Study: Youth now have more mental health issues

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: CBS

A new study on the stress levels of high school and college students has some skeptics.

The study found that five times as many students are dealing with anxiety and other issues than those during the Great Depression.

And a study author at San Diego State University says the number may actually be low, considering all the students taking antidepressants and other psychotropic medications.


Read more: http://www.kgan.com/template/inews_wire/wires.national/34d78ab1-www.kgan.com.shtml

[hughee99]

1. There's more mental health issues to have, now.

How does one go about determining the anxiety levels of students during the great depression, anyway?

[Lorien]

32. Personally i'm beginning to wonder if there's an environmental component

toxins in the air, water, our food supply...several of my friends with adult children have seen their kids recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, several friends with young children have announced within the last two years that their kids are autistic. In 1986 I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and almost no one had ever heard of it before. Now everyone seems to know someone who struggles with it. This can't simply be linked to population growth. Something else must be going on.

[avaistheone1]

2. Send them over to Afghanistan or Iraq.

That should straighten them out, or perhaps screw them up for the rest of their lives.

:sarcasm:

[mwb970]

3. Is it because they have become accustomed to an easy life?

The college students I know live in a bubble of TV, video games, and texting to each other. They seem to assume that the world will continue to provide for them somehow. I wasn't around for the Great Depression. Could young people have been somehow different then?

[CreekDog]

12. Kids in Richmond, CA, Detroit, Newark, Philadelphia, and other impoverished areas have it easy?

come again?

or maybe you mean kids have it easy except for the ones that don't.

i get ya now. :crazy:

[WriteDown]

16. If you're going to UPenn, you probably don't have it as bad as the

Great Depression. Actually, if you are going to ANY college in any of those cities, you are probably miles ahead.

[CreekDog]

18. Most Philly kids go to Penn, right?

wrong. :eyes:

[WriteDown]

19. FAIL...

Even if you're going to HS, you probably are leagues ahead from your counterparts in the Great Depression. And if you're going to also include college students....

From the article.

"A new study on the stress levels of high school and college students has some skeptics..."

[Mojorabbit]

24. I have some of my grandfathers schoolbooks

He graduated 8th grade, worked, did WW2 and then was a postman. His school books are a gazillion times more difficult than anything I had in school up to that grade( I was a HS grad 74). This was a one room school with all grades in it. He had Latin and German, as part of the curriculum. He worked the farm too and was let out of school for the harvestl Perhaps the time outdoors doing physical labor was a tonic. I really think that is missing from so many kids in the past twenty years. Being outdoors. I could totally be wrong and probably am but I think being in nature is very important for good mental health.

[WriteDown]

26. Similar histories....

One of my grandfathers had to leave school in the beginning of 10th grade to work at my families fish market. My grandmother on the other side was put up for adoption at the age of 12. Not sure about their mental health though. They didn't share much of their past except in rare moments.

Even my father's schoolbooks were light years ahead of anything I had in HS so I've always thought about that.

[Lorien]

33. I've seen studies that said as much. There are three main components to happiness:

1). Contact with friends and loved ones
2). Contact with Nature
3). Personal creativity (artistic or other endeavors, such as volunteer work).

This came from the book/ video "Affluenza" and "Escape from Affluenza". No where was consumption/ materialism found to be a factor.

[WolverineDG]

42. My grandfather never finished high school yet

he did the NYT crossword puzzle every day, including Sundays, in PEN & without consulting a dictionary or encyclopedia.

dg

[cap]

35. I graduated UPenn on scholarship and it was an ordeal

I didn't eat properly for certain periods... Most notably was spaghetti and parmesan cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 3 weeks.

My boyfriend finally caught onto what was going on and went out and bought groceries for me for a few weeks.

I remember doing without during the week so that on Friday night I could cook a chicken dinner for the two of us.

A lot of my scholarship friends were doing the same thing. We were joking that sometimes eating became a chore... You felt hungry, opened your refrigerator, looked at was in there, saw the same thing you'd been eating forever, and then decided you really weren't so hungry after all. Hunger pangs would hit again and you would just put down what you had.

There was often the monthly tension around the end of the month as to whether we'd make rent and utilities.

This was back in the 80's when financial aid was a lot more generous.

[Exultant Democracy]

4. I'm sorry but the answers a bunch of first year psych students give can be compared to 1930's data

at least not in any way that can be considered scientific. A very different culture and society with different ideas about expression.

[tinrobot]

11. ..and aren't psych students more prone to mental issues anyways?

n/t

[raccoon]

5. I think part of it's that there's more identification of it.

Another part is most Americans are over-medicated.

