THE YEAR 2020 has
been one of the most tumultuous in modern American history. To find events
remotely as destabilizing and transformative, one has to go back to the
2008 financial crisis and the 9/11 and anthrax attacks of 2001, though those
systemic shocks, profound as they were, were isolated (one a national security
crisis, the other a financial crisis) and thus more limited in scope than the
multicrisis instability now shaping U.S. politics and culture.
Since the end of World War II, the only close competitor
to the current moment is the multipronged unrest of the 1960s and early 1970s:
serial assassinations of political leaders, mass civil rights and anti-war
protests, sustained riots, fury over a heinous war in Indochina, and the
resignation of a corruption-plagued president.
But those events unfolded and built upon one another over
the course of a decade. By crucial contrast, the current confluence of
crises, each of historic significance in their own right — a global
pandemic, an economic and social shutdown, mass unemployment, an
enduring protest movement provoking increasing levels of
violence and volatility, and a presidential election centrally
focused on one of the most divisive political figures the U.S. has known who
happens to be the incumbent president — are happening simultaneously,
having exploded one on top of the other in a matter of a few months.
Lurking beneath the headlines justifiably devoted to
these major stories of 2020 are very troubling data that reflect intensifying
pathologies in the U.S. population — not moral or allegorical sicknesses but
mental, emotional, psychological and scientifically
proven sickness. Many people fortunate enough to have survived this
pandemic with their physical health intact know anecdotally — from observing
others and themselves — that these political and social crises have spawned
emotional difficulties and psychological challenges.
But the data are nonetheless stunning, in terms of
both the depth of the social and mental health crises they
demonstrate and the pervasiveness of them. Perhaps the most illustrative study
was one released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this
month, based on an extensive mental health survey of Americans in
late June.
One question posed by researchers was whether someone has
“seriously considered suicide in the past 30 days”— not fleetingly considered
it as a momentary fantasy nor thought about it ever in their lifetime, but seriously
considered suicide at least once in the past
30 days. The results are staggering.
For Americans between 18-24 years old, 25.5 percent — just
over 1
out of every 4 young Americans — said they had. For the much
larger group of Americans ages 25-44, the percentage was somewhat lower but
still extremely alarming: 16 percent. A total of 18.6 percent of Hispanic
Americans and 15 percent of African Americans said they had seriously
considered suicide in the past month. The two groups with the largest percentage
who said yes: Americans with less than a high school degree and unpaid
caregivers, both of whom have 30 percent — or almost 1 out of every 3 — who
answered in the affirmative. A full 10 percent of the U.S. population generally
had seriously contemplated suicide in the month of June.
In a remotely healthy society, one that provides
basic emotional needs to its population, suicide and serious suicidal
ideation are rare events. It is anathema to the most basic human instinct:
the will to live. A society in which such a vast swath of the population is
seriously considering it as an option is one which is anything but healthy, one
which is plainly failing to provide its citizens the basic necessities for
a fulfilling life.
The alarming CDC data extends far beyond serious suicidal
desires. It also found that “40.9% of respondents reported at least one adverse
mental or behavioral health condition, including symptoms of anxiety disorder
or depressive disorder (30.9%), symptoms of a trauma- and stressor-related
disorder (TSRD) related to the pandemic (26.3%), and having started or
increased substance use to cope with stress or emotions related to COVID-19
(13.3%).” For the youngest part of the adult population, ages 18-24,
significantly more than half (62.9 percent)
reported suffering from depressive or anxiety disorders.
THAT MENTAL HEALTH WOULD SUFFER materially
in the middle of a pandemic — one that requires isolation from community and
work, quarantines, economic shutdowns, and fear of illness and death — is not
surprising. In April, as the realities of isolation and quarantine were
becoming more apparent in the U.S., we devoted a SYSTEM
UPDATE episode to a discussion with the mental health experts Andrew
Solomon and Johann Hari, both of whom described how “the traumas of
this pandemic — the unraveling of our way of life for however long that lasts,
the compulsory viewing of all other humans as threats, and especially sustained
isolation and social distancing” — will exacerbate virtually every social
pathology, including ones of mental health.
But what makes these trends all the more disturbing is
that they long predated the arrival of the coronavirus crisis, to say nothing
of the economic catastrophe left in its wake and the social unrest from this
year’s protest movement. Indeed, since at least the financial crisis of 2008,
when first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration acted to
protect the interests of the tycoons who caused it while allowing everyone else
to wallow in debt and foreclosures, the indicia of collective mental health in
the U.S. have been blinking red.
In 2018, NBC News, using health insurance studies, reported
that “major depression is on the rise among Americans from all age groups,
but is rising fastest among teens and young adults.” In 2019, the American
Psychological Association published a study documenting a 30 percent
increase “in the rate of death by suicide in the United States between 2000 and
2016, from 10.4 to 13.5 per 100,000 people” and a 50 percent increase “in
suicides among girls and women between 2000 and 2016.” It noted:
“Suicide was the 10th-leading cause of death in the United States in
2016. It was the second-leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 34 and
the fourth-leading cause among people ages 35 to 54.”
In March 2020, the New Yorker’s Atul Gawande published
a survey of data from two Princeton economists, Anne Case and
Angus Deaton, under the headline: “Why Americans Are Dying from Despair:
the unfairness of our economy, two economists argue, can be measured not only
in dollars but in deaths.” The decadeslong economic stagnation for Americans,
the reversal of the American Dream, and the shockingly high mass unemployment
ushered in by the pandemic are obviously significant reasons why these
pathologies are rapidly worsening now.
Observing these trends is necessary but not sufficient for
understanding their breadth and their impact. Why is virtually every metric of
mental and spiritual disease — suicide, depression, anxiety disorders,
addiction, and alcoholism — increasing significantly, rapidly, in the richest
country on earth, one filled with advanced technologies and at least the
pretense of liberal democracy?
One answer was provided by Dr. Laurel Williams, chief of
psychiatry at Texas Children’s Hospital, to NBC when discussing the rise of
depression: “There’s a lack of community. There’s the amount of time that we
spend in front of screens and not in front of other people. If you don’t have a
community to reach out to, then your hopelessness doesn’t have any place to
go.”
That answer is similar to the one offered by the brilliant book
on depression and modern western societies by Johann Hari, “Lost
Connections,” along with his viral TED Talk on the same topic:
namely, it is precisely the attributes that define modern Western societies
that are crafted perfectly to deprive humans of their most pressing emotional
needs (a book by Hari on addiction, “Chasing the Scream,” and an even-more-viral
TED Talk about it, sounds a similar theme about why Americans are turning
in horrifyingly large numbers to serious problems of substance abuse).
Much attention is devoted to lamenting the toxicity of our
discourse, the hate-driven polarization of our politics, and the fragmentation
of our culture. But it is difficult to imagine any other outcome in a society
that is breeding so much psychological and emotional pathology by denying to
its members the things they most need to live fulfilling lives.
Today’s SYSTEM UPDATE on The Intercept’s YouTube channel is devoted to exploring this unravelling of the social fabric: not just the data demonstrating that it is happening, but also what the causes are, and what the consequences are likely to be for our politics, our culture, our society generally. And the answers to the question prompted by all of this — where is the exit ramp to prevent these trends from worsening even further? — are as elusive as they are vital.
No comments:
Post a Comment