The Mental Illness Crisis By Mrs Vera West
Dr Jonathan Haidt, academic and psychologist, has been researching the mental illness crisis which is now gripping the West, and I covered some of his material in a previous blog piece. His colleague Dr Jean Twenge has published a book entitled, Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future (2023). The book looks at six generations:
-the Silents, born 1925–1945
-Baby Boomers, born 1946–1964
-Gen X, born 1965–1979
-Millennials, born 1980–1994
-Gen Z, born 1995–2012
-and the still-to-be-named cohorts born after 2012.
The book shows the alarming rise in depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide among Gen Z teens, and how this has now spread like a cancer to Millennials. Both generations are pessimistic, believing in doom soon from climate change catastrophes, and other supposed horrors. And they are all highly woke, with 4 out of 10 Gen Z’ers believing that the founders of the United States are “better described as villains” than “as heroes.” By contrast, fewer than 1 out of 10 Boomers agreed. Thus, I have to admit that perhaps a large part of the plight of the young is due to their uncritical acceptance of the nonsense handed down to them from the chattering class, which they have swallowed, hook, line and stinking sinker as well. It would make anyone depressed.
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-mental-illness-crisis-millenials
“Today we have a second post from Jean Twenge, to mark the day that her new book comes out: Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future. I strongly recommend this book. In fact, here’s my endorsement of it, on the back cover:
Gen Z is really different from previous generations, as Jean Twenge showed us in her previous book, iGen. Now, with Generations, Twenge gives us the big picture of all six living generations. This is a gripping family saga in which Twenge shows not just how we all differ from our parents and children, but why. It’s not mostly because of major events; it's a far more interesting story about technology and the slowing down of childhood development. Generations is vital reading for parents, teachers, managers, and anyone else who works with young people and wants them to do well.
I have been so focused on what happened to Gen Z that I have not mastered the findings on other generations. But Jean has, and in the post below she shows us how important it is to track mental health changes in all generations simultaneously. Her book is full of stunning and shocking graphs showing the extent of recent changes to the two youngest generations. Her post below shows a few of those.
— Jon Haidt
After my book iGen was published in 2017, I traveled the country giving talks about how smartphones and social media impacted the lives of Gen Z teens and young adults. But in city after city, I often got the same question: “Hasn’t this new technology affected all generations?”
That got me thinking. The traditional view of generations theorizes that experiencing major events (wars, terrorist attacks, economic recessions) at different ages causes generational differences. But technology – not just smartphones but washing machines, airplanes, modern medicine, and so on – have changed day-to-day life much more than events.
In my new book, Generations, I explore how technology is at the root of generational differences – not just for Gen Z but for all generations. I examine how the six generations with a quorum of living members – Silents, Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and Polars – differ in everything from sexuality to politics to work attitudes to gender identity to wealth. These differences happen because technology has not only direct impacts but indirect ones, like the growth of individualism and the slowing of the life course (the latter is why, for example, Gen Z teens delay getting their driver’s licenses, Millennial young adults delay having children, and middle-aged Gen X’ers and Boomers look younger than their grandparents did at the same age.) My goal is to help the generations understand each other better by separating the myths from the realities of generations with as much data as possible (39 million people across 24 datasets).
One big focus in Generations is trends in mental health. After documenting the alarming rise in depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide among Gen Z teens, I was curious whether the increases had spread to Millennial, Gen X, and Boomer adults as well. I wanted to know:
- Are adults also more likely to suffer from depression in recent years?
- If so, what are the consequences of the rise in depression for democracy and society?
- If so, what are the causes of the rise in depression for teens and adults?
Let’s take these questions in turn.
Question 1. Are adults also more likely to suffer from depression in recent years?
In 2016, a study in Pediatrics came to a startling conclusion: Rates of major depression among U.S. adolescents (12- to 17-year-olds) rose significantly between 2011 and 2014.
A few years later, with data up to 2016, my colleagues and I found that depression among young adults (18- to 25-year-olds) had also started to rise, beginning about two years later (2013) than it did for teens.
The analyses of this dataset for Generations, with data up to 2021, showed something new: Depression rates among 26- to 34-year-olds (nearly all Millennials by 2021) were also up, with increases beginning after 2015 … These increases were not as large as for teens and younger adults, but they were novel – and concerning.
Similar trends appeared in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, where adults were asked how many days in the last month they experienced poor mental health (such as feeling down or stressed). Just as with depression, young adults rose first and furthest, followed by 26- to 34-year-olds. There was less lag between the initial increases – a year instead of two years and some evidence for increases among those over age 35 (mostly Gen X and Boomers), but the basic pattern was the same.
