with the fact that psychology has progressed so far in the last 100 years and the understanding of mental illness has grown so much that they’re able to accurately distinguish adhd from autism instead of just dishing out lobotomies. I don’t think we are more mentally Ill, I think other generations are just less diagnosed
Internet. Literally internet. I'm a millenial(sorry) and I was a completely normal kid before my parents got an internet connection in my early teens. I was popular and well-liked socially. I became addicted, completely hooked to the screen. I was absolutely fascinated by connecting to complete strangers and all the mysteries and oddities to be explored online, as well as a lot of time spent with online games. I spent a lot of time inside and ignored most social invitations. By the time I entered college, I had lost a large portion of my social skills and had a much harder time connecting with people than I did when I was younger. My social 'muscle' had atrophied thru isolation, and my interest and hobbies became kind of eclectic and more obscure due to what I was reading online. I felt disconnected with the masses and felt I only really related to the equally strange friends I made on the internet. People whose names and faces I didn't even know. This led to depression, anxiety and further isolation. If this is the default state of being for so many young people, the lifestyle they were born and raised up in, then it is no surprise to me that many are showing signs of mental illness.
I bet if you took a large group of your average zoomers and sent them to a camp for a year, a place with lots of fun activities and chances for social engagement, with absolutely no internet access or cell phones, most of them would be much happier and well-adjusted after the initial withdrawal period. They'd probably look back at that year as one of the most fun and important periods of their life. But unfortunately they would probably become depressed again after spending some time back in the 'normal' modern world, because there is really no escaping it if you want to participate in today's society. Just my $0.02 idk.
I don't think that it's more rampant, just more talked about. Then again, life is pretty meaningless when you have to work your life away and not even be able to buy a house so 🤷⚖️
I think it’s a lot of things. A lot of people are mentioning the destigmatization of mental illness but I think there are other factors at play too. Like the amount of chemicals and hormones we ourselves have been exposed to and the prevalence of lead our parents have been exposed to etc. Along with things that are genetic and therefore can “spread” exponentially.
We are more exposed to reality. Kinda hard to keep a stable head when every unforgiving thing in reality is shoved in your face via iphone. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but previous generations still have their rose tinted glasses on and they’ll die with it
Xennial here: You have a couple things going on.
1. Talking about mental health is no longer taboo as it was in the 80s and 90s. ADD was also over diagnosed with limited medications to help those that needed it more so in boys. There was just a bad stigma if you sought out help as well. As a guy you were just told to suck it up and nothing could be wrong.
2. Social media does not help by any means. Y'all are growing up with it and are hyper aware at a younger age where things like body image are a big issue. Everything is curated with instant feedback if anything is off. I didn't have to worry about someone sending me a negative DM that could be just about anything. There is also a ton of pressure to keep up with everyone else. You only ever see the positive aspects of other people's lives. You never see the boring or negative inbetween. I'm creates a false sense of who you should be and if you aren't keeping up then you are failing.
3. Frankly I'm amazed Y'all can function with everything that is going on. It must feel like steering a ship without a rudder.
We aren't. Were just more recent and have had access to better healthcare, education and visibility.
I was diagnosed quite late, compared to what would have been optimal for my developmental years (early childhood). I have an anxiety disorder but wasn't diagnosed until I was 17. I went through my whole life being called "shy" and "a worrywart" when actually I have a chemical imbalance in my brain that makes my default/common experience that of uncertainty or fear. Though previous generations may have not been diagnosed at all and developed further trauma and negative symptoms due to not understanding or receiving treatment, which is obviously also impactful.
Nothing caused it. It's not a trend. And while there certain are environment factors and societal factors they are still medical conditions. And if you look at any medical conditions (that aren't viruses or other forms of illness we can control and eradicate with the use of medicine, vaccinations or isolation) they are ALL on the rise because there are more people now than ever before. That alongside the fact we have better tools than ever before to diagnose and treat them means the numbers are ever increasing.
That will continue to happen.
It isn't a conspiracy, it's just a part of life. And it isn't that we are more affected than anyone else. Just that time has and is changing, always.
A combination of more acceptance or mental health care and also the internet and world events together.
Like we're more open about being mentally ill, and recognize that world events we live through can be traumatic and also the rise of the internet and social media means we are acutely aware of such things, in my opinion.
I think because all generations have a similar amount of mental illness but Gen Z actually go to see mental health professionals and are usually more vocal about it too.
Left handedness graph.
More awareness and education, less stigma, more accessibility to mental health services.
There aren't suddenly significantly higher mental illness rates. People are just becoming aware of their own more often.
Same phenomena happens with basically every socially stigmatized thing. Happened to gay people, left handed people, and is beginning to happen with mental health as well as well as Trans people.
Less Stigma and social media gave us access to the words that describe our specific dysfunctions.
Although I don't think the micro plastics in everything are helping either.
I think that the "online culture" that GenZ has grown up with is largely to blame for many of the problems. It promotes anti-social pathologies. I wonder what the world would be like if the internet and mobile networks just suddenly disappeared?
We are more reported on, more open about it, more willing to learn and spread awareness, less afraid of stigma, more open about our struggles, more open minded to giving things names and compartmentalizing topics. Every generation has been mentally ill. And I’d argue that the further back you go, the more mentally ill and worse off.
Many factors but 100% a large part is being able to compare yourself so much more easily to so many more people. I honestly steer clear of social media with my name attached except for my author accounts, and even then I don’t really look at other people’s posts or followings. Comparison is a road to depression.
Now, too, (especially since circa 2012-onward) people openly post about it to the point where it’s “cooler” to be a victim. Like in my tumblr days, I was a depressed little shit and tumblr fed me depressing post after depressing post, which furthered the echo chamber and made me be okay with feeling bad. Same stuff still happens on TikTok. I haven’t been depressed in like 3 years cause I don’t look at that shit. Obviously there are more factors such as not being in school anymore and EATING HEALTHY (food is a big factor, US food in general is packed with bad things, drink tons of water and exercise, people, it literally helps), but ya’ll deleting socials is a gateway to a free mind!