[Jennicut]

6. It is only because most people were not diagnosed years ago

and had no idea they were depressed. The stigma for people with mental illness has always been high but less so now.

[SpiralHawk]

7. "We're depraved on account of we're deprived." - WSS

"That's why we're a mess." - WSS

[juno jones]

8. I'd be depressed too if I had to live in this world.

:sarcasm:

Everything's about to crash, these kids are saddled with student loan debt and headed into an economy where they will be lucky to get near-minimum wage work-even in their field. They can look forward to this country's infrastructure crumbling as the last dollar is spent on war without end, getting old with no safety nets even after having done 'all the right things'.

Gees, the future's so bright I gotta wear...yeah, right.

[WriteDown]

14. Unlike the Great Depression where kids new that WWII was right around the corner...

and going to make things all better. :eyes:

[juno jones]

41. My parents were greatest gen, and I never heard them

talk about awareness of looming ww2. They were young, sure, but it was never a foregone conclusion that the US would wind up in the war...until it did. As for the depression, they also had resources like family farms to fall back on. And except for the arms race, post ww2 sounds relatively idyllic. My dad got a full education on the VA tab and my mom was able to enter a medical field that had been predominantly male.

They also didn't have access to the kind of info we have now. Who knows if they did I might be here because they might have both offed themselves over the knowledge that we'd all turn out like this. :eyes:

[Odin2005]

9. BS. Most likely mental issues were just dismissed as character flaws back then.

[hayu_lol]

10. Kids during the Great Depression were under the pressure...

of wondering if they would have a meal that day or not.

Old raggy clothes(all hand-me-downs), poor houses, and maybe no place to live.

College was just a dream for most kids from the 30s.

You could make your own crystal set for radio reception, there was no tv, no record players, and few if any board games to play.

Many kids(teens)had to work at whatever they could find to help put food on the table...if they had a table to put the food on.

Yes, one could definitely say that those were 'different' times.

[EFerrari]

30. My mom was born in 1932 and had to endure hunger from

the age of 4 to about 7. She's also ADD but of course, there was no ADD at that time. My brother is also ADD and there was no ADD when he was growing up and both of my sons are ADD -- ditto, there was no such DX when they were kids.

Having a name for this now will help my nieces, two of whom are ADD.

[mopinko]

37. or accepted.

seems to me that it just used to be accepted that someone had a "melancholy" personality. or that artists were "very emotional". i wonder sometimes if that did not work better. i suppose for many, it did not. but overall, well, i wonder.

[bejamin wood]

13. Life is increasingly complex

There was once a time when you could pickup your things and go somewhere to start a new life. That concept is nearly extinct. There are no clean breaks for the young, they are trapped and can feel it. Slip up and you are toast. I should know, I've spent the last ten years recovering from the previous twenty.

I remember squabbling over little things like perfect hair and stylish clothes until I realized my best friend got his clothes in a garbage bag after school. That's when reality sunk in and I was only six years old. That's when I started asking serious questions about culture, poverty, and politics. By the time I was a teenager, my life had gone downhill. Drugs, depression, and the weight of the world nearly sunk me into oblivion three times.

Kids today are too serious for the wrong reasons. I wish we could offer more freedom to experiment with learning and enjoying life. Working Class Hero comes to mind...

[WriteDown]

15. Yep, the good ole days...

[Socal31]

17. BS.

There is an infinite more ADD diagnosis than there was during the GD as well! Imagine that!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

20. Big time.

An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

[AlphaCentauri]

22. Very common I think n/t

[Mojorabbit]

25. Oh my....nt

[Lorien]

34. Yikes! All that over a game?

I've seen gibbons in the zoo behave that way...well, almost.

[scheming daemons]

21. Alternate headline that means the same: "Those Kids Today are CRAZY!"

....

[surrealAmerican]

23. Wouldn't this be because ...

... during the great depression, the "high school and college" age people with the most anxiety would not have been students, but rather drop-outs?

Even finishing high school was considered a luxury at the time.

[mrbarber]

27. This story reminds me of the people who say there are more Gay people now than ever before.

No, we just know of more now, because not everyone is hiding in the closet.

[lostnfound]

28. Fearful television vs healing nature as an escape. nt

[EndersDame]

29. I think there was more of a sense of community and extended family close by

to use as a support system for kids growing up during the 1930s. Just a passing thought..

[mrbarber]

39. EndersDame.....

LOVE your profile pic and your name!

[EndersDame]

40. Thank you so much!

[Wilms]

31. When's the last time anyone chilled to a Rap album. n/t

[treestar]

36. IMO there is a lot more stress

And a lot more parental involvement with everything. More fear of crime.

[Javaman]

38. The link appears to no longer work, but I would love to find out who funded his research. nt