#MentalHealthMatters #ModernDayStruggles
Hey there friends! 👋 Have you ever stopped to think about why mental health issues seem to be so common these days? We’re talking about all the heavy hitters like ADHD, Autism, Depression, Anxiety, Bipolar disorders, and more. 🧠💭
I mean, did all of these conditions exist before the 21st century, or have our modern-day lifestyles somehow brought them to the forefront? It’s a question that has been boggling our minds and we just can’t seem to shake it off. 🤔💡
Let’s dive into this together and explore the possible reasons behind the rise in mental health issues. Is it the fast-paced world we live in, the pressure to always be “on,” or maybe something else entirely? Let’s dig deeper and uncover the truth. 💪💬
Have you ever wondered about this too? Share your thoughts in the comments below and let’s start a conversation. Together, we can unravel this mystery and gain a better understanding of the world we live in. 💙✨
They’ve always existed, but we’re better able to identify and treat them today.
For a long time, there’s been a lot of stigma around mental health issues and getting help for them. Things are starting to get better, but we’ve still got a long way to go. People are more comfortable talking about stuff like depression and anxiety now, but there’s still a huge stigma around more serious conditions like schizophrenia (but that’s another story). So, more access to talk about these issues = more that people are actually going to talk about them, which is a good thing.
However, I’d argue that social media algorithms can make you perceive that people are talking about mental health more than they actually are. For example, if you watch a few TikToks about mental health, you’ll probably see even more of them, making it seem like the conversation is bigger than it might be. Note on social media – I’d argue that there is also an increase in the incidence of mental health issues like depression and anxiety as social media has become more prominent as well, especially among teens.
We are more aware of them. We don’t just write individuals off as “ weird” or “ retarded”. At least some of us are making an effort to be more understanding.
In the past babies with immediately apparent issues were often abandoned or killed. Child mortality was really really high until relatively recently, so a lot of children that may have had these issues could have died before it become apparent or because they were favored less than the “healthier” kids.
In the early 1900s a lot of hack medicine targeted mentally ill people, or they were taking in to institutions and forgotten about it. Look up the shit they put women and different ethnicities through for minor issues. Lobotomies started in the 30s….
Also note that people would hide their troubles or insecurities from others. There are many cases of mentally ill children being locked away by their families. Those are just the cases we know about, there could have been many families doing this in secret.
To add, there is a heavy stigma around mental illness, so many families might even know there is something wrong with one of their family members so they do their best to ignore it outright. Many people will refuse to diagnosis their children even if their teachers / counselors reccomend it.
And in general, we have more trained professionals who can recognize and diagnosis these conditions. If you look in the comments of videos that describe symptoms of different conditions, you will often find people saying that it “all makes sense” now, or that used the video as motivation to seek and receive a formal diagnosis. Autism for example is still very underdiagnosed, especially in women because the typical symptoms seen in male children do not match those found autistic female children.
I don’t think it’s that it’s less taboo or we’re better at diagnosing. I honestly think that life is too much anymore. It’s unrelenting news 24/7 and the bleakest shit after a global pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and destroyed long standing businesses that were cornerstones to communities. Less people go to the movies now. People want to work from home. People want to be home, cocooning from the world. We’ve created a way of life that isn’t healthy for the human soul.
Theres just alot more awareness of these things now which means diagnosis is alot more common
They existed but the way my family dealt with me and my brother ADHD was to send us out side and run it off. We were always in trouble at school. My brother quit school in 7th grade. I got lucky and learned coping skills because I finally got a very patient teacher. Depression and anxiety was ignored mostly or told to suck it up. GEN X just did things different.
Part of the issue is much better public awareness and removing the stigma about mental health issues, which is a very good thing.
But then, some people — especially young people influenced by social media — self-diagnose and use “mental health” as a sort of cop-out for whatever. As in, “I’m struggling in school because of ADHD, anxiety, depression, or whatnot.”
In such cases, I’ll say: That sounds difficult, what does your therapist say?
The common response: Oh, I’ve never seen a therapist.
Which is really sad, because when someone is dealing with mental health issues, they really really really need to be working with a therapist, who can usually make things much better for them.
When they discovered what cancer was, suddenly everyone and their dog was getting diagnosed with cancer. This doesn’t mean cancer was just invented or just appeared, it just means we can identify, monitor, and treat it better.