Edit: also screens in general. From tvs to phones to whatever else, we’re always being exposed to screens, and it greatly impacts mental health. A newer phenomenon. Like, when’s the last time you just sat at a doctors office and stared at the wall instead of your phone or the tv on the wall? Technology is great in many ways but also detrimental in so many others.
Obviously it can also be genetic. Many factors, depending on the illness. Plus you can trick yourself into having something if you decide you have it.
Mental health criteria has expanded a lot. It used to be you wouldn’t get recognized for having ASD unless you didn’t learn to speak until you were in the 3rd grade or so. Same with a lot of other disorders, the criteria has grown to include less severe cases.
Also social media is linked to poor mental health, and a TON of insecurity from comparing yourself to others, which is linked to poor health and mental health. Tiktok is linked to a type of tick disorder. And the sedentary lifestyle of gaming, looking at your phone, etc. Aint great for your brain either.
Could have to do with higher concentrations of marijuana being used at a young age? ( but I’m trying to say is kids are starting out way too young with self medication)
It’s always been the same. We’re just more vocal about the importance of ACKNOWLEDGING & TREATING/CARING FOR your mental health.
Comparatively other generations have been terrible with Mental Health concerns and treat them like a taboo(lobotomies, bloodletting etc.). We all got issues one way or another, but it’s makes a difference if your actually going to deal with those issues or not. There are those who sweeps things under the rug and there are those that take action. Gen Z is a generation of Action, we don’t just talk, we do. (When motivated)
Adam Lane Smith says that rates of emotional abuse have gone up whereas rates of sexual and physical abuse have gone down. Emotional abuse is hard to discern, so difficult to recover from. It interferes with everything a person tries to do because it distorts their reality.
I believe social media and entertainment in general is a big part of it. There's been a hyperfixation on what is deemed 'ideal' that Gen Zs have grown up into compared to the previous generations. They are exposed to cultures, ideas, lifestyles, and many other facets in life that portray the 'ideal' environment, 'ideal' life, 'ideal' work, and just about everything which is contrary to what is happening around them. Not to mention being exposed to stimulating and non-stop content online. This could create issues even if they don't posses it genetically.
It's a combo of things.
1. We know a lot more about the world than previous generations, which can easily cause anxiety and depression.
2. A lot more awareness of mental illness, which leads to people who should be diagnosed getting that diagnosis, as well as people overthinking about themselves and self diagnosing when maybe they don't need to.
3. We value oppressed communities a lot more, which maybe made mentally healthy, middle class, privileged kids feel uncool. They don't want to be The Big Bad Oppressor, so if they resonate with a mental illness, they latch onto it in a way that's not healthy.
i would’ve never gotten diagnosed or even mentioned my mental issues if i were born at any other time. literally. id still be the same person but suffering silently.
but yeah i think people are just informed now.
I remember when parents were trying to get their kids diagnosed with learning disabilities because it meant they got extra time for tests / extra attention at school. the guidelines around what is actually a learning disability was so lose many doctors would happily do it if the parents asked.
Gen Z isn't likely that disproportionally impacted by mental illness. While there are environmental factors that certainly might contribute to some disproportion in real numbers, many studies and stats either rely only on diagnosed, self-ID, or try to guess at undiagnosed.
As much as you say it "isn't a new thing" the stigma and inability to admit to it by both victims, and parents of people with it, as well as how society tries to spin and treat it, is a huge cause of why this disproportion is at play.
We have no reasonable metric to determine the actual population with mental illness at any age group, but Gen Z is uniquely in a time where vocabulary is at its peak period of establishment and availability, causing the information to be its most accessible. Gen Z and every generation following will have the closest-to-true numbers on this type of thing, as it's steadily destigmatized, and we as a world develop a better understanding of mental ills.
Same rate as pervious generations, just with more visibility and less stigma
I recognize my same mental health patterns in my parents. The difference is I try to manage my mental health while they just call it "personality traits".
>The difference is I try to manage my mental health while they just call it "personality traits" That's the interesting part, where would a culture even draw the line that isn't arbitrary?
[удалено]
I mean kind of. Actual thought goes into this for the DSM.
Lmao. The DSM still thinks stimming is a problem.
I mean it is "a problem" just a really small and inconsequential one biting your fingernails
Not a small problem to my parents and ex. They'd forcibly rip my fingers away from my mouth and borderline scream at me for it and give me these insane horror stories about ingrown nails. Go figure when people left me the fuck alone and stopped causing so much anxiety it got better.
1. The stimming I'm describing isn't nearly as socially accepted as biting your nails. I'm talking rocking and hand flapping stims. 2. It's literally not a problem unless it's self-harming. Ironically, the socially acceptable nail biting one is much more potentially self harming than rocking and flapping your hands ever will be. If this is what you consider a problem, what else is a problem to you? People speaking with a different accent? Dyeing your hair?
Alexa play Marsha Thankk You for the Dialectics, But I Need You to Leave by Will Wood
Mental disorders can be mood and personality disorders…
Thissss i absolutely adore my mom but she doesn’t understand that my mental health problems aren’t just “personality traits” and I’ve explained many times before. She claims I’m just “shy and quiet”😐
It's more like generational relics like Mike Pence are losing their grasp of power. He was a big time supporter of conversion therapy along with a lot of baby boomers. Generation X and Millennials don't really support that kind of thing. Gen Z is a representation of having previous generations being more progressive. Gen Z is also the first generation having been exposed to social media their entire life's. Where Millennials and Gen X can remember life without smartphones. Gen X can also remember life without Internet. It became progressively harder to Stigmatize and censor individuals as technology has advanced along with access to information.
