8 thoughts on “Interesting sentences”

1. Modernity has been here a while. Statistical measures of mental illness prevalence not so much. Is it only the most modern of modernity that really matters then?

   How seriously can we take measures of the incidence of mental illness, the consistency and comparability over time, and the assumption that those measures reliably map to the mental realities of the times at which they were measured? If the government is going to start giving kids personal tutors if their parents provide the right paperwork with the right magic words on them, then those diagnoses are going to skyrocket.

   Which is the actual problem with modern modernity that is causing the “measures of modernity” to go all screwy.

   The reason the analysis of crime trends focuses so intensely on the homicide rate is that statistics for other crimes are known to be highly unreliable for a lot of reasons. Gunshots are famously and significantly under-reported, as has now been definitively proven by multiply municipalities installing SpotShotter-style system. But, “it’s hard to ignore a dead body with a hole in it,” for neighborhood residents and police alike. So the homicide rate is the only decent stoplight around if you are looking for your keys, if still quite an imperfect and dim one.

   The suicide rate should probably play a similar role in discussions of the prevalence of mental illness. Not entirely reliable, but hard to ignore, and likely the best we’ve got.

   And as we learned when scrutinizing some of the statements Jean Twenge made and which appear in iGen, the suicide rate for teens has not increased, even though she made clearly misleading statements giving people (and journalists) the impression that it had, by inappropriately and unethically lumping suicide and depression rates together.

2. I think Handle’s probably right that suicide is a good proxy. It’s probably a better proxy for depression and possibly bipolar disorder than other measures (though suicide rates are certainly affected by the availability of guns). But I doubt it’s a good proxy for schizophrenia and anything related to anxiety.

   In fact, schizophrenia, I would imagine, is much easier to diagnose and thus has probably been diagnosed reliably and consistently across time, and I think there’s little risk of malingering, since no one really wants to take anti-psychotics for anything but treating mental illness. So, if we’re seeing rates of schizophrenia going up, I don’t think that’s due simply to increased diagnosis. It probably reflects a real trend

   • It’s been a while since I read it, but I think that David Kopel in his book, “The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy,” found that in countries where there was a legal change from relatively unlimited gun ownership to strict gun control, the historic suicide rate was maintained, notwithstanding: i.e., there was a commensurate rise in non-gun suicides to balance the lack of gun suicides.
     Someone who is serious about ending his life, apparently, will find a way….
     There is the argument that removing the gun availability gives the suicide more time to reconsider, if he has to obtain legal/illegal pharmaceuticals, a rope, or a bridge to vault from. As I recall, I don’t think that the data bore that out.
     http://a.co/gWoP7sH

3. we see increased prevalence of depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia across time and culture. Our genetic heritage has clearly not changed and yet the incidence of mental illness is changing.

   Let us not compare our society to the late 1990s but 1970s on suicides and mental illness. It has been a tough 10 years after the Financial Crisis for most people.

   And in terms of mental illness and culture, I always assumed it was diagnoised a lot less back 50 – 100 years.

4. I noticed, at my few attempts in employment, that I had no gene for decoding complex work schedules.

5. I blame the internet. I never realized how many crazy people were out there until I got online.

   • 🙂

6. Airbag effect. The increase in incident of lower extremities injuries after the implementation of airbags. Before airbags, those with such injuries usually didn’t survive the upper body damage.

   It wasn’t that long ago that if you didn’t get out of your funk and do something toward your winter survival, you died before the next spring. If you went manic on someone, you likely got shot down. Same with schizophrenia. Less than a century ago, if you weren’t one of the top 0.1%, you died if you couldn’t take care of yourself. Either directly, or others let you die for the survival of the group.

   But we can’t discount the decrease in individuality which now spotlights those who are conforming, often due to mental issues.

   “The tendency to automatic action of the mind is still further promoted by the environment of modern life. The crowding of populations into cities, and the division and subdivision of labor in the factory and the shop, and even in the so-called learned professions, have a tendency to increase the dependence of the individual upon the mass of society. And this interdependence of the units of society renders them more and more imitative, and hence more and more automatic both mentally and physically.”
   —Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand: manual training, the chief factor in education (1900)

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