When I once visited a pyschologist and told him that I self-identified with a chocolate orange, he told me that i would have to be sectioned. And, my name is not evenTerry.
Extreme wealth divide is definitely making this worse combined with social media highlighting the 'perfection' of billionaire lifestyles and rich celebrities which is completely unachievable for 99%
Take a look at "The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami" by Farhad Dalal. CBT is much favoured by corporations and governments as a counselling methodology and has been applied as a valid therapy across all aspects of mental health. Far from it's origins as a way of helping people overcome phobias. Phobias are by their definition irrational. The senses of anxiety, purposelessness, loneliness and disillusionment that are ever more pervasive today are often very rational responses to economically desperate and culturally alienating forces. CBT is pernicious as it's focus is always on the individual rather than on the circumstances. It's always the individual's responsibility to change the way they view their circumstances and that way they can attain greater wellbeing. It's not the system or the circumstances that are objectively wrong. It is the subject who is at fault. Such is CBT's influence it is now pretty much the only form of counselling that is funded. Pernicious.
@@billB101 ok, so in a nutshell the way to get more wholesome stuff in your social media feed is to stop clicking on billionaire lifestyle stuff and start clicking on wholesome things?
@@dna9838 I couldn't tell you how the algorithms _actually_ work to be honest ( as I don't program them ) But personally I watch all sorts as I believe to form an accurate opinion you need to see all sides of the argument ( and not just hang out in echo chambers reinforcing your own belief system, ) and that in turn feeds me lots of cr!p I don't want to see. I also know the algos are skewed towards feeding you negative crap too because that's where the clicks live. But that's a whole other conversation.
Realising that my own depression was actually a rational response to events and conditions in the world around me was an important step towards healing and managing the depression. I'd tried therapy and they basically just told me not to think about the things that caused those thoughts, but I don't think that's really what I needed to hear at that time. I think we need to stop treating it like something that's wrong with the individual, especially when it is fully within our control to just make society less... depressing!
Society is predicated on the convenient and false lie that if someone has problems it is their own fault. This scapegoats the victims of neoliberalism absolving its proponents of any need to address the root causes instead of the symptoms. To do this would mean a reversal of the ideology that has wrecked societies and economies around the world since Thatcher and Reagan but profit and greed are more important than people to the neoliberals. Tory ideology since Thatcher is that if you are poor or suffer ill fortune it is your own fault. They do not apply this to their own circumstances though-transfer of wealth to the rich ensures a comfortable life. Money is not the be all and end all but having enough to provide the stability that ameliorates a lot of the anxiety many suffer. I realise depression is not the same as anxiety although they often overlap. Mental health is worse in unequal countries, all the evidence supports this. I am glad things have improved for you and I wish you all the best for the future, including a happy New Year for 2025!
Yeah we get told that straight away. “ _You_ have a chemical imbalance in your brain. This pill will help that” Except, _do_ you? How? What chemical? Why? No. It’s a response to environment and conditions, like any other animal responds when it is in an unhealthy scenario
Quite, just because you feel everyone is out to get you doesn't mean that they aren't. Find yourself a few good friends. You won't find them at work, my colleagues I keep at a distance, or in any form of government.
What we need is a reboot. Better Mental health requires community cohesion where people can pull together and support each other. Give young adults a purpose where they can have impact. Public ownership, community hubs & green spaces.
You're not wrong. Something has to change in that respect. You will need to incentivise the wealthy to help. I'm so dissapointed that our government shows no willingness in this respect.
Social media gave me an outlet, a voice to show my frustration at how I was being treated as a newly disabled person. Now, I can't face social media. It shocked me at how many people just don't care about others as long as they get their own prejudices aired.
There are so many interesting points in this discussion. I never liked Twitter. Threads was better. But after Musk took over Twitter, all the nasty people moved over to Threads. I share your shock that all social media is full of nasty people!
The world has become too fast paced, we're constantly overwhelmed and can't keep up with the changes, the 24 hour news cycle, always online, technology constantly bombarding us with information. Constant doom-mongering. Most people literally can't keep up. You could really blame the pace of technology. I mean, we've always had anxiety, it keeps us alive; fight, flight or freeze. It's when your general level of anxiety is constantly overwhelmed it becomes a problem.
Some Sci-Fi authors in the 70's and 80's predicted that information technology would move too fast for the human race to adapt/evolve? I mean it took us how long to adapt to Agriculture? - then less time to adapt to Industry? And now a split second to adapt to information overload?
I started work growing Internet businesses for people in 1999. I’ve now spent more years of my life online than living real life. The pace of things has even got to me. 2 years ago I removed myself from all forms of social media. All I now have is RUclips with some carefully selected channels. If you are struggling, perhaps try disconnecting yourself as much as possible. It certainly worked for me.
Mental Health issues are much more common than people presume and its not social media, its a feeling of uncertainty, feeling you can lose your home, job, food and all the simple things that make life bearable then people have fear, anxiety about basic things, this can be placed at the feet of the ultra rich & their greed.
I was a child in the early 90s recession. My parents had money worries. Their stress definitely was passed on to me. Bless them, they didn't know and were great parents but I remember the anxiety I felt at the time. The 1990s were not as bad as today. Politics is failing, the Internet is a sewer of misinformation and disinformation (present company excepted). Fascism is on the rise, corruption has been normalised. Is it really a surprise that mental health is so bad.
I remember that era very well and echo your sentiment. Did you mean to say it's a surprise the mental health is so bad, or that it's no surprise? Back in 1990-91, people anticipated a recovery - and still they did in 2008-09-10. Now it's really unclear what is beyond this and I think that's the difference and why so many people live in fear.
@@nickjcresswell I meant it's no surprise really, and I think you nailed it. It felt like things could get better before. It feels like things are just getting ever worse.
It can, if it happens immediately. But if it doesn't happen peacefully, so what? Those who stand in the way of peaceful resistance ("i agree with what you want but not how you wish to get it if it means anything other than elections") make violent revolution inevitable. What's more important to you: 1. The presence of justice 2. The absence of tension
The education system needs complete reform - the academic and behavioural expectations on children are unbearable it is leading to mental ill health and burnout (and school attendance difficulties as well as the SEND crisis) in so many children especially neurodivergent children. This then leads to mental ill health as an adult. When asked over 50% of children cite school as the reason for their mental ill health.
