New Survey Reveals Class, Age Divide in Mental Health Crisis

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From The Hill: “Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti examine the toll that the Coronavirus pandemic is taking on Americans’ mental health.

‘Because of the way that the suicide numbers are reported, we aren’t going to know how bad that specific metric is until a year or so down the road. We also won’t get a complete picture of overdose deaths until a year or so down the road. But all of the anecdotal evidence says that we are in absolute crisis across this country, and it’s not getting nearly enough attention let alone anyone actually doing anything about it here in DC.'”

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4 COMMENTS

  1. The sicker a society is, the more people give up. If one’s hardships have only one outlet, which
    is to medicalize or talk about them, in a space where the hardships or reactions are to be said to reside
    in that one person, that is the ultimate burden that might be too much to carry.
    We have a shitty way of dealing with people’s loss of hope and despair.

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  2. If you look at Simon’s article calling out Stanford https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/12/stanford-algorithm-fails-deliver-appropriate-healthcare/ and Davidow’s article about Jill Biden https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/12/no-jill-biden-not-called-doctor-no-one/ to reference the article about the Academy’s impact by viewing the disciplines contributing to an economy https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/higher-education/racialethnic-distribution-advanced-degrees-humanities, the chances of shiftiing the thinking to realize a healthier community become plain when one views the emergent stories in context to the heart and airport noise https://www.studyfinds.org/airplane-noise-night-heart-problems/.

    For we moved to Louisville, Ky in ’89 when UPS was expanding with their hub that triggered the largest relocation of homes along with the destruction of small cities in the US at this time. I would travel to D.C. to meet with the staff of the FAA being that we would hear the noise at night. Klonopin would be prescribed to address the sleep issues. (And later I would quit cold turkey that resulted in the most painful headache one could imagine.)

    To think the local university students are afforded tuition reduction and nighttime employment if they work at UPS might feed into the research study at the New York Academy of Science that was about Cancer, Circadian Rhythm and Light https://www.nyas.org/ebriefings/circadian-disruption-and-cancer/ suggests some signifant issues for research that requires precision and orietation towards scholarship if one values LIFE of a community.

    Truly our challenge is difficult, perhaps more so in a city that headquarters Humana, Horse Racing and Distillieries for everyone generally enjoys the party at the moment. But if We are ignoring the early warning signals, the canaries in the Mine and Minds, then who are we kidding?

    How can one or one plus two or more change the course of humanity as the local politics would silence questioning while the local banker would tell me the government takes care of the handicapped while dismissing me with the question, “Have you saved the world yet?”. First, I was having to understand the plight of those impacted by forces that shaped our mental health and then to understand the strange world of politics that would take me into Janet Reno’s Office. Enough said?

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    • You have touched on an important concept here and that is that all of these individual issues have to be examined in the larger context in which they effect society. We have a piecemeal approach to fixing problems, as you showed with the suggestion of Klonopin to overcome the sleep disturbance from noise pollution. The airplane noise by itself might seem minor until you consider the tsunami of other issues effecting most of us. You have to be able to fit all of the issues into the larger puzzle of what is wrong with our culture and values to understand how to begin to approach fixes that will do more good than harm. Antidepressants and opioids (the current second and third most prescribed drugs in America) are NOT the answer – they are simply more ways big business have found to profit off the ills of a broken culture when the will of politicians and community leaders to address the underlying and pervasive problems is lacking.

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