Now that the stigma surrounding mental health is fading, more information is available, medical professionals can better identify, monitor, and treat, and people in general are seeking treatment more. The need to bottle it up and survive is being replaced with a desire to know one’s self and to improve where possible.
So yeah these mental illnesses and neurodivergencies aren’t new. Until recently, the recognized symptoms of autism didn’t really include women because our presentation is different. Same with adhd. It’s no wonder that more research and info equals more diagnoses.
Better identification but also our environment is not very conducive of mentally healthy individuals (speaking as someone from the USA)
It’s just easier to get diagnosed. Mental disorders are much more nuanced now, they are in their own separate categories instead of being “moron,” or “retarded,” or “crazy.” Why do you think we have the DSM-5?
Really, I think many people just want help. For example, I always suspected autism (it also runs VERY STRONGLY on my dad’s side of the family lmao) but I didn’t seek a diagnosis until adulthood because 1) I was afraid of the judgement, 2) I was worried my parents would tell me I was faking, and 3) I realized at some point that I had virtually no social life, had extreme trouble completing daily tasks, never left the house, had mood issues, etc.
I’m glad I got diagnosed. After my diagnosis I was able to get some help from my psychiatrist so I can navigate life easier. My social life is thriving, I’ve been going out more, I can talk to people like a goddamn normal person (it was SO hard before).
Oh, also got ADHD, depression, PTSD and anxiety with that diagnosis too 🤣 tbh I should have been seeking therapy/help a LOT younger. My quality of life has improved so much with medications and help from my psychiatrist.
yes to most of what everyone else is saying. But also, think about something like ADHD. In the past, would it even have been a “disorder?” Your hyper kid going outside and getting tons of farm work done isn’t a problem. It’s a disability because the way our world functions today, the symptoms dis-able people who have it from functioning.
Also, depending how far back you’re talking… many people had to be very physically active just to stay alive. Physical activity is a helpful part of the treatment for a lot of these issues.
too common for what?
A bit of column A, a bit of column B. The following is Super simplified, there are a bunch of factors and I’m not a geneticist or a doctor.
Some of those issues are caused by genetics, so with more people being born to parents who have the genes, you get more people predisposed to those issues. Like MS is a disease traced back to sheep hearding in Europe. ADHD is considered somewhat genetic.
Autism on the otherhand is partially linked to older mothers, which is possible due to modern medical technology.
Also, due to that technology, we can now identify these diseases! We can actually see how a depressed brain lights up differently from a non depressed brain!
Furthermore, there is a culture shift. Belief over behavior and mental health has gone thru some extremes. believing that God made a person a certain way to punish the parents or community, that demons are causing the issues, levels of accepting that people are weird.
Lastly, lead and microplastics, there is a bunch of great literature on the rise in murder that corresponds to leaded gasoline. We are also finding evidence of microplastic messing with the body, but we’re at the beginning of understanding. Everyone has microplastics in their body now.
I think the fact it seems like everyone and their mother has some form of mental illness says that this is either a societal problem or mentally ill people are simply different from other people and there’s nothing really wrong with that. It doesn’t have to be a disease. (with exception to a few diagnoses)
Yes and those that suffered did so in silence, died of alcoholism, or benefitted from a generally shorter life span.
Its more socially acceptable now to admit to having mental struggles than it was back then.
At the same time, social media has also changed how people interact to the point where there is an epidemic of loneliness, especially for men.
As a result, we have more people accepting whats going on, but we also have a releatively new cause for issues that hasnt been figured out fully. At least thats my take anyways
I think it’s both lifestyle nowadays probably makes it more common. I think it was always an existence just not much was known about it before the 21st century so it was played off as other things either laziness witchcraft possession all sorts of things only when we became more aware of medicine and psychological things did it become more apparent that these things exist who knows truly how long they’ve existed before, we actually knew about it
Our doctors understand it more. More people are rightly diagnosed (someone bipolar o schyzophrenic in the middle ages was labeled as possesed by a demon for example).
On top of that internet makes things much much more visible. And people sharing mental disorders can connect and talk about their symptoms and support eachother which makes more people aware of those symptoms.
Its just a combination of better moderm medicine and the internet giving mental health more visibility.