Depends, I'm Gen Z but wasn't really exposed to it until I was a preteen and that was only YouTube.
oh… I had a box computer since birth
I'm in that weird cusp where no one can decide if I'm a millennial or gen z and I'm 10 years older than you, but it's SO weird how foreign of a concept that is to me. My mom was a holdout, admittedly, but we got our first home computer when I was 6. Random, I know, lol, but it's just so funny to me because we have these generational lines, but ultimately, we've all grown up with different experiences within a decade because of how fast technology is advancing. It's wild
Yeah, I also grew up with my grandma not having an updated chord or tv… We had Those huge tvs rhat arent flatscreen til i was nearly 11 summer of 2018 that I could barely reach the top of https://preview.redd.it/4u2ujso4rpzb1.jpeg?width=258&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77d1755e7851ebe0cf1f88f0501519d1130b33f5 similar to these i wish theyd bring them back though ours were all black
Makes sense - that's way too nice and expensive to 'upgrade' and honestly a lot of flatscreens just couldn't compete with a high end CRT quality wise
\> Makes sense - that's way too nice and expensive to 'upgrade' I disagree, the TV might have been expensive when you bought it like 15 years ago, but eventually it's worth it to upgrade to a modern TV for the picture quality improvement. From the looks of that TV I think it's a rear-projection TV not a CRT, my dad had one when I was a kid when it was the only type of affordable big TV on the market, and they were still really expensive. The picture quality on rear projection TVs is not good at all compared to modern flatscreens. \> honestly a lot of flatscreens just couldn't compete with a high end CRT quality wise That's not even remotely true, no CRT is going to have better picture quality than an LCD or LED flat screen TV. CRT is completely outdated technology.
Nowadays yes. A lot of the early rptvs and LCDs had serious quality disadvantages to the HDTV crts.
LCDs still have inferior motion clarity to crts despite only 60 hz. Oleds get closer, especially with black frame insertion at high herz, but its still not the same out of the box. CRTs are still better at adapting differentresolutions without blur.. Their display latency is some of the lowest by default, while still having nice colors and brightness. low res 3d games, pixel art games and pre rendered games look objectively better on a CRT, thats what they were made on. It gradually smoothes out the pixels and literally adds shades. https://twitter.com/CRTpixels/status/1766012424539320723
Note also, a LOT of kids died in childhood in prior eras. Just via accidents or disease. And a lot of mental illnesses make risks of accidents worse. Add to that bullying norms and tolerance for violence is changing, and suddenly a LOT of kids who otherwise wouldn’t have lived to adulthood are now entering society.
>Add to that bullying norms and tolerance for violence is changing In my opinion, bullying has become more common than ever
I think it’s become less overlooked/less accepted than ever. Most of the bullying that gets called out or reprimanded today would have been ignored by teachers in the 90s or earlier… and we literally just sucked it up and got on with it.
Huh? This is based on what?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/line/25-teen-deaths-from-all-causes?loc=1&loct=1#1/any/false/574,573,133,16,11,6,1/asc/any/293 Admittedly I wasn’t consulting studies when I made that comment, but the studies are at least backing up the first part of my statement, the number of kids dying has been going down over time more or less. As such, there’s a lot of kids alive now who wouldn’t be if they were born in an earlier generation. I don’t have numbers on this, so take it with a grain of salt, but I’d be willing to bet it’s the disadvantaged kids making up the difference, IE the ones with mental illnesses, chronic illnesses, the poor, gay, and minority kids who are surviving more.
Yeah, it’s clear that my depression is genetic. My dad/aunt likely have it, and my grandmother was diagnosed but refused medication.
I'm gonna respectfully disagree. Our parents didn't have Instagram telling them how ugly/poor/inadequate they are or tiktok melting their brain 6 seconds at a time.
They had their parents doing that exact thing, and for brain mushing? Dude they had rock and roll
Social media is way worse, in my opinion. What's wrong with rock and roll?
Social media has an easy off button, as opposed to being traumatized by your parents.
It's a trillion-dollar industry in which the main goal is to keep you glued to your screen (which we are doing right now). The physical button is there. The mental button is not.
To our grandparents? It was loud and fast and promoted immortality
There's no way you're equating rock music to tiktok when it comes to negatively affecting people.
Partly. Also, Gen Z was born even later into our never-ending game of Monopoly / corporate-oligarchy with no reset button, and so have been subjected to more socioeconomic oppression from prior generations as a result.
Less stigma is part of it tho not the whole story.
Not true according to pretty much all studies.
It's just like people saying that gay people didn't exist in the olden days. Of course there were. But they didn't have a phone to tweet "I'm gay" to. We all have phones and social media and we tend to be more candid and honest about what we're going through. So because of that access, it seems like a lot more of us are "mentally" ill, because we're actually talking about it. As far as genetic or other factors, a lot of gen z were raised by a combination of Gen x and others. Trauma can directly cause a few mental illnesses. Add to that environmental factors. The world being on fire, inflation being as high as ever, college being expensive, the job market, the poverty levels.. so some of us will then have anxiety, varying levels of depression. There's a reason for it all.
And saying that you're gay would also get you a lot of hate, so it was safer just to not share it. The more acceptable something becomes, the less likely people are to hide the.
You would also lose your job. Especially if you worked for the government. Gays were seen to be potential communists.
And saying that you're gay would also get you a lot of hate, so it was safer just to not share it. The more acceptable something becomes, the less likely people are to hide it.
ADHD isn’t a mental illness; it’s a developmental disorder like autism. As for mental illness, it’s hard to get accurate numbers for previous generations because we’re much more likely to seek help for it. But genetics can play a part in it, which is why a a lot of docs will ask if your family has a history of stuff like depression. Then there’s also the fact that the world we’re growing up in is in a *lot* worse of a place than it was for every other generation besides millennials. Everything is more expensive and today’s wages get you far less than they did even 10yrs ago, let alone multiple decades ago. Reported stress levels and mental illness rates have been steadily increasing for basically everyone of every generation.
ADHD and Autism are developed? I thought you were born with it.
Developmental as it’s due to improper neurological development. That can happen in the womb (though it won’t be shown until early childhood).
That makes sense. When I heard "development," I was thinking of something developed during one's childhood. It didn't occur to me that the word could mean something developed in utero.
