Is Rising Inequality Responsible for Greater Stress and Anxiety?

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From The Guardian: “Now Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, the authors of The Spirit Level, have returned with a new book, The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Wellbeing.

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The new book, as the subtitle suggests, focuses on the psychological or mental costs of inequality, which, they argue, are many and varied. The basic premise is that inequality creates greater social competition and divisions, which in turn foster increased social anxiety and higher stress, and thus greater incidence of mental illness, dissatisfaction and resentment. And that leads to coping strategies – drugs, alcohol, and addictive behaviours like shopping and gambling – which themselves generate further stress and anxiety.”

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4 COMMENTS

  2. I think the police state exists in part because of inequality. If you’ll notice, South Africa and the former USSR nations have high incarceration rates, too. Inequality, social disintegration, deep pockets of intergenerational poverty and oppression…when these factors combine, one gets a police+prison state.

    What scares me about American culture right now is how defeated just about everyone has become. We have -male- celebrities “getting treatment” for whatever, often as part of plea deals. I mean…its bad enough for women, but when the shrinks have even gotten the high status, white men…

    no one is safe from Mental Health, Inc.

    Reducing inequality and expanding (recreating? building?) a safety net would help tremendously. Look at the 50s-70s, maybe even into the 80s. sure, the US had a much more extensive state hospital system, but…

    holy mother of god…look at what Mental Health, Inc. is up to now, in 2018. And its so much more dangerous, insidious, than in years past…

    more people “in treatment,” higher suicide rates, more people on disability. Fewer people in state hospitals…plenty more in prisons, on various forms of Mental Health, Inc.-supervised “Treatment” thru probation parole, conditional discharge, etc…

    I don’t think its going to get better in the US, honestly. The 1%-ers these days make the Gilded Age upper crust look like amateurs.

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  3. I agree with both of you, the wrong people took control of America. But at least the satanic sins and crimes of these self proclaimed “elite” are filling the internet now.

    So many people are now “awakening” to this unfortunate reality, that some of us “insightful” people realized long ago, and we were political-abuse-of-psychiatry-ed for having such “insight.”

    The psychiatrists believe 9/11/2001, the never ending wars that resulted from that event, and the financial destruction of our monetary system by banksters who don’t know the number one rule in banking, are wonderful things! Do you still believe that psychiatrists?

    You’ve got the fiscally irresponsible, bailout needing, war mongering and profiteering, globalist luciferian pedophile banksters, that our founding fathers forewarned us about, in charge now! Isn’t that great for the child abuse covering psychiatrists?

    Oops! Wrong people in charge.

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