We Don't Have A Mental Health Crisis. We Have A Lifestyle Crisis
Our elites profit most when we’re chronically fat, sick and depressed keeping us hooked on pills engineered by big pharma as a magic cure for all our problems.
Americans could learn a thing or two from Harrison Ford.
In a rare interview with the Hollywood Reporter last week, the media-shy actor shared how, at 80, he knows exactly “who the fuck” he is.
When pressed on prior therapy sessions he disclosed in 2002, he offered some honest thoughts.
“My opinion is not of the profession, it’s of the practitioner,” Ford said. “There are all kinds of therapy. I’m sure many of them are useful to many people. I’m not anti-therapy for anybody — except for myself. I know who the fuck I am at this point.”
The Hollywood Reporter pressed him on his own analysis.
Your fans online have done some armchair diagnosis, looking at things you’ve said about being shy in social situations and some of your talk show appearances. Some assume you’ve wrestled with social anxiety disorder. Are they onto something?
Shit. That sounds like something a psychiatrist would say, not a casual observer. No. I don’t have a social anxiety disorder. I have an abhorrence of boring situations.
Ford is onto something. We don’t have a mental health crisis as much as we have a lifestyle crisis. That’s not to deny that people are seriously suffering, which is as fundamental to the human experience as pleasure. But everyone seems oblivious to why they suffer.
In his old age, Ford has completed the journey of self-discovery, one that fewer and fewer people seem able and willing to take. Instead, a wave of apathy has taken over a population that’s succumbed to the pitfall pursuit of cheap and immediate dopamine hits through weed, porn, Netflix and Instagram powered by a processed ready-to-eat diet. And it’s made everyone sick. People generally aren’t happy when they’re sick.
Americans are lonelier and more depressed than ever. Americans are also being prescribed more drugs than ever, and yet suicides have risen 30 percent since 2000 while life expectancy is on a steady decline. Clearly, something’s not working, especially when 1 in 10 Americans are affected by depression despite antidepressant use at an all-time high. One study from a team of researchers at Saudi Arabia published last year found antidepressants don’t even raise quality of life over time.
Our elites profit most when we’re chronically fat, sick and depressed keeping us hooked on pills engineered by big pharma eager to capitalize on every ailment from anxiety to obesity. A culture allergic to personal responsibility and honest self-reflection (or really any self-awareness) seems to ignore the possibility that anxious and depressed people might have their own mentality to blame for all their problems.
A groundbreaking study published in the journal of Molecular Psychiatry last summer exposed antidepressants as having little more effect than placebos, leading some psychologists to reject the assertion that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance. The findings suggest our high rates of depression aren’t a consequence of biology and instead are one of circumstances, and our approach to those circumstances. Victimhood never did anyone any favors.
The late Roman stoic philosopher Seneca offered timeless wisdom in one of his letters to Lucilius warning against travel as a cure for discontent.
“Do you think you are the only person to have had this experience?” He wrote in letter 28. “Are you really surprised, as if it were something unprecedented, that so long a tour and such diversity of scene have not enabled you to throw off this melancholy and this feeling of depression? A change in character, not a change of air, is what you need.”
Those depressed Instagram influencers should take note.
Many blame the heightened prevalence of mental illness on the culture’s destigmatization of even talking about mental health. That might explain some of it among older generations, but not the children by this point.
New data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released on Monday revealed the children are not alright. According to the CDC, teenage girls are suffering the worst of our “mental health crisis.” Federal data shows 3 in 5, or 56 percent of teen girls said they felt persistent sadness or hopeless in 2021, up from 36 percent ten years ago.
Teenange boys also saw a sharp increase in those who reported sadness or hopelessness, from 21 percent in 2021 to 29 percent.
It should be no surprise, then, that kids and teens also happen to report far too much screen time compared to their parents.
Ford is confident because he judges himself by his own standards. Younger people seem to have trouble basing their own self-image on how they perceive themselves relative to others in a society where everyone is performatively trying to cultivate an Instagrammable lifestyle.
Most Americans probably don’t need more pills and therapy sessions at this point. They need to get away from their screens and go outside.
More stories:
POLITICO: Pot is making people sick. Congress is playing catch-up.
The Federalist: Every Bite Of Processed Food Is Killing You: Study
The Federalist: Study Finds Republicans Happier In Their Marriages Than Democrats
The Federalist: Daily Caller’s ‘Damaged’ Documentary Highlights The Danger Of Discovery’s ‘Generation Drag’
The Federalist: Who Aborted Babies Say They Were Pressured Into It
New York Times: Psychedelics are a Promising Therapy, but They Can Be Dangerous for Some
StudyFinds: Anti-inflammatory drug turns back time, makes aging blood young again
Washington Examiner: Mental health training may be required for Ohio prep coaches
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