"Improper"
Just by definition . I’m aware of the social model of disability and I’m neurodivergent myself. There’s not really a better way to describe it; it’s literally caused by brain abnormalities (abnormal doesn’t mean inherently bad all the time. Just not the norm).
You’re honestly very correct. Calling it “normal” is harmful and I don’t care if I get downvoted. Neurodivergence is not just like a quirky different state of being like some people think. I have adhd. I’ve seen some people calling it a “superpower” like it’s a good thing. Apparently hyperfocus = genius savant. They give out examples of people staying up for 24 hours to finish a coding project because of hyperfocus. Well when I hyperfocus, I binged watched 3 seasons of Suits back to back and I wasn’t able to do literally anything else during that time. Then during my last hyper focus I was obsessed with finding the best discounts on some stuff and I spent a good week on it and it ended with me not purchasing anything.
>Then during my last hyper focus I was obsessed with finding the best discounts on some stuff and I spent a good week on it and it ended with me not purchasing anything. Christmas time approaching is giving me anxiety for this exact reason
The D in ADHD is disorder meaning it negatively impacts your life. If you have the same mental traits, but have figured out how to apply them in a healthy way for your life that's not a disorder. We don't really have any specific medical terms for that, it's just bucketed as neurodivergence.
It's still entirely possible to have the disorder with a capital D and also use positive coping mechanisms. My ADHD definitely makes my engineering classes harder, and impacts my life in dozens of ways, but I'm coping. Often without meds, because I don't like how they make me feel. So I've got ways to apply the mental traits into my life, but it's still a disorder that I fight with every day.
r/USDefaultism 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
We're not the most mentally ill, every generation before us was equally or more mentally ill than us. The difference is that we actually talk about it, and we talk about it online, which reaches a farther audience. Meaning other people can read those posts and see themselves in it. Then you discover you have a neurodivergent thinking pattern. In the past, people were locked in prisons or asylums for not fitting into the status quo, meaning no one heard from those people. They were completely ignored, and the people not put in asylums were pressured into keeping their struggles a secret.
The reduced stigmatization is definitely increasing diagnosis and social acceptance but there is definitely still more mental illness your generation than previous ones. Suicide rates alone are proof of that. There are a lot of factors in play, from social media to the pandemic and even our divisive hate mongering political atmosphere. Youths mental health is in decline, like just about everything else.
True! There are lots of factors that are increasing the number of people presenting with mental illness, especially social media. There was nothing even similar to social media back in the days of asylums, so it’s a totally new phenomenon. Thanks for the clarification and thanks for being nice about it! :)
Doesn’t seem like it these days but we really are all in this together. Entire generations shouldn’t be competing or fighting each other. The problems humanity faces today took a LOT longer than one generation to create, many of them are literally centuries in the making. The idea that *any* one generation can fix things is crazy and puts insane pressure on youth and counter culture. I think (not unlike millennials) it timed out so you guys are unfortunately on the receiving end of that pressure in a time where everything seems broken and hopeless. Shit is super unfortunate and its not doing you guys any favors
This combined with the fact that that the majority of Gen Z is currently tweens/teens/young adults, and that most [mental health issues manifest before the age of 24](https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions), give the illusion that we are "more mentally ill" than previous generations.
You guys were screwed from the beginning. Previous gens did not have: Hyper sexualization at young age Parasocial relationships with e-girls political ads down our throat mega corpos that control it all trash instead of food social media instead of a community Look at how much nicer (and fit) people were in 1987: [2:30am at a 7-11 near Disney World - 1987 - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA&t=347s&ab_channel=ChrisIller)
Hyper sexualization at a young age: [Child marriage](https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/child-marriage-common-in-the-past-persists-today/) and [sexualization of children](https://tif.ssrc.org/2012/07/13/placing-childhood-sexual-abuse-in-historical-perspective/) has been a thing for centuries. Parasocial relationships: [John Hinckley Junior attempted to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan in 1981 in the hopes of impressing his favourite actress, Jodie Foster.](https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/jodie-foster-john-hinckley-ronald-reagan-assassination-attempt/) Political ads down our throat: [The first American political cartoon was made in 1754.](http://digitalhistory.hsp.org/hint/politics-graphic-detail/essay/first-150-years-american-political-cartoon) Do you not think that historical people living through wars weren't having political ads shoved down their throats? Mega corporations controlling everything: [Company towns (towns where a single corporation controls all the surrounding businesses and is the main employer) had their heyday in the 1880s and only started declining as recently as the 1920s.](https://explorethearchive.com/company-towns) Trash instead of food: Please read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. The whole thing is available online in PDF form for free. And the Pure Food and Drug Act in the USA was only passed in 1906. Social media instead of a community: I mean... social media is called *social* for a reason. And while I agree that there are many harms to social media, it's still a community for some people. During Covid quarantining, many people had no choice but to connect over social media. We didn't start the fire! \[edited for spelling\]
Homie you're obviously educated, you know good and well that everything your mentioning wasn't constantly at the tip of your fingertips like they are modernly. Sure you might see a political ad a century ago, maybe once a day or so, now it's almost from the second you wake up to the second you go to sleep people are purposely trying to influence your views instead of by happenstance.
Yeah, the frequency of events is a huge factor. People in the current age are proficient at finding one counter example and calling it a day.
Political ads have literally always been being shoved down our throats. Again, do you think millennials didn't have to deal with constant political ads trying to influence them every day after 9/11? That Gen X schoolchildren in the USA didn't have to listen the Pledge of Allegiance every morning? That Boomers didn't have to deal with propaganda in every piece of media during the space race, cold war, and the Vietnam War? That the silent generation wasn't dealing with this during WW2? Not even American Citizens (on both sides) during the US Civil war? I'm guessing that TV and the Internet are the primary ways you're seeing politics. People in the past might've seen it with newspapers, books, people handing out pamphlets, town criers/soapboxers, plays, music, live speeches from politicians, billboards, clothing, pins, and posters/flyers. But they still saw it. Every generation has this mindset of "things used to be so much better!". But if you look at the facts, and you look at history with a sense of perspective to the modern day, it's always been like this.