Poor parenting and an anti learning culture are a large part of the antipathy towards school. The anti learning culture goes back decades in Britain but the acceptance that attending school is necessary as a means to an end in gaining an education has started to break down. Cite the source of your claim that over 50% of students claim school as the reason for their mental health. There are many issues with schools that there is not enough time to debate in a few sentences below the line on You Tube but they are a microcosm of society and even if you created a perfect curriculum ( there is no agreement on what it would look like anyway) it would not be a panacea. Behavioural expectations that are frequently described as draconian now in Britain were the norm not so long ago here and still are in many other countries. Poor behaviour in schools is preventing well brought up students from learning which they are entitled to.
@@eightiesmusic1984I agree entirely: this is something we could debate at length. I’ll just add one point. I think teachers are cruel: they frighten children with climate change, that oil will run out, no jobs when they graduate, that they’ll be extinct by 2070 etc. No wonder children have mental depression at an early age.
@@george11419 I think there is something to be said for teaching children in stages that are adjusted to their ability to cope what they are taught. The problem is that the adults are worried. I'm not worried that oil will run out, it won't (unless we can carry on burning most it), but I am worried about climate change and what work will look like when machines can learn more efficiently than a human. I think we have to accept that adult insecurities are feeding the insecurities of our children and that we need to change our societies to make everyone feel safer.
I’m not going to say any more but just leave this article here which explains very well the impact of school on to e mental health of neurodivergent young people researchfeatures.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Sinead-Mullally.pdf
I've suffered with anxiety and depression my entire life. I was bullied at school by both the teachers and my peers, because I was so withdrawn, I was sent to child psychologists and a range of specialists but nothing changed. I was bullied and ridiculed at home by my sister and my male parent. As a result I have spent my life living in fear. However the fear I feel has become much worse since 2012. To suggest that neoliberalism is the root cause of the mental health pandemic is something of a generalisation.
Are you sure? If Murphy had been able to realize his dreams he would have been a member of Jeremy Corbyn's government (if elected) or at the least as "adviser" to the same bunch of characters. I do not think he has ever challenged this view of his aspirations, have you Richard?
Thank you for the video. I think that all these “mental” problems are just a physiological response to the awful conditions we’re living in. I agree completely with you on this assessment. Also, I think that with the psychiatrisation of a discomfort with your human condition we’re expropriated of the power of healing things by themselves and infantilised by being put in the position of patient, completely dependent on a science separated from us.
I completely agree with this and can relate the insecurity of growing up in an area where there is very little opportunity for employment and a fear of going back to that which happened when I was 18-19. Fortunately things turned out for the better, I have a well paid job:- HOWEVER this has recently changed for the worse which has lead to increased anxiety to sustain the same outputs with fewer resources. With very little alternative I feel trapped but I still have an income. Staff are going off sick with stress and every one is looking for an out. Social Media doesn’t help as it amplifies an implied way of living life and how we should look like and what we should aspire to. This can only be done with money which is getting harder to earn.
Thank you for this analysis! In addition, I would like to highlight the negative effect of modern food on mental health. I had a clinical depression for 10 years and indeed believe now that it was a normal reaction to a not-normal life situation. There is much literature about this. The depression disappeared some years after drastic life changes.
"Social" media is one of the ultimate incarnations of neoliberalism. From a super early age our kids are taught to compete for likes and that you are only someone of note if you have xyz. The only way social media could actually be social is if there were no profit motive.
I agree, but kindly insert the bothersome “but”… The issue of increasing loneliness was studied and observed widely e.g. in the mid 1990s across OECD. It was deemed worse in larger cities, reflected in “policies” related to it being implemented more often there. Today, we know more about how “behaviour economics” is a tool for financial gain - social media being one of many means to that end. We also know (empirically and anecdotally) how individuals suffer from losing eh… “faith” in their own immediate future. Enforcing an individualised idealism in society (the ideal of modern liberalism) is vital for this kind of societal power. We “know”, because it has been described in artworks, philosophy and early science, increasingly since around 1850 - as modernity took hold. That’s a huge rabbit hole - but it must be there for quite human and existential reasons…? 😊
Agree totally. Economic inequality is the root of all our problems. Too much wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of the few. This erodes democracy. This lowers the quality of life for the majority of the population. Economic hardships cause anxiety and depression.
When my partner died, I was offered anti-depressants to improve my mood. For goodness sake: it is normal to be feeling awful when the love of your life has died, and it is unhealthy to take stuff to cover the damage. The doctor insisting I should take these meds also made me feel that I was a burden to the people around me who really could not be arsed to engage with me and my sorrow, when these people are what we call loved ones. You do not deal with mental pain with a chemical plaster. First, you clean the wound, you look at it you analyse it. so, Wes Streeting idea is not entirely wrong, but, once you have looked (which is what his plan would do), then you must engage, clean, and put a chemical plaster on, maybe. As we know, some wounds are better off left in the open to heal. Thus, all these people whose mental health is suffering need to be engaged with, validated, listened to, "hugged" in some way, and then many will need chemistry, but not all.
I believe the cause of my struggling mental health is my curiosity to learn how the world operates, particularly economic systems. I'd be much happier if I stayed blissfully ignorant.
Outstanding analysis and entirely correct. I'm going to show this to my daughter who is in the third year of her degree and is finding it mentally tough to get any assistance with her next step in the world o the extent of depression. She need to know she is not alone and some of the resoning behind her feelings. Thank you.
Thank you so much Richard for all of your videos. I feel educated, informed and with a bit of hope for real constructive change. Looking forward to your new videos as you set out a realistic agenda, especially to make finance serve ordinary people.
There’s a few causes and I’d say most of them rooted in the wealth imbalance. Basically everything from shelter to education including food is ridiculously expensive, making it widely inaccessible which leads to insecurity meaning people generally live in survival mode rather than thrival mode. How could this not cause mental health issues when living in this state over a long period of time? 🤔
This would make sense if it were only children from poorer homes who are affected, but that's not the case. This may be a factor for some children, but not the sole factor. Nor does it apply to all children. Diet, sleep, exercise, face to face social interaction, a sense of purpose, a sense of being part of something bigger than oneself, social media, excessive screen time, too much time indoors, parents who won't allow the child to be exposed to risk, rampant consumerism and capitalism, repercussions from the pandemic lockdowns, the breakdown of families, are all part of the problem.
They're almost all being forced into the same school system, & the same health system. 7 hours a day from the age of ~4 in a hostile environment? It suits some kids, but it's so starved of reaources that it can only cater for one size fits all now, so any differences are increasingly hard to support. Look at who is moving into home ed in the greatest numbers in last decade & you'll see it's SEN kids ie the Square Pegs who couldn't cope with being hammered into round holes any longer. And if they need NHS? CAMHS was broken long ago. You rarely get seen until you're too ill to be easily treated. Actively suicidal as a minimum in most places. So the poverty isn't just re the homes of these kids.
