It seems like this reported phenomenon has been building for a a number of years now.
I’m not at all sure as to any specifics re: causation, but I believe there’s some reason to suspect that is is semi-conscious cultural canary-in-the-mine-shaft behaviour.
I first noticed this item in today’s Guardian, and was prepared to say that I did not have any ready sources to extrapolate from this report from the UK to North America.
.
Four times as many children prescribed antidepressants
July 23, 2007The number of prescriptions for antidepressants and other mind-altering drugs given to children under 16 has more than quadrupled in the last decade, according to official figures released today.
There were more than 631,000 such prescriptions recorded in the last financial year, according to government figures, compared to 146,000 in 1996-97.The prescriptions, for drugs including antidepressants and treatments for mental health problems as well as for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were dispensed outside hospitals in England. Figures from 2000 include prescriptions made out by dispensing GPs.
The new figures are revealed amid growing concern about rising levels of childhood depression and pressures faced by young people.
.
Then, whilst browsing through the Toronto Globe and Mail, I ran across this item about what may be a growing trend amongst North American teens.
.
Cuts, bites, burns: Teen self-injury on the rise?
DAVID ANDREATTA
July 20, 2007Latoya had no intention of harming her boyfriend when she reached for the kitchen knife while in the throes of an argument with him four days ago.
Instead, she calmly dragged the serrated edge across the fleshy underside of her left forearm, as she has done for years when the stress of the moment becomes too much for her to bear.
Then she did it again, and again, until the skin broke and blood bubbled to the surface.
"Whenever I’m upset or in pain, instead of taking it out on other people I take it out on myself," said the 23-year-old from Toronto, whose scarred and bruised arm betrayed a decade of self-abuse.
Deliberate self-injury without suicidal intent is not a new trend. But new research suggests the practice may be more common among young people than previously believed.
According to a study published in the August issue of the journal Psychological Medicine, 46 per cent of U.S. high school students surveyed had practised some form of self-mutilation in the past year, ranging from cutting and burning to pulling out hair and hitting themselves.
.
.
Whatever the reasons may be, I don’t
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link
http://blog.wirearchy.com/2007/07/23/sadness-and-unhappiness-widespread-amongst-the-young/trackback/
July 26, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Anonymous
The whole theme of deep sadness, advanced chronical depression and a general loss of hope seems to be in the zeitgeist in a number of blogs this week.
One particular artist friend wrote in her blog how she finds her potential lovers totally vain and barely interested in anything but sex, if even that; that nobody seems to be capable of expression affection in relationships or to stick around for more than comfort sex for a single night. I commented that I keep on bumping into more and more people who are virtual emotionless zombies, broken souls not getting the affection they need and having virtually given up hope on life.
On another blog, someone was trying to describe Finnish and East European callousness and brilliantly summarized it as what happens to people whose whole existence revolves around a never ending struggle just to survive and a a perpetual sense of never achieving any real win, of barely breaking even and having no energy or money left to enjoy life or aspire to improvements. A sense of wasted efforts.
Another (somewhat related to the one you quoted above) mentioned the same feeling of struggle without any gain as a reason of the youth’s disengagement from the political process.
All in all, people who become more and more isolated, emotionally and physically, suffer a constant increase in pressure to outperform themselves and who end up feeling that none of it is worth the trouble easily become permanently broken and disenchanted, eventually reaching a point of no-return where they simply won’t ever regain any sense of entertaining the possibility of overcoming misfortune and achieving happiness. When people reach that point, society as a whole is doomed.
I think that the main reason why it most visibly affects youth is because they grow up seeing all the political lies, the illusory nature of consumerism and work-oriented life, the unhappy lives their parents live and giving up early on any of it ever improving.
August 5, 2007 at 4:36 am
Anonymous
I think there is an obvious chemical component we may be overlooking here. When endorphins are released into the brain, pain is over-ridden and anxiety lessens considerably.