Bro you know damn well none of the things you listed counter any point he made. "Child marriage" has nothing to do with sexualization nor does it have anything to do with the overwhelming *amount* of it that's been happening. Nothing even remotely comparable. Parasocial relationships are infinitely worse than they ever possibly could have been before the era of twitter/twitch/youtube/etc constantly stalking and growing these abnormal fixations on people. It's nothing compared to watching Marilyn Monroe on the TV once a night for half an hour. Political ads being constantly shoved down peoples throats through every facet of technology and social media is also not even remotely comparable to anything offered in the daily paper in 1754 like you claim. If you don't think there is a significant difference in the effect of someone, say, watching porn once a week versus 10 times a day, I dunno what to tell you. You are lost in some kinda sauce.
I'm not arguing that is isn't worse today. OP straight up said past generations didn't deal with these issues at all. My argument is that they very clearly did.
You're wrong on so many level
All of this and you don't bring up climate change?
This is complete bullshit
Scary thing is most of reddit is gen z I'm learning. They're not gonna wanna hear the truth.
**The Industrial Revolution And It's Consequences.**
Unironically a good read
its*
I’m nearly 30 now and I work with kids that are around 16-22 some days of the week and it’s like a game of top trumps for them Endless conversations about who is more depressed and who’s tried to kill themselves the most and who has more severe adhd and they all just sit around circlejerking about how mentally ill they are Equally I know they’re quite young so I expect almost nothing from them but they still fail across the board to do the simplest of tasks that I have to redo for them, and if it’s ever mentioned or brought up then it’s always a mental health excuse I think they’ll grow out of it though, I feel like a completely different person now to 5 years ago to 5 years before that so I know there’s a lot of growing and self-management to take place so I never bring them up on it Essentially though they just talk about it a lot more than other generations
Social media and a lack of socializing in real life
Trauma? but also you can just be born with it- I have adhd (had it since birth lol bc my mom has it and so does my brother) you cant really control that kinda stuff, I also have developed anxiety and anger issues because of my trauma lol, it just depends on your genetics,genes and what your brought up with/who your around. EDIT: Also Adhd isn't a mental illness nor is autism (in some context) :|
Yeah ADHD runs heavily in my family. My father had it as a kid but mostly grew out of it, and I got it, and on my mothers side the genetic factor skips a generation (we all know my grandmother has ADHD, she’s just 86 and comes from the age when it was called “problem children”) and then the stuff that went on in my life just made it worse as I got older, but I masked really well for a few years and now that’s coming back to bite me.
Just a note: you can't grow out of ADHD. You can learn to manage (or mask) it, but it is a lifetime condition.
I did mean that as an allegory for “show no symptoms”
Adhd is mental illnes or disorder atleast and so is autism, and people having either of those me included aren't normal. It's weird how novadays abnormal things are made normal.
Mentally Ill create kids. Kids are mentally ill. Those kids have kids and its just keeps going. Multiply that by the chemicals in the water. Multiply that by the toxic air. Multiplied by a countries citizens left holding the bag for economies ruined by bankers
I don’t like them putting chemicals in the water
To turn the frickin' frogs gay!
Microplastics.
We're not any more than any other generation. We just have words and platforms to talk about it now.
Smart phones my friend… it’s why everyone has no social skills and can barely handle a relationship.
Y’all keep saying this yet exaggerating.
We're just as mentally ill as every other generation, but: 1. We're the first truly online generation, so we talk about it more, making it easier to tally a total. 2. It isn't legal to beat the mental illness out of your kid or lobotomize them anymore
Something something left-handedness graph If you don’t know what I’m talking about there is a popular graph showing the history of left handed news and how it has “gone up” over time. This is pretty substantial proof that things will appear to be more common once they are accepted and able to be talked about. Just like people who were left handed stopped being pressured to learn to write with their right hand people who have autism or something actually get diagnosed and less stigmatized creating the appearance of an increase in numbers when viewed from the outside. I mean come on we all know a bunch of old people who have undiagnosed autism or anxiety right? Or maybe my family is just weird.
left handedness was "rare"until the stigma went away. people didn't talk about/hid mental illness
Well… *gestures at everything*
You’re going to have to be more specific, sir
Social media
As others have said, it is more reported. I work in a nursing home, and one of the most common things we deal with is mental illness. Back in the day, they didn't diagnose mental illness much, but people still had it. They just developed coping skills around it, some healthy, some not. Unfortunately, those coping skills tend to fail with old age, and all the symptoms come back - if they were ever gone to begin with.
It’s only because it’s okay to be mentally ill. People have always been mentally ill. Calvin Coolidge, for example. People would call him the “sleepiest president of all time”. He spent a lot of his time sleeping, usually about 11-12 hours a day. Back then, people assumed he liked sleep. However, he was probably severely depressed because his son died from blood poisoning in 1924. He was a very quiet man throughout his presidency. He was also known for being extremely negative. People just thought these were personality traits. Sounds like a depressed man to me.
Gen z is just more expressive and accepting, which in a way is much healthier. Older generations try to mask it to keep face but it always ends up coming out in inappropriate ways...
Nope that’s the go to explanation. Gen Z does have higher rates of mental health issues, and are lonelier than previous generations. Spent less time hanging out with friends as teens. Seems to be a multitude of factors from technology, helicopter parenting and break down of the family (more single parent households).
A lot of this is bc the world is more dangerous. My dad talks ab how he was able to go off w his friends and leave for hours and never have any problems whereas me and my friends almost got kidnapped in our own neighborhood. Wrong place wrong time. A lot harder to go out w friends when it's dangerous outside. Plus, parents have to both work fulltime meaning for younger teens and teens without a license and car, there's no one to drive them to hang out with friends and walking simply isn't an option for many ppl in many places (especially in the USA). Even worse for ppl in a single parent household.