🎯💯💯💯💯👌 Every word is on point. The message is spot on. Thank you for daring to say what we know to be the truth but feel that no one in power dare say. We need a totally different system. Fast. .
This is absolutely correct. I'd bet that over 90% of the mental ill health in developed countries could be solved by improving living and working conditions.
Authorities understand that people are more easily controlled while fearful(learned from the Nazis I believe), it’s my suspicion that the Hoi polloi are considered cattle.
I am stunned by your statement that social media has no effect on children's mental health. That is one one of the most insane things I have ever heard.
I don't think that was what he said. I think his point is that it's too easy to blame this all on too much social media when there is more at play. No one is denying social media is part of the problem; just not the only cause. Social media is the creation of a privaledged elite and with that they command enormous control over the populous. This is more aligned to the message in the video.
I believe that social media does play a role too. .. it is not the only reason obviously and I see and agree with the points Richard is making. I am not a child and I was not using social media very much but have fallen into a social media vortex during the weeks before Christmas and I have never been as stressed as now , fear and anxiety going up as soon as I spent a few hours online. A lot of the content is divisive and made to split everyone apart. Moderate views are hard to find. I certainly think it does have an impact and accelerates things and makes hatred boil over. It is used as an instrument of extreme propaganda in many ways and I hope it can be tamed to allow more peaceful and level headed discussions.
I wish I kept the reference but I remember a study that showed that the "natural" human state to enable progress and non-destruction is a state of mild depression. It encourages empathy, self reflection and avoidance of irrational self aggrandisement
I totally agree. It's when one listens to those that allegedly "know better" and makes no sense, when one drills down into the meat of their utterances. It becomes like python's "lumberjack song" except that the majority go along with the whole proposition, no matter how absurd it becomes. This is what has happened since 1979. Regarding social media; there was a time when lies and BS were more difficult to detect, especially with Legacy TV/print media held sway and were gatekeepers as to what was and was not news. These days the plethora of information is phenomenal and it's a matter of sifting it to get an idea of what's happening.
What drives me crazy is all the people my age calling them malingers but in their next breath claiming their mental health problems prevent them working. Double standards 🤬
@OP; A good start is to study what “work” even is…? Paid work (employee) is quite recent as the single possible option to sustain a life. I say “single possible option”, because other options (varieties of capital income, rents, direct agrarian sustenance etc.) are available choices for way less than 1 in 10, quite flat ratio last 150 years.
David, I worked in youth service in the early 2000s, back then NEET became a political concern. What was very evident and a figure that might need more analysis is the disparity between young men and women. Young women were nearly twice as likely to fall into the neet bracket. Today the figures show almost parity. Nearly 1 million young people 16-24 NEET. A generation of lost kids with no stake in society and feeling left behind. No wonder we have a mental health crisis. Unfortunately Politicians will always resort to blaming the individual or something existential rather than the structural problems that exist within our society.
Peer-reviewed science including the National Institute of Health confirms social media usage causes poor mental health. However, Richard is correct that the massive division in wealth is highly problematic and must adversely affect people's wellbeing
Much of the issue is caused by too much indoor screen time with too much information/stimuli and nowhere near enough physical activity or social interaction with real people to balance it. That’s bad enough for adults, but during formative years is much worse.
I have long thought that children need to meet adults other than their teachers and parents. They need to learn to interact with adults in all sorts of roles. But fundamentally the parents are too scared to let them. What has scared them? The world has; which brings us back to Richard's point! The high-functioning adults need to change things so that everyone can be happier.
@@tlangdon12 apologies if I’m misinterpreting what you intended, but what are “high functioning adults”? Leaders in society? Surely ALL adults, particularly parents have an obligation individually to make these things happen, not expect society to change magically around them ( someone else to solve their problems for them.)
“Our society actually exists as a kind of negative afterimage. We all live in a crazy, backward world, often unaware of the lies and double messages we are given. If we could be free for a moment to catch a glimpse of our true situation, if we could view our society as a visitor from another planet, we would be stunned at the nightmare in which we live. The things we are expected to believe about ourselves and about society are frequently the very opposite of the way things really are. Unhappily, the individual and all the members of our society are often unconsciously working together to maintain a largely defensive and dishonest way of living” Robert Firestone “Psychological defenses in everyday life”*_
Children have always had difficult pressures, sometimes way more threatening immediately, but they are versatile and they usually cope. Either the pressures are too relentless and too continual or there are new modern pressures. Social media pressures and smart phones / PC's are new and are a factor.
People realising they’re in a life long stage show but ego and identity is holding on to denial, this makes one cranky. Don’t avoid the void, get out the other side much faster.
A week or so ago I was waiting outside a major shopping realier with my dog while his 'mum' was shopping. And this mum and her little boy stood next to us waiting for a taxi or dad to come pick them up, eventually we got to talking. The mum was obviously upset / anxious as they'd been moved - I don't know the details, and hated where she'd been moved to. The boy had just seen his old school friends, as they were shopping in their previous area of residence - and they were there for him to visit them at school. She said, with a shopping cart full of food: "I don't know what I am doing. I don't know if I am going back....!?" This happened under a Labour Government. My 'partner' arrived back and we said some pleasantries and went to catch our bus home. The bus overlooks the site where we'd been and the mum and her boy were still there. I was just thinking I wonder what's going on. It was cold and a mum and her lad standing around in the cold seemed pretty vulnerable, but yeah, under a Labour Government we uproot people from the lives they are happy with. Clearly this woman HAD to go back to this new place of residence, but something was causing her such misery that she couldn't even make the call to go back!? I dunno. I just know one thing this world has been corrupted by neo-liberalism! Everything has a price but no-one knows it's value. It's only the psychopaths who know how to operate in this world. Good honest conscientious people cannot function in a system where it is kill or be killed. The reason we call ourselves civilised is because we don't treat each other like animals, but then I'd argue even animals treat other animals better than we do. True in the natural world it is kill or be killed - you're either the tiger or the gazelle. But that's not even what we do. We have the social contract that keeps us 'inline,' most of us follow the rules, but we are not protected by that - it is being used to abuse us.