Also the fact that we’re coming from a mayor pandemic, there are currently two wars happening, rich people getting richer and the common people getting poorer with unchanging wages in the face of inflation, and climate change getting worse every years doesnt particularly helps either.
Awareness. People didn’t know how to deal with the problem back then.
I think there are four trends.
Firstly, our societies have always had some kind of self-improvement tools. When religion was predominant, it provided rituals and guidelines that kept mental heath under wraps. People have given up on religion, but they haven’t replaced it with anything else to cope with the quandaries of life. And in the digital age, we get oversaturated with more impressions than our brains has evolved to handle. So mental health is taking a hit.
Secondly, in the past there was “functional enough” and “not functional enough”. If you were a bit neurodivergent but you managed to fly under the radar, no one would be the wiser.
Thirdly, we have started to be able to identify various forms of neurodivergence, however, especially in the USA, there are monetary incentives for medical professionals and the pharmaceutical industry to over diagnose.
Fourthly, there also seems to be some form of social media contagion, by which people self diagnose. And when you are a nobody, it’s tempting to come up with something that makes you stand out.
Overall, I am not even sure that the concept of neurotypical and neurodivergent is reliable. We all have our little quirks, so it’s just a question of what type of quirks make us typical or divergent. But what if we had it all the other way around?
As an opinion from what I’ve watched and experienced. The general perception of the world and living in it has been getting worse and more depressing each decade as the media and corporations began prioritising monetary gain. The shock value has to this day been used in most media outlets to pull in people through emotions. In conjunction with all of that and more, including the Internet, we have become more sensitive to our mental health as well as putting more focus on it. Which has made people more aware of their own mental conditions that have been affected by this mental draining of striking negative emotions to get reactions. And there we get more mental health issues being quite common. At least this is my opinionated understanding
He, autistic children were probably abandoned a whole lot back then. Schizophrenic people? don’t even get me started.
It’s not that they were uncommon back then, people just were not out and about. They either got treated like animals/lab rats or maybe rotted to death.
You won’t hear about the person that’s depressed but you’ll hear about the anger issues, the constant drinking, how Peter stopped drawing, and the way Benet stopped taking baths or going out of his room.
We are more aware now that those things can be symptoms of depression. They existed, but not understood.
There’s more awareness now, and subsequently more people being diagnosed.
For some of them though, living in a society that doesn’t see people as a priority and hasn’t been set up to support human needs for at least a decade now (and is slowly getting worse) has caused many to look inward and blame their inability to thrive on a disorder or limitation that exists within them when in a normal, harmonious and functioning world they’d be fine.
I have Asperger’s, but if people were always honest and the lights were dimmed, it would go entirely unnoticed, so I often wonder if as our governments drive wedges between people and the means to meet their needs, how many “neurotypical” people will be left.
I’m under no illusions of the impact trends can have too and I can’t act like in not hoping this one runs it’s course sooner rather than later; I don’t appreciate the memes, the trivialisation, or the misinformation. Awareness doesn’t always feel like awareness when it’s raised with misrepresentation and condescension, but I sympathise with the influx of people looking for reasons why they feel out of place when a place to feel in costs 140% more than it did for the generations before them.
Anyone would feel an increased need for comfort, stability and truth today; these things hold no value to capitalism, and as someone who’s perpetually uncomfortable and confused, I’m not happy either way, but the people who could have been happy are now broken – and if broken feels like Autism, or Bipolar, or ADHD to them, the label provides context, and context brings comfort, and comfort is in short supply.
It existed but people in prior generations were either locked away or told to tough it out and suffered in silence.
They aren’t more common. They always existed. Either people weren’t aware that these existed, or they didn’t feel comfortable discussing them publicly. Many people, like those with ADHD, simply felt like they were broken and couldn’t understand why they couldn’t operate like everyone else. Without awareness, this looks like laziness or unprofessionalism. With awareness, individuals can recognize that they CAN function normally, if they accommodate this condition with organizational techniques, routines, and sometimes medication.
It’s the reason why “woke” shouldn’t be demonized. Pretending stuff doesn’t exist won’t make it go away…it just keeps people from getting the support they need to succeed. Woke is simply awareness of things around you. Giving people the agency to talk about things that they’ve hidden for years, doesn’t create new issues; it just exposes what was already there.
These issues have always been present, people are just more open about them today, and hopefully more willing to seek help.
