A new study out of California has shown that five times as many students (including high school students) suffer anxiety and other mental health issues than past years… even from the Great Depression. I’m certain that this comes as no surprise to anyone on sharenotes.com as those of us in the trenches understand that anxiety all too well.
We are living in tough times, with high expectations for our lives during a recession that feels like it rivals the Great Depression in it’s magnitude and expanse. The study goes on to outline the specific areas of mental health that have increased over the years and if you really want to read it, the results will be published in a future issue of the Clinical Psychology Review. What I found most interesting however was that the authors of the study found strong, if not conclusive evidence that social factors had a major influence on the results.
In the past you knew only a handful of people, got only a handful of channels, no computers, no social media. Your list of people to compare yourself to was pretty limited to the neighbor’s kid or maybe someone you saw on TV. Now a days everyone’s everything is available to you 24/7. Your circle of friends can quite literally expand world wide and pop culture has made no secret that success and excess are valued commodities. We follow each others tweets about our successes and read Facebook updates “Johnny was accepted to Harvard Law!”. It’s no wonder that we’ve grown up with a heightened sense of competition and expectations.
Marry these high levels of “gotta go big” expectations, the need to show off and keep up with the joneses with the worst economic times in recent history and you’ve got a recipe for mental instability. Our failures are often reasonable, but in today’s transparent society it makes them even more disappointing. It feels like everyone can see every miss-step we take and that can start us down the path to anxiety and depression.
Studies such as this one aren’t necessarily meant to be filed in the “Captain Obvious” file, psychologists struggle to understand where mental unrest comes form so we can find ways to mitigate it. Not just treat it after the fact. This is important in what seems like an overly medicated society. I personally think that a lot of things will begin to heal as the economy gets stronger. Particularly the as unemployment declines. I think all of us on sharenotes.com have had anxiety over entering into a market place with no job for us post graduation.
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