I agree with your conclusion but make two points. 1. I think that social media does feed into poor mental health but as you stated is not the underlying cause. I think it feeds into poor mental health in two ways , by showing the person more of what is wrong with the world and also by showing them (often falsely) the ways that they are missing out or inadequate. This then feeds into their poor mental health but I take your point that it isn’t the underlying cause which is as you stated a rationale response to economic and social policy that is harmful to wider society, their family and them as an individual. 2. I take issue with the idea that therapy or counselling on school would only give them a diagnosis. It is established through research that play therapy is an effective therapy for children and young people which would benefit them even when the underlying cause is a rational response. Where that is not available work around emotional literacy is still useful for the child. The reason we don’t offer this is that neo liberalism situates blame in the individual or in case of children in the parents therefore the system doesn’t accept the part it plays and as a result doesn’t help mitigate it for those affected by it. Interestingly, those in the top wealth bracket who are benefiting from the transfer of wealth upwards are also affected by worsening mental health (read affluenza) and often fail to see the correlation that wealth inequality is detrimental to everyone. My main concern is that a downtrodden people who have been socially gaslighted and distracted and manipulated for years are unlikely to rise up against the systems that control us as it feels to abstract and removed from their daily struggle. And the systems that control especially around protest, benefits sanctions and now zero tolerance schools are tightening so fast that I’m not sure how we mobilise in an effective manner anymore?
My therapist has this sign in his praxis; Wer heute noch nicht verrückt ist, ist einfach nicht informiert. Translated; Anyone who is not crazy today is simply not informed.
"Although thought maybe seen by some as subjective, it is the actions one takes by using one's own definition of the situation and the social relationships between the interaction of the participants and how others respond to the actions taken, which create socially real consequences." Clive Burgess 13th July 2005
Due to use of social (and mainstream) media for pro neoliberal (and other) propaganda. I'm not sure we can blame all ills on neoliberalism because people are inherently selfish (no matter that most of us do try not to be) and there will always be someone who trys to use that against us (the conman is one example, the narcisist is another): selfishness makes us prone to stupidity! Neoliberalism is definitely one (major) reason for mental ill health and in my opinion should be stamped out as it corrupts people's thought processes but it is only one reason, not the only reason.
The child sees the emperor has no clothes. That description of neoliberalism is succinct and accurate. Unfortunately children absorb their parents emotions, from before birth, and those feelings remain subliminal for the rest of their lives. Hopefully this will soon give rise to a mass rejection of neoliberalism and a search for something better.
I’ve never seen so many people explode in public over nothing at all, the smallest things triggering up a stored anger, walking time bombs i call them and i’m seeing it happen 20/30 times a day.
What no-one mentions in regard to young people is how restricted their lives are until they reach 18. They have not been allowed to “grow up”, they have been stripped of all responsibility, and then, in a binary manner they are adults. Think of all them beeps and bong at the checkout for age restricted goods that I could freely purchase as a child in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Nowadays they could maybe purchase an Airfix kit, but they’d never be able to buy the glue to put it together, and don’t even mention the craft knife. The “childhood industry” is out of control, infantilising generations.
I am aged 70 and have studied insect science as an academic all my life. When I was ten years old I was able to buy chloroform for scientific purposes (killing specimens) from my local chemist and was only required to sign the poisons register. When I was eight years old I proudly wore a large sheath knife in my belt everywhere I went outside of school (many boys did). Me and my friends would roam the town for up to five miles around, totally unsupervised. From the age of ten we would cycle thirty miles a day out into the countryside and back. Again, no supervision. Enough said.
Well, we can be certain the Tories will do nothing, Reform will do nothing and Starmer's Labour will do as little as possible. Thus there is no realistic way out of the problem until we have a genuine party of progressive politics that is capable of growing and sustaining electoral support. This is no urgency or determination for any such alternative politics at the moment.
@robmaslen6446 Great example. Unfortunately, the green party supports the mass people trafficing. Ethnic sabotage of the UK. It also supports the legalisation of drugs. So I cannot...
I recall headlines from the 80s stating that anxiety and depression in youths and young adults was rising significantly. No surprise given the changing workscape and the disappearance of old industries. There's an old statement of truth about ptsd. The individual isn't the problem. Their trauma is a healthy, normal response to an abnormal situation. In othet words, they don't need fixing, its their experiences that need recognition and processing. You look at this from a neoliberalist point of view. A good analysis. Other points of view that take a more equable and just approach would be more thoroughly damning. Collective compassion and cooperation against the small number who divide and exploit is the best way forward towards a truly equal, global society.
I agree on most points, but social media does play into the equation. The evidence is in the hyper wealth not giving their children smart phones. Obviously not good for them. Anxiety is not only a poor man's problem.
A story as old as the hills, Romeo and Juliet, Morden day West Side Story, environmental and social factors. Who had the mental health problems in these plays and why? High levels of inequality will always have a derogatory effect within societies.
Unfortunately, Richard I'm not sure the import of your message has really hit home looking at the bottery in the comment section. The message that you are trying to get across is that economic deprivation fosters mental ill health in neoliberal economies. Remove the economic deprivation - which is the result of the misallocation and ineffective and inefficient distribution of resources within neoliberal economies - and societally-wide mental ill health will signifucantly decrease. Humans love stories, but their no substitution for the truth. Myths dominate our thinking and are relentlessly and neoliberalism's biggest myth is that money is wealth, and that those who do not have money, who are poor are to blame for their poverty. This myth is built on another myth - that being wealthy is a sign of virtue or talent. And the people who push this myth are often the asset wealthy, who spend their money buying media outlets to push these lies. The truth is that both cream and sewage float to the top. Luck as inherited asset wealth is the reality, and how deeply embedded this myth is in our culture, is reflected in our obsession with class, and other ways to "divide and rule". There are hard working, talented people who never get asset wealthy, or even enough money to live. I'm thinking of Robert Tressell, the author of the novel "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists." Tressel was an Irish migrant working as a decorator, who wrote his novel at the kitchen table at night. Poverty ensured he never lived to see his novel published, as he died of Tuberculosis, a disease of deprivation, before his daughter got it published. This all happened at the beginning of the 20th century, and yet in the 21st century we're repeating the same myths and the same mistakes as were perpetrated in the early 20th century. And the world is in some ways even more malevolent than the 1910s. We have forgotten the lessons people in this country at that time learned, because the problems they were dealing with, are still being fought with in the 21st century. And in many ways, we are in danger of going backwards. That's what people don't realise, that we've been here before, where the asset wealthy were unperturbed by the loss of the poor and deprived. Qui Bono? Who benefits from that? It may have taken two world wars and a global financial crisis to persuade people to look at things differently, but at least they walked around and examined the elephant in the room, and decided to clean up the growing pile of poop. We're not even really looking. Intergenerational forgetting? Probably, and we're self-harming the fabric of our society as a result. And increasing mental ill health is a symptom of our neglect of the basic realities of running an effective economy. For it to be effective, capital - social and economic - can't be hoarded by a minority, at the detriment of the majority, because it's unsustainable in the long run. That's why we are endangering ourselves. And a those suffering from depression and anxiety are exhibiting a sane response to an insane world, where the winners spend money to gaslight everyone else. Reality can't be ignored, because that way madness lies. I hope we wake up and start resisting the myths and the lies, because it's not only damaging the economy, it's damaging us as people.