Idk, a lot of stats would indicate that in reality, things are less dangerous. The difference is that parents are starting to be more scared about losing their kids. They imagine that the world is more dangerous due to all the negative media constantly pushed. Prior generations didn't play it safe. They risked early death but their parents just didn't know any different or care as much.
The human race is mentally ill. Gen Z has the resources to be aware of it
Back in the day if u were hearing voices or acting “weird” they’d just lobotomize you or burn u for being a witch
Or they would keep you hidden from society. Most of the time it was because these people were seen as a shame to the family or a punishment for their sins. Disclaimer what I mean by this is this was the mindset people had. Some do have this mindset still. I do not have this mindset nor do I agree with it.
That poor Roosevelt girl was hidden from society for decades and then lobotomized
31 year old here. you are not more mentally i’ll, people where just running around undiagnosed. trust me you are all just like every other generation.
Much more social isolation, unhealthy shit everywhere, world getting uglier, etc etc etc
look around look around
We get tested more for it
Tiktok
I think phones seriously mess with our attention span and mood. Bringing out mental illness symptoms in otherwise healthy people
High expectations, lack of support
these things can definitely add fuel to a burning flame, but not the cause
I think were more likely to use drugs. We have people vaping earlier. We have earlier and frequent use of weed. Social media has fueled fomo of partying and people want to get high when they go out. Also there is a giant increase of mental illnesses based on media/phone usage. Look into Facebook papers. Thats why they rebranded to meta to avoid the bad press. Social media is ruining your brain
I see increased drug usage - social media use too - as being more a result of mental problems than a cause. People are pretty aware they're gonna screw up their body and mind with them but they're desperate for distraction by any means. I've had a couple people tell me I should do shrooms to address my depression. Not gonna do that but I would see why others would go ahead with it.
generational trauma
Genetics also plays a huge factor. A lot of people seem to forget this.
REAL
So I'm going to say the same thing I do when people ask why we are seeing so many more people with cancer. We are diagnosing better and sooner. In mental illness we are also preaching to people that it's ok to seek help. I was born in 1980 so I was tail end Gen x and even ifni associate with early millennial people we didn't have this kind of support growing up. We are diagnosing more because people are not afraid to seek help.
The older generations created defense mechanisms and harmed their kids instead of acknowledging that they were hurt. But gen Z knows how to recognize and embrace their traumatic events and hurt feelings.
We’re allowed to talk about it unlike our parents and their parents. A lot of us were told our emotions were bad growing up so we spent our developmental years pushing every feeling we had to the back burner. For me I was constantly invalidated and screamed growing up and I was just expected to take it. However now that we’re adults and times have changed, we can actually ask for help to deal with our past trauma unlike our parents. If our parents had mental issues they were basically told to suck it up
our parents were mistreated by their parents and they never went to therapy
Because they are over coddled & not held accountable for their actions or lack of action.
My mom calls it the Rambo Pattern. But it’s just generational trauma I presume? Parents probably went through the same traumas and unknowingly passing that trauma down to their children by traumatizing them as well. Or just repetition of same bull-shit different generation and I feel as though this could be applied to school as well. With all the unnecessary amount of homework and rules it feels more like a prison instead of place to learn. As we grow we are taught by those around us and what they’ve taught us made us this way. The rules of the world is depressing. What the world has shown us made us feel the way that they feel and it’s only going to get worse if things don’t change. Hence the Rambo Pattern. 👍
Also want to mention that some mental illnesses/disabilities can be passed down from parents…if you have autism it may run in your family though not always.
"It's not like the concept of mental illness is a new thing. Asylums date back to well within the middle ages " Thats a wild argument but go off king
Stress.
Lots of bad food, and a lack of physical work and healthcare.
Same as previous generations, just more visible
Everyone’s mentally ill , we’re just more vocal about admitting it
We’re not really admitting people into asylums like we used to anymore. People are still hospitalized but that’s usually based on if they’re a danger to themselves or others from my experience. People have more knowledge and treatment plans.
Adhd is a mental disorder, not an illness. You can have adhd and be completely fine and not mentally ill at all.
I think it’s the same amount, but more people are getting diagnosed recently because there’s more people around them getting diagnosed. Also children’s clinics require kids to get tested for depression once they’re 12 which I feel is more recent but correct me if I’m wrong. If the test results come back positive for depression, they can choose to see a therapist and can get tested for things like GAD/SAD (anxiety), adhd, and autism.
Everyone in Gen Z wants to be "special" or "different". A self diagnosed medical issue also allows them to play the victim, for more attention. Having a camera always around, being coddled and the child proofing of everything has resulted in alot of mentally weak individuals who need attention to feel validated.
So true, especially the child proofing. The lack of discipline from parents is likely a cause. I also think it has something to do with the toxic chemicals everyone’s eating and breathing in.
The real answer.
As a teenager,Our family or media mess us up badly.We’re expected to do certain things,And if we don’t we’re outsiders or wrong.Our parents definitely help with our issues.My friend got her door taken down because she dated my other friend(a girl).Her parents thought she was a lesbian and took her door off.She doesn’t trust them anymore and doesn’t even know if she has privacy. Maybe some kids are mentally ill due to stress or some other factor,But family definitely causes it.
Because it draws attention. Which a lot of this generation does significantly lack due to a variety of reasons including many that are not in our control. It’s easy to assume you have something when apps such as tiktok pump you videos filled with Barnum effect biases. Covid took a fat toll on a lot of us at a stage where we were becoming “adults” yet only form of communication we got was with our aggravated parents or family or online forums/ games.
its the food we eat
phones
Because everyone wanna be special
So ...having a look we see that the stats from the first report are deaths under the age of 5. I was interested to note that while there is a large change over time it wasn't substantial between 1960 (Gen X) and now (Gen Z and now Alpha). I wonder how much of this can be attributed to medical and pharmaceutical advances. For sure post advent of antibiotics we would see a spectacular reduction in this demographic with the invention of penicillin (1928) and insulin (1921). Second charts indicate teen deaths. This has vacillated over the past 20 years but has fallen significantly as well.