The rise in depression and poor mental health was moving up the age scale – it started with teens, stretched to college-age adults, and by 2016, was ensnaring 26- to 34-year-olds who were building careers and families. This last group was also a different generation: All 26- to 34-year-olds in 2014-2020 were Millennials, born 1980-1994 – a generation that was, at least as teens, actually happier and more satisfied with their lives than Gen X’ers (born 1965-1979) were. So this wasn’t just about Gen Z aging into older age groups.
Like a cancer, the mental health crisis that first afflicted Gen Z teens spread to Gen Z young adults and then to Millennials. The problem wasn’t getting better – it was getting worse, and it was pulling in an age group and a generation who, at first, were not affected.
That’s bad news on many levels, especially if our goal as a society is to reduce human suffering. These are screening surveys getting a cross-section of the population, not just those who seek help. These data suggest the need for more mental health services will only grow – not because more people are comfortable seeking help, but because more people need it. The deterioration of mental health among Millennials will have ramifications for the nation, as they will more likely struggle building families and succeeding at work.
Question 2. What are the consequences of the rise in Gen Z and Millennial depression for democracy and society?
Most people think of depression in terms of emotions: Sadness, despondency, worry. But, as practitioners of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) observe, depression is also about how people think. By definition, people who are depressed have a negative outlook of things. So, given the rise in teen depression, it makes sense that Gen Z teens are much more pessimistic about the world – a trend that started when Millennials were teens in the 2000s
Are these fluctuations in pessimism reflections of depression trends or do they hue close to some objective reality of how bad things actually are?
They seem to be more about depression shaping perception, than perception shaping depressive outlooks. For example, although teens’ pessimism sometimes spikes during difficult times (such as the high violent crime rates in the early 1990s), the first survey after the 9/11 attacks saw an all-time low in pessimism among teens. Likewise, instead of declining when the U.S. economy went on a tear from 2012-2019, pessimism went up. (Nor is the change in pessimism a response to climate change: Teens’ concern about the environment peaked in the 1990s, not recently – that’s shown in the Gen X chapter of Generations).
Both Millennials and Gen Z are also more pessimistic about capitalism. While younger adults once had a more positive view of capitalism than older adults, that flipped in the early 2010s. Younger adults in 2018-2021 were considerably less positive about capitalism than in 2010
These pessimistic trends are consistent with the “hellscape” narrative, intimately familiar to most digital media users in recent years. It’s the meme of the dog sitting inside the burning house with the “this is fine” speech bubble. It’s the ubiquitous Millennial complaint about stagnant wages (which, it turns out, isn’t true, as the Generations excerpt in the Atlantic shows). It’s the claim that racism and injustice are worse now than ever (which isn’t true either, given that racial segregation was the law in the American South in the early 20th century). It’s the idea that the world is literally on fire, so there’s no point. It’s Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz tweeting in February 2023, “We’re living in a late stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic [with] record wealth inequality, 0 social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world … [you] have to be delusional to look at life in our country [right now] and have any amt of hope or optimism.”
Negativity is more common on the political left, but a variation appears on the right as well. It’s the “this country is going to hell in a hand-basket because of the liberals” narrative of degeneration. It’s the fear that drag queens are coming for your kids. It’s saying that crime has risen so much in the liberal-controlled big cities that they are unlivable. It’s the idea that there’s a war on Christmas. It’s Make America Great Again (because its best days were in the past). These views are likely more common among older people, partially because more conservatives are older, but it suggests that not all of the negativity is coming from the left. The national conversation is much more negative, polarized, and toxic than it once was.
No matter its political origin, pervasive negativity, especially if it is paired with a sense of hopelessness, is problematic for maintaining a stable society. For a democracy to thrive, it helps if its citizens believe that (1) the system is reasonably fair, (2) the government functions reasonably well, and (3) that the country was founded by good people with good intentions.
Among Gen Z and Millennials, all three of those beliefs are in question. Young adults are less likely to agree that “America is a fair society where everyone can get ahead” – the majority disagreed. Plus, 3 out of 4 Gen Z’ers, and 2 out of 3 Millennials, think “significant changes” to the government’s “fundamental design and structure” are necessary.
Most stunning is this: 4 out of 10 Gen Z’ers believe that the founders of the United States are “better described as villains” than “as heroes.” Fewer than 1 out of 10 Boomers agreed, creating a substantial generation gap. So young adults are not just more negative about the current situation; they are also more negative about events 250 years in the past. …”
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