Glaringly obvious as are the solutions.. Economic activities should work for us all not the few.... and while we're on it end the rediculous exploitation and price gouging of our utilities (water and energy)
When our politicians and prime ministers like Sunak invest in disaster capitalism it’s no wonder the future looks bleak. Even the people that are supposed to make our lives better are actively making everything worse for their own financial gain🤯 We live in a backwards and upside down world and it’s no wonder people are going mental. Most people try not to even think about it or even give excuses for them and this is why it won’t change. It’s getting worse but people still keep voting for their preferred team and keep blaming the other side but the reality is they are all the same. Their donors are all the same. The corporate interests are the same and they all support the same disaster capitalist agenda. When will it change? When people start paying attention to what’s really happening and stoped voting for their favourite team.
@ neither of them were prime minister of Britain nor a part of British politics. However 🪨 supports All our political parties when they take power. As for musk and Gates I don’t know what they have shares in other than their direct businesses. Sunak was directly involved in crashing the pound and so were many donors that supported Brexit. The point is our politicians are actively making our country and economy worse for the sake of their own fortunes and their donors fortunes. So it’s no wonder things ain’t getting any better.
@@billB101 It happens all the time on You Tube. Right wing comments are ok and all over You Tube, as well as racism but it is not removed. I have reported comments that should be deemed in breach of the community guidelines and they are returned below the line most of the time.
The mental health crisis is a economic problem than a actual mental problem. Very few people can understand it and see through it , others just keep blaming each other and gets no where.
Exactly, falling real wages, housing, job, insecurity and failing education provision where post baby boomer generations are actually poorer undermines any sense of belonging, direction or purpose. Thatcher got her wishes, there is no community (which she single handed lay destroyed) just individuals. As to the Labour Party, it’s more right wing than a 1950’s conservative government. Blair and now Starmer follow the neoclassical economics that is embedded into neoliberalism and have shown themselves not to care. Time for new leadership before the ultra right wing creates that fictitious sense of belonging and direction. We know where that leads us (the US is about 5 years ahead!). That should fill anyone with fear and dread.
Real wages are falling because the personal tax allowance has been frozen until 2028. For decades, the PTA has kept pace with inflation. Not now. Council taxes will also rise. VAT remains at 20%. And kids won’t inherit much because of inheritance tax. It’s tax, tax, tax and more tax.
@@george11419 But where does the tax go? It's not going to pay for new stuff, it's generally going to pay the higher prices of the services that we have always had. Inflation is killing us. If we don't reduce inflation to the same rate that tax income is increasing, we are not going to be able to spend any tax on new initiatives without reducing the payments for existing services.
As a youngster, my son was always keen to give money to homeless people. In high school, anxiety attacks led to school refusal. So he was tested and found to be autistic. Then we learned when he was a youngster, a teacher told the class if they didn't study, they'd end up homeless. He's autistic. He took it literally.😹He was convinced at 10 that he would be a homeless person by the end of school 😭
I never got this "social media" angle; I have struggles mainly from T1D. I do not partake in social media, a part from YT & the occasional hobbyist forum. Never used facebook, instagram or doom scrolled twitter. Tbf I have never even read a tweet nor a facebook message.
I guess since you don't use social media that hundreds of millions of kids worldwide don't either. I can see you have a very strong imagination there. lol
People need to "be the change". "Physician heal thy self" is their best bet. Most change requires struggle. The sacred four of Food, Fire, Water, and Shelter, are enough to sustain life. Learn to derive these from nature, and you have freedom.
Being anxious has always been normal, it's how we survive. However when your levels of anxiety are constantly overwhelmed it can turn into a General anxiety disorder which can become a real problem.
This is so wrong headed it is difficult to know where to start. Childhood is a natural state of anxiety. Once upon a time before the age of entitlement middle and working class life had structure. The extended family. This unit was bound by mutual and enduring obligation. Within this I thrived as a child despite my anxiety. Where is that structure now? I would submit that Roy Jenkins is more responsible than Margaret Thatcher for its demise.
Just as it is possible to have a weak body without a medical condition causing it (more likely lack of exercise) it is possible to have a weak mind without a mental illness causing it. Same solution- exercise.
Children today have vast amounts of entertainment, vast amounts of educational resources, vast amounts of food choices, are often driven to school and receive little in the way of discipline. Life has never been more comfortable. A bit of harsh realism would benefit them.
In many ways, you are not wrong. But harsh realism is just likely to scare them more than they are already scared. I would argue that they need to be exposed to the real world in a kindly manner. They need to be drip-fed the harsh realities at a rate that they can cope with. I didn't have to go to work at 15 years of age like my dad, and I'm very grateful for that. I was allowed (by virtue of my parents and my society's wealth) to put off having to work for a living until I graduated at 23.
Linked to this is the long term illness levels in the UK. Interestingly from 2000 to 2019 this declined from 2.4 million to 2 million but since then has surged to around 2.8 million. A link perhaps to improved and then degraded healthcare of which mental health is a part. Of course, the IEA has a different take on this: ruclips.net/video/Fs0gkyPpI3o/видео.html.
I think that you have been moving along a potentially terrifying path these last months Richard. I'm no accountant (in fact I've been frightened of all things numerical since childhood) but one observation of people that I can put some weight on is that none of us are "rational". We have the term Mental Illness because those rational men who studied human distress which did not appear to have its roots in physical causes were medical doctors. It seemed rational to split, Descartes-like, areas such as thought, feeling and behaviour as if, by defining them, we could somehow analyse them like entries in a spreadsheet. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly we have no word for the thought-felt despite the fact that virtually every thought we have has intrinsic feeling mixed with it whether the thought is 'what shall I have for supper' or 'should we invade Greenland'. I suspect that beginning to accept the irrational, the thought-felt, our own distress, may be useful in your journey.
Reminds me of the "ADHD-Pandemic" in the 2000s. I always found it silly that people would force young children to sit down, study and behave all day long and then wonder why they are acting out. And instead of trying to understand the reason behind the childrens behaviour, they slapped a disorder-label on them. With the apparent rise of Anxiety and so on Disorders now, I'm getting quite the deja-vu. Not all, but a lot of therapy might be rightfully called organized gaslighting by a sick system that is setting young people up to fail, then blaming it on the individual.