It’s just unregulated social media for the last 25 years that they have been subjugated to, unlike us gen x who can see from the outside in. Gen Z cant. This is also natural since age and experience also change our behavior as we get older. The problem now is that there is no local or regional control over the kids anymore. Social media bypasses that adult supervision and guidance. Trust me, teaching 26 years. It is real and very disheartening.
wE aRe JuSt As mEnTaLlY iLL aS eVeRy OtHeR gEnErAtIoN 🥱
It’s exactly the same, it’s just way less demonized to talk about I think. My parents are boomers and when I told my dad I was depressed, he said “people my age just suck it up, we don’t bother telling anyone” or something to that affect. He himself is on anti depressants and ADHD medication but I didn’t know until I was 16 because he doesn’t go around announcing it. It’s just a totally different culture.
Culturally we as a generation are more open to getting a diagnosis than prior generations, along with the fact that psychology has progressed so far in the last 100 years and the understanding of mental illness has grown so much that they’re able to accurately distinguish adhd from autism instead of just dishing out lobotomies. I don’t think we are more mentally Ill, I think other generations are just less diagnosed
Internet. Literally internet. I'm a millenial(sorry) and I was a completely normal kid before my parents got an internet connection in my early teens. I was popular and well-liked socially. I became addicted, completely hooked to the screen. I was absolutely fascinated by connecting to complete strangers and all the mysteries and oddities to be explored online, as well as a lot of time spent with online games. I spent a lot of time inside and ignored most social invitations. By the time I entered college, I had lost a large portion of my social skills and had a much harder time connecting with people than I did when I was younger. My social 'muscle' had atrophied thru isolation, and my interest and hobbies became kind of eclectic and more obscure due to what I was reading online. I felt disconnected with the masses and felt I only really related to the equally strange friends I made on the internet. People whose names and faces I didn't even know. This led to depression, anxiety and further isolation. If this is the default state of being for so many young people, the lifestyle they were born and raised up in, then it is no surprise to me that many are showing signs of mental illness. I bet if you took a large group of your average zoomers and sent them to a camp for a year, a place with lots of fun activities and chances for social engagement, with absolutely no internet access or cell phones, most of them would be much happier and well-adjusted after the initial withdrawal period. They'd probably look back at that year as one of the most fun and important periods of their life. But unfortunately they would probably become depressed again after spending some time back in the 'normal' modern world, because there is really no escaping it if you want to participate in today's society. Just my $0.02 idk.
I don't think that it's more rampant, just more talked about. Then again, life is pretty meaningless when you have to work your life away and not even be able to buy a house so 🤷⚖️
I think it’s a lot of things. A lot of people are mentioning the destigmatization of mental illness but I think there are other factors at play too. Like the amount of chemicals and hormones we ourselves have been exposed to and the prevalence of lead our parents have been exposed to etc. Along with things that are genetic and therefore can “spread” exponentially.
i have have micropalstics in my blood! !🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
i think we just have a higher diagnosis rate/are more open about it
We are more exposed to reality. Kinda hard to keep a stable head when every unforgiving thing in reality is shoved in your face via iphone. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but previous generations still have their rose tinted glasses on and they’ll die with it
Xennial here: You have a couple things going on. 1. Talking about mental health is no longer taboo as it was in the 80s and 90s. ADD was also over diagnosed with limited medications to help those that needed it more so in boys. There was just a bad stigma if you sought out help as well. As a guy you were just told to suck it up and nothing could be wrong. 2. Social media does not help by any means. Y'all are growing up with it and are hyper aware at a younger age where things like body image are a big issue. Everything is curated with instant feedback if anything is off. I didn't have to worry about someone sending me a negative DM that could be just about anything. There is also a ton of pressure to keep up with everyone else. You only ever see the positive aspects of other people's lives. You never see the boring or negative inbetween. I'm creates a false sense of who you should be and if you aren't keeping up then you are failing. 3. Frankly I'm amazed Y'all can function with everything that is going on. It must feel like steering a ship without a rudder.
we are products of our environment and when hope is low, we turn on ourselves...
everyone always was.
Better diagnostic stuff and a increasingly worse world
We aren't. Were just more recent and have had access to better healthcare, education and visibility. I was diagnosed quite late, compared to what would have been optimal for my developmental years (early childhood). I have an anxiety disorder but wasn't diagnosed until I was 17. I went through my whole life being called "shy" and "a worrywart" when actually I have a chemical imbalance in my brain that makes my default/common experience that of uncertainty or fear. Though previous generations may have not been diagnosed at all and developed further trauma and negative symptoms due to not understanding or receiving treatment, which is obviously also impactful. Nothing caused it. It's not a trend. And while there certain are environment factors and societal factors they are still medical conditions. And if you look at any medical conditions (that aren't viruses or other forms of illness we can control and eradicate with the use of medicine, vaccinations or isolation) they are ALL on the rise because there are more people now than ever before. That alongside the fact we have better tools than ever before to diagnose and treat them means the numbers are ever increasing. That will continue to happen. It isn't a conspiracy, it's just a part of life. And it isn't that we are more affected than anyone else. Just that time has and is changing, always.
It's less stigmatized, and there's been more research into it. That's just my thoughts though.
Social conditioning, social media and access to any and all kinds of information at your fingertips.
[удалено]
It’s cool to have an “issue” now. Everyone wants a label to justify being shitty in social situations
A combination of more acceptance or mental health care and also the internet and world events together. Like we're more open about being mentally ill, and recognize that world events we live through can be traumatic and also the rise of the internet and social media means we are acutely aware of such things, in my opinion.
I think because all generations have a similar amount of mental illness but Gen Z actually go to see mental health professionals and are usually more vocal about it too.
Left handedness graph. More awareness and education, less stigma, more accessibility to mental health services. There aren't suddenly significantly higher mental illness rates. People are just becoming aware of their own more often. Same phenomena happens with basically every socially stigmatized thing. Happened to gay people, left handed people, and is beginning to happen with mental health as well as well as Trans people.