All of these have existed. It’s only been fairly recent where we stopped beating our children for “daydreaming” or “willfully refusing to talk” autism and adhd are not mental health disorders but a learning disability or developmental delay.
Yes, mental health disorders have always been around as well. The public just didn’t see them in society b/c they were closeted up in asylums to be mistreated until they died.
A lot of people will tell you that there’s more studies, more awareness, so there’s more diagnosis. While that is indeed true, it’s also true that mental illness in younger individuals has increased.
This is likely due to lifestyle differences that are comparably different from the past. People drive instead of walking, people are using the internet for information instead of studying through schools where they can be social. And the biggest one yet, people are more inclined to doom scroll tik tok, and stream videos on YouTube for entertainment instead of picking up a legitimate hobby.
I’m a 44 year old woman and I was just diagnosed with autism last year. autism especially in females is grossly under diagnosed because girls don’t have the same symptoms as boys and boys are who doctors studied autism on.
Depression and anxiety are likely higher because A) it’s not such a negative stigma to report it and get help B) the world is shit right now.
People actively hid these issues when I was growing up, admitting you needed any kind of help mentally meant you were crazy and made your family look bad
I imagine always existed. Social media and less stigma is allowing folks to share their stories. There are folks who are going to say it’s prevalence is increased due to people faking to take advantage of it, but I hope people realize that is likely a small minority. I can imagine many have suffered in silence because they learned that society in general will look down upon you; and possibly their family may be more concerned about their external image and want to hide it.
I was diagnosed in the 90s with ADD and Asperger’s and anxiety and they also said I had depression. So yeah they existed before the 21st century.
Social media and internet.
Word travels around the world in seconds
People can share experiences in seconds.
Plus, new names or diagnoses for conditions are profitable.
If you got it…
They got a pill or shot or vaccine or counseling for it.
Yes, they definitely existed.
However, before widespread literacy, and the necessity of sitting for hours concentrating, most people had no clue they might have adhd or dyslexia. If they were working outside – no one could tell. They might just be a little fidgety in church or unable to keep their mind on task. Lots of people were likely depressed, but you had to get over yourself or starve. Read Shakespeare – melancholia was everywhere. So was anxiety – there was usually someone “nervous”. There were always people locked up in attics or fenced off in the living room in a diaper in old novels.
Because either everyone is looking for something to blame instead of their own doing and/or people just want to be part of the “cool hardship” crowd. People who seriously have mental issues don’t walk around talking about it. It usually gets to the point where people around them knows something’s up and nobody talks about it.
Its always been there. There is just more awareness about it now and as a specie, we are now acknowledging it.
The easiest analogy is to look at left handedness. Not too long ago, people who were naturally left handed were forced to use their right hand for a variety of reasons. Once the taboos and restrictions against left-handedness eased, and went away, a lot more people were noticed to be left-handed in society.
Some similar phenomena can be seen occurring in the realms of sexuality and sexual identity.
For a very long time, people that weren’t neuro-typical were dealt with in society in a lot of ways and kept either out of the public eye or forced to “cosplay as normal.” Now that society is starting to adjust and the stigmas associated with being neuro-atypical are being dealt with, you are going to see more openness on the issue.
Because now we have tools to diagnose these, and mental health isn’t a taboo anymore.
Back then(30 years ago) , therapists were for ‘crazies’ and ADHD meds were ‘lazy parents druging their kids’. There were probably plenty of people with these issue before, but they were brushed off as… various slures… (lazy, crazy, weirdo, … english is not my first langage so i don’t really know if these words match what was said in my langage.)
They all existed. We have better diagnostic criteria now. Folks are more likely to seek help to figure out what’s up with them now. And folks are more able to talk about them now, thanks to the Net making everything seem more common.
I have ADHD, I’m 49 years old, when I was a child the doctors said I was “hyperactive” and told my mother not to give me red cordial. These things existed, they just weren’t categorised correctly.
We talk about it instead of becoming alcoholics like our parents/ grand parents
The same reason left handedness went up after they stopped beating left handed children.
Like. You do know for a long time we threw people in asylums where they suffered horrible fates.
Experimentation on orphans was pretty common. And they were handing out lobotomies like candy.
People were fucking terrified of showing even the slightest hint of mental health issues.
History is terrifying.