ADHD is very real, and so many people are getting diagnosed in middle age now because there wasn't the medical research back in the 70s and 80s that we now possess. The explosion of diagnoses in the 2000 coincided with increasing levels of data on the subject. It many cases it's incredibly debilitating.
Everything you say is true. But is there not also the fact that social institutions - family, community, religion - have eroded to the point where people spend less time with each other or even leave their house? I am not going to argue that sunday schools will save people. Rather that these social institutions of family, community and a shared spiritual outlook were interdependent and gave meaning and purpose. Take out any one of the three and the other two start to fail. One could consider them a bedrock on which to build your excellent economic-based ideas. The spiritual crisis of modern man has been generations in the growing but we are now beginning to witness its true horror - it is destroying the young.
I disagree about the shared spiritual outlook. One of my parents is spiritual, the other is not, and I am not. I don't need spirituality to spend plenty of time with others - I volunteer with two organisations, I care for my parents, my adult children and my partner. Spirituality is very personal, and I don't agree with indoctrinating children before they have the critical thinking skills to judge whether they want to be spiritual or not. If it does do anythign for social cohesion, is does it in a malign way.
The Canary "The gap in absolute wealth between the poorest 10% and richest 10% of people in the UK increased by 48% between 2011 and 2019, according to a new report from the Fairness Foundation"
This is one of the most contorted arguments I have ever heard. I refuse to accept that the poverty faced by children today comes even close to that experienced by millions of children in the 50s, 60,s and the early 70,s. Children are no longer allowed to be children - even in pre-school nurseries the emphasis is on attainment. Those that struggle are then quickly diagnosed with some defined medical condition to conveniently label them - dyslexic being my favorite. You fail to mention the health and mental consequences of the poison children now consume under the label of 'food' resulting in a tidal wave of ADHD behaviours affecting adults as well as children. To dismiss the responsibility of social media so readily is to ignore its measurable negative impact on adults and children alike - in many instances it is a poisonous cauldron that never stops boiling. I suspect you have used childrens mental health issues to simply push your own political agenda. That said - all the best for the New Year.
I remember when I was young, getting my head around Marx, in particular the statement, 'All property is theft.' I knew I could not change the world, so my solution was to thieve as much as I can of it. I worked within the system. For that, I am lucky I suppose. I think communism is a great idea, unfortunately, it goes against human nature. My wife is Chinese and grew up in the cultural revolution times, 1960s, so we know a bit about it.
It depends on the specific mental health condition. Depression and anxiety are partly to do with the state of society and the world. The climate crisis and coming apocalyptic effects are another rational reason for depression too. You’re wrong that social media isn’t a factor in mental heath though. There are plenty of research studies showing a significant uptick in mental health issues around the world in the last 15 years or so since social media became prevalent. It increases polarisation and obsession with image. For myself I’ve recently realised in my early 40s that I’ve had ADHD all my life and that’s caused mostly by genes and other factors e.g. being born prematurely. I’m keenly awaiting formal diagnosis and medication but it’ll be another two years or so till I can get medication.
Agree with most of this but I do think social media has its place in the story too. Poverty both relative and absolute where much higher in Dickens' time but I'm willing to wager what we would call mental ill health was not the concern it is now. Not for any good reason, of course, work in terrible conditions/steal/beg or die was the order of the day, no time for feelings. The MH crisis of today affects the children of the middle classes as it does other stratas of society. Widening income disparities, an upper tier that increasingly pulls up the drawbridge, dilution of opportunity for the young, the ubiquity of private equity businesses that don't give 2 f's for their 'resources' form the background contrast to social (and some mainstream) media where the young are told they can be anything they want to be with ambition, looks and hard work - and parking their morals and ethics at the studio door. It's all bollocks. You are completely right, young people's brains have realised that life shouldn't be like this and have reacted in the only rational way possible.
"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." Said the owner of the bootstrap factory who doesn't pay his workers enough to be able to buy the bootstraps they make.
Richard, I have just watch a utube video titled: I have seen this before. It really illustrate the situation between Democracies and a Dictatorship. Please let know if you can find it and let me know know what you think? Terry Wright.
I believe that a psychologist once referred to mental i'll health as, "A sane response to an insane world ".
It was Laing
Precisely!
These people are not ill, there is a fault in reality
It is the world that has the problem, not the victims.
When I once visited a psychologist and told him that I self-identified as a pair of curtains, he told me to pull myself together.
When I once visited a pyschologist and told him that I self-identified with a chocolate orange, he told me that i would have to be sectioned. And, my name is not evenTerry.
Extreme wealth divide is definitely making this worse combined with social media highlighting the 'perfection' of billionaire lifestyles and rich celebrities which is completely unachievable for 99%
Think people are getting fed different content. My social media tends to have more wholesome aspirational stuff for some reason.
@@dna9838 "Think people are getting fed different content. " Of course we are, by algorithms.
Take a look at "The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami" by Farhad Dalal. CBT is much favoured by corporations and governments as a counselling methodology and has been applied as a valid therapy across all aspects of mental health. Far from it's origins as a way of helping people overcome phobias. Phobias are by their definition irrational. The senses of anxiety, purposelessness, loneliness and disillusionment that are ever more pervasive today are often very rational responses to economically desperate and culturally alienating forces. CBT is pernicious as it's focus is always on the individual rather than on the circumstances. It's always the individual's responsibility to change the way they view their circumstances and that way they can attain greater wellbeing. It's not the system or the circumstances that are objectively wrong. It is the subject who is at fault. Such is CBT's influence it is now pretty much the only form of counselling that is funded. Pernicious.
@@billB101 ok, so in a nutshell the way to get more wholesome stuff in your social media feed is to stop clicking on billionaire lifestyle stuff and start clicking on wholesome things?
@@dna9838 I couldn't tell you how the algorithms _actually_ work to be honest ( as I don't program them ) But personally I watch all sorts as I believe to form an accurate opinion you need to see all sides of the argument ( and not just hang out in echo chambers reinforcing your own belief system, ) and that in turn feeds me lots of
cr!p I don't want to see.
I also know the algos are skewed towards feeding you negative crap too because that's where the clicks live.
But that's a whole other conversation.
Realising that my own depression was actually a rational response to events and conditions in the world around me was an important step towards healing and managing the depression. I'd tried therapy and they basically just told me not to think about the things that caused those thoughts, but I don't think that's really what I needed to hear at that time. I think we need to stop treating it like something that's wrong with the individual, especially when it is fully within our control to just make society less... depressing!