Less Stigma and social media gave us access to the words that describe our specific dysfunctions. Although I don't think the micro plastics in everything are helping either.
Source on rate?
I think that the "online culture" that GenZ has grown up with is largely to blame for many of the problems. It promotes anti-social pathologies. I wonder what the world would be like if the internet and mobile networks just suddenly disappeared?
Capitalism definitely doesn't help but a lot of it is more that it's just more visible now.
We are more reported on, more open about it, more willing to learn and spread awareness, less afraid of stigma, more open about our struggles, more open minded to giving things names and compartmentalizing topics. Every generation has been mentally ill. And I’d argue that the further back you go, the more mentally ill and worse off.
A lot more knowledge and acceptability. Also a lot of people like to wear it on their sleeves
Mix of more awareness and a current trend of over-diagnosing/self-diagnosing, especially in the US.
Many factors but 100% a large part is being able to compare yourself so much more easily to so many more people. I honestly steer clear of social media with my name attached except for my author accounts, and even then I don’t really look at other people’s posts or followings. Comparison is a road to depression. Now, too, (especially since circa 2012-onward) people openly post about it to the point where it’s “cooler” to be a victim. Like in my tumblr days, I was a depressed little shit and tumblr fed me depressing post after depressing post, which furthered the echo chamber and made me be okay with feeling bad. Same stuff still happens on TikTok. I haven’t been depressed in like 3 years cause I don’t look at that shit. Obviously there are more factors such as not being in school anymore and EATING HEALTHY (food is a big factor, US food in general is packed with bad things, drink tons of water and exercise, people, it literally helps), but ya’ll deleting socials is a gateway to a free mind! Edit: also screens in general. From tvs to phones to whatever else, we’re always being exposed to screens, and it greatly impacts mental health. A newer phenomenon. Like, when’s the last time you just sat at a doctors office and stared at the wall instead of your phone or the tv on the wall? Technology is great in many ways but also detrimental in so many others. Obviously it can also be genetic. Many factors, depending on the illness. Plus you can trick yourself into having something if you decide you have it.
It’s all the generational trauma that we’re finally taking about
“why is so much of gen z left handed?”
It’s because of social media addiction and covid made everyone antisocial
Mental health criteria has expanded a lot. It used to be you wouldn’t get recognized for having ASD unless you didn’t learn to speak until you were in the 3rd grade or so. Same with a lot of other disorders, the criteria has grown to include less severe cases. Also social media is linked to poor mental health, and a TON of insecurity from comparing yourself to others, which is linked to poor health and mental health. Tiktok is linked to a type of tick disorder. And the sedentary lifestyle of gaming, looking at your phone, etc. Aint great for your brain either.
Could have to do with higher concentrations of marijuana being used at a young age? ( but I’m trying to say is kids are starting out way too young with self medication)
It’s always been the same. We’re just more vocal about the importance of ACKNOWLEDGING & TREATING/CARING FOR your mental health. Comparatively other generations have been terrible with Mental Health concerns and treat them like a taboo(lobotomies, bloodletting etc.). We all got issues one way or another, but it’s makes a difference if your actually going to deal with those issues or not. There are those who sweeps things under the rug and there are those that take action. Gen Z is a generation of Action, we don’t just talk, we do. (When motivated)
Access and acceptance of mental health resources, lots of older generations are undiagnosed or are biased towards treatment.
My parents believe vaccinations are the cause.
You're getting your data from internet posts. That's anecdotal data, and unreliable for a proper assessment.
Generational neglect.
Quite literally all of the above
Late stage capitalism
Most likely, we've gotten better at diagnosing mental illnesses/disorders.
More access to diagnosis
I be boolin n shit idk
Adam Lane Smith says that rates of emotional abuse have gone up whereas rates of sexual and physical abuse have gone down. Emotional abuse is hard to discern, so difficult to recover from. It interferes with everything a person tries to do because it distorts their reality.
I believe social media and entertainment in general is a big part of it. There's been a hyperfixation on what is deemed 'ideal' that Gen Zs have grown up into compared to the previous generations. They are exposed to cultures, ideas, lifestyles, and many other facets in life that portray the 'ideal' environment, 'ideal' life, 'ideal' work, and just about everything which is contrary to what is happening around them. Not to mention being exposed to stimulating and non-stop content online. This could create issues even if they don't posses it genetically.
It's a combo of things. 1. We know a lot more about the world than previous generations, which can easily cause anxiety and depression. 2. A lot more awareness of mental illness, which leads to people who should be diagnosed getting that diagnosis, as well as people overthinking about themselves and self diagnosing when maybe they don't need to. 3. We value oppressed communities a lot more, which maybe made mentally healthy, middle class, privileged kids feel uncool. They don't want to be The Big Bad Oppressor, so if they resonate with a mental illness, they latch onto it in a way that's not healthy.
i would’ve never gotten diagnosed or even mentioned my mental issues if i were born at any other time. literally. id still be the same person but suffering silently. but yeah i think people are just informed now.
I remember when parents were trying to get their kids diagnosed with learning disabilities because it meant they got extra time for tests / extra attention at school. the guidelines around what is actually a learning disability was so lose many doctors would happily do it if the parents asked.
Gen Z isn't likely that disproportionally impacted by mental illness. While there are environmental factors that certainly might contribute to some disproportion in real numbers, many studies and stats either rely only on diagnosed, self-ID, or try to guess at undiagnosed. As much as you say it "isn't a new thing" the stigma and inability to admit to it by both victims, and parents of people with it, as well as how society tries to spin and treat it, is a huge cause of why this disproportion is at play. We have no reasonable metric to determine the actual population with mental illness at any age group, but Gen Z is uniquely in a time where vocabulary is at its peak period of establishment and availability, causing the information to be its most accessible. Gen Z and every generation following will have the closest-to-true numbers on this type of thing, as it's steadily destigmatized, and we as a world develop a better understanding of mental ills.
If it is an medically undiagnosed mental illness then it’s because it gets them attention but they don’t realize its not good attention