Society is predicated on the convenient and false lie that if someone has problems it is their own fault. This scapegoats the victims of neoliberalism absolving its proponents of any need to address the root causes instead of the symptoms. To do this would mean a reversal of the ideology that has wrecked societies and economies around the world since Thatcher and Reagan but profit and greed are more important than people to the neoliberals. Tory ideology since Thatcher is that if you are poor or suffer ill fortune it is your own fault. They do not apply this to their own circumstances though-transfer of wealth to the rich ensures a comfortable life. Money is not the be all and end all but having enough to provide the stability that ameliorates a lot of the anxiety many suffer. I realise depression is not the same as anxiety although they often overlap. Mental health is worse in unequal countries, all the evidence supports this. I am glad things have improved for you and I wish you all the best for the future, including a happy New Year for 2025!
Yeah we get told that straight away. “ _You_ have a chemical imbalance in your brain. This pill will help that”
Except, _do_ you? How? What chemical? Why?
No. It’s a response to environment and conditions, like any other animal responds when it is in an unhealthy scenario
Quite, just because you feel everyone is out to get you doesn't mean that they aren't.
Find yourself a few good friends. You won't find them at work, my colleagues I keep at a distance, or in any form of government.
I almost can't believe how much your way of thinking mirrors my own. You are a wonderful man, and thank you for being so *real!*
It’s no sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society 😢
a quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti, for those wondering.
What we need is a reboot. Better Mental health requires community cohesion where people can pull together and support each other. Give young adults a purpose where they can have impact. Public ownership, community hubs & green spaces.
We need a new substitute of the chapel
You're not wrong. Something has to change in that respect. You will need to incentivise the wealthy to help. I'm so dissapointed that our government shows no willingness in this respect.
Social media gave me an outlet, a voice to show my frustration at how I was being treated as a newly disabled person. Now, I can't face social media. It shocked me at how many people just don't care about others as long as they get their own prejudices aired.
Social media is a reflection of human psychology
There are so many interesting points in this discussion. I never liked Twitter. Threads was better. But after Musk took over Twitter, all the nasty people moved over to Threads. I share your shock that all social media is full of nasty people!
That's about right.
This is so true.
@@george11419 I call it anti-social media.
The world has become too fast paced, we're constantly overwhelmed and can't keep up with the changes, the 24 hour news cycle, always online, technology constantly bombarding us with information. Constant doom-mongering. Most people literally can't keep up. You could really blame the pace of technology.
I mean, we've always had anxiety, it keeps us alive; fight, flight or freeze. It's when your general level of anxiety is constantly overwhelmed it becomes a problem.
I can’t cope with technology. Every day I am encouraged to download an app for this or that. I refuse.
Some Sci-Fi authors in the 70's and 80's predicted that information technology would move too fast for the human race to adapt/evolve? I mean it took us how long to adapt to Agriculture? - then less time to adapt to Industry? And now a split second to adapt to information overload?
I started work growing Internet businesses for people in 1999. I’ve now spent more years of my life online than living real life. The pace of things has even got to me. 2 years ago I removed myself from all forms of social media. All I now have is RUclips with some carefully selected channels. If you are struggling, perhaps try disconnecting yourself as much as possible. It certainly worked for me.
Mental Health issues are much more common than people presume and its not social media, its a feeling of uncertainty, feeling you can lose your home, job, food and all the simple things that make life bearable then people have fear, anxiety about basic things, this can be placed at the feet of the ultra rich & their greed.
I was a child in the early 90s recession. My parents had money worries. Their stress definitely was passed on to me. Bless them, they didn't know and were great parents but I remember the anxiety I felt at the time.
The 1990s were not as bad as today. Politics is failing, the Internet is a sewer of misinformation and disinformation (present company excepted). Fascism is on the rise, corruption has been normalised.
Is it really a surprise that mental health is so bad.
I note you don't mention the elephant, mass migration, you Lefty
I remember that era very well and echo your sentiment. Did you mean to say it's a surprise the mental health is so bad, or that it's no surprise? Back in 1990-91, people anticipated a recovery - and still they did in 2008-09-10. Now it's really unclear what is beyond this and I think that's the difference and why so many people live in fear.
@@nickjcresswell I meant it's no surprise really, and I think you nailed it. It felt like things could get better before. It feels like things are just getting ever worse.
None of what you advocate (and we hope for) is ever going to happen peacefully.
I'm amazed that did not get quashed by Google.
It can, if it happens immediately. But if it doesn't happen peacefully, so what? Those who stand in the way of peaceful resistance ("i agree with what you want but not how you wish to get it if it means anything other than elections") make violent revolution inevitable.
What's more important to you:
1. The presence of justice
2. The absence of tension
@@Contextualiser16-tn8nd bible pacifier.
Keep calm, it's less than 6 hours old, this comment and all it's replies will disappear sooner than later 💀
@@Contextualiser16-tn8nd 1.
The education system needs complete reform - the academic and behavioural expectations on children are unbearable it is leading to mental ill health and burnout (and school attendance difficulties as well as the SEND crisis) in so many children especially neurodivergent children. This then leads to mental ill health as an adult. When asked over 50% of children cite school as the reason for their mental ill health.
Poor parenting and an anti learning culture are a large part of the antipathy towards school. The anti learning culture goes back decades in Britain but the acceptance that attending school is necessary as a means to an end in gaining an education has started to break down. Cite the source of your claim that over 50% of students claim school as the reason for their mental health. There are many issues with schools that there is not enough time to debate in a few sentences below the line on You Tube but they are a microcosm of society and even if you created a perfect curriculum ( there is no agreement on what it would look like anyway) it would not be a panacea. Behavioural expectations that are frequently described as draconian now in Britain were the norm not so long ago here and still are in many other countries. Poor behaviour in schools is preventing well brought up students from learning which they are entitled to.
That’s interesting.
@@eightiesmusic1984I agree entirely: this is something we could debate at length. I’ll just add one point. I think teachers are cruel: they frighten children with climate change, that oil will run out, no jobs when they graduate, that they’ll be extinct by 2070 etc. No wonder children have mental depression at an early age.
@@george11419 I think there is something to be said for teaching children in stages that are adjusted to their ability to cope what they are taught. The problem is that the adults are worried. I'm not worried that oil will run out, it won't (unless we can carry on burning most it), but I am worried about climate change and what work will look like when machines can learn more efficiently than a human. I think we have to accept that adult insecurities are feeding the insecurities of our children and that we need to change our societies to make everyone feel safer.
I’m not going to say any more but just leave this article here which explains very well the impact of school on to e mental health of neurodivergent young people researchfeatures.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Sinead-Mullally.pdf
I've suffered with anxiety and depression my entire life. I was bullied at school by both the teachers and my peers, because I was so withdrawn, I was sent to child psychologists and a range of specialists but nothing changed. I was bullied and ridiculed at home by my sister and my male parent. As a result I have spent my life living in fear. However the fear I feel has become much worse since 2012.
To suggest that neoliberalism is the root cause of the mental health pandemic is something of a generalisation.
Brilliant summation of the effects of neoliberalism. We need your type of wisdom in government Richard.
Are you sure? If Murphy had been able to realize his dreams he would have been a member of Jeremy Corbyn's government (if elected) or at the least as "adviser" to the same bunch of characters. I do not think he has ever challenged this view of his aspirations, have you Richard?
Thank you for the video. I think that all these “mental” problems are just a physiological response to the awful conditions we’re living in. I agree completely with you on this assessment. Also, I think that with the psychiatrisation of a discomfort with your human condition we’re expropriated of the power of healing things by themselves and infantilised by being put in the position of patient, completely dependent on a science separated from us.
I completely agree with this and can relate the insecurity of growing up in an area where there is very little opportunity for employment and a fear of going back to that which happened when I was 18-19.
Fortunately things turned out for the better, I have a well paid job:- HOWEVER this has recently changed for the worse which has lead to increased anxiety to sustain the same outputs with fewer resources. With very little alternative I feel trapped but I still have an income. Staff are going off sick with stress and every one is looking for an out.
Social Media doesn’t help as it amplifies an implied way of living life and how we should look like and what we should aspire to. This can only be done with money which is getting harder to earn.
Thank you for an excellent video. You have a heart, something which is sadly lacking these days. Happy Holidays.
Thank you for this analysis! In addition, I would like to highlight the negative effect of modern food on mental health.
I had a clinical depression for 10 years and indeed believe now that it was a normal reaction to a not-normal life situation. There is much literature about this. The depression disappeared some years after drastic life changes.
100%
My depression was caused by my dental fillings, absolutely toxic.
@ bet diet was a big part of it
Only "disagreement" I have, is that I will argue loneliness and the with social media works are symptoms of the underlying problem you talked about.
"Social" media is one of the ultimate incarnations of neoliberalism. From a super early age our kids are taught to compete for likes and that you are only someone of note if you have xyz.
The only way social media could actually be social is if there were no profit motive.
I agree, but kindly insert the bothersome “but”…
The issue of increasing loneliness was studied and observed widely e.g. in the mid 1990s across OECD. It was deemed worse in larger cities, reflected in “policies” related to it being implemented more often there.
Today, we know more about how “behaviour economics” is a tool for financial gain - social media being one of many means to that end. We also know (empirically and anecdotally) how individuals suffer from losing eh… “faith” in their own immediate future.
Enforcing an individualised idealism in society (the ideal of modern liberalism) is vital for this kind of societal power.
We “know”, because it has been described in artworks, philosophy and early science, increasingly since around 1850 - as modernity took hold.
That’s a huge rabbit hole - but it must be there for quite human and existential reasons…? 😊
Agree totally. Economic inequality is the root of all our problems.
Too much wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of the few. This erodes democracy. This lowers the quality of life for the majority of the population. Economic hardships cause anxiety and depression.
When my partner died, I was offered anti-depressants to improve my mood. For goodness sake: it is normal to be feeling awful when the love of your life has died, and it is unhealthy to take stuff to cover the damage. The doctor insisting I should take these meds also made me feel that I was a burden to the people around me who really could not be arsed to engage with me and my sorrow, when these people are what we call loved ones. You do not deal with mental pain with a chemical plaster. First, you clean the wound, you look at it you analyse it. so, Wes Streeting idea is not entirely wrong, but, once you have looked (which is what his plan would do), then you must engage, clean, and put a chemical plaster on, maybe. As we know, some wounds are better off left in the open to heal.
Thus, all these people whose mental health is suffering need to be engaged with, validated, listened to, "hugged" in some way, and then many will need chemistry, but not all.
I believe the cause of my struggling mental health is my curiosity to learn how the world operates, particularly economic systems. I'd be much happier if I stayed blissfully ignorant.
Outstanding analysis and entirely correct. I'm going to show this to my daughter who is in the third year of her degree and is finding it mentally tough to get any assistance with her next step in the world o the extent of depression. She need to know she is not alone and some of the resoning behind her feelings. Thank you.
Neither of my children want to have children. My wife is unhappy about it, but I cannot blame them.
Same here
Thank you so much Richard for all of your videos. I feel educated, informed and with a bit of hope for real constructive change. Looking forward to your new videos as you set out a realistic agenda, especially to make finance serve ordinary people.
There’s a few causes and I’d say most of them rooted in the wealth imbalance. Basically everything from shelter to education including food is ridiculously expensive, making it widely inaccessible which leads to insecurity meaning people generally live in survival mode rather than thrival mode. How could this not cause mental health issues when living in this state over a long period of time? 🤔
This would make sense if it were only children from poorer homes who are affected, but that's not the case. This may be a factor for some children, but not the sole factor. Nor does it apply to all children. Diet, sleep, exercise, face to face social interaction, a sense of purpose, a sense of being part of something bigger than oneself, social media, excessive screen time, too much time indoors, parents who won't allow the child to be exposed to risk, rampant consumerism and capitalism, repercussions from the pandemic lockdowns, the breakdown of families, are all part of the problem.
They're almost all being forced into the same school system, & the same health system. 7 hours a day from the age of ~4 in a hostile environment? It suits some kids, but it's so starved of reaources that it can only cater for one size fits all now, so any differences are increasingly hard to support. Look at who is moving into home ed in the greatest numbers in last decade & you'll see it's SEN kids ie the Square Pegs who couldn't cope with being hammered into round holes any longer. And if they need NHS? CAMHS was broken long ago. You rarely get seen until you're too ill to be easily treated. Actively suicidal as a minimum in most places. So the poverty isn't just re the homes of these kids.
Competition, which is the cornerstone of neoliberalism is the culprit here.
Thank you so much for this perspective!! 🙏🇩🇪
🎯💯💯💯💯👌
Every word is on point.
The message is spot on.
Thank you for daring to say what we know to be the truth but feel that no one in power dare say.
We need a totally different system. Fast.
.
This is absolutely correct. I'd bet that over 90% of the mental ill health in developed countries could be solved by improving living and working conditions.
Or by restricting to the genuinely ill access to "mental health" disability benefits as an alternative to working for a living.
Wow Richard, your videos get more and more profound. Thank you
Is "profound" the new synonym for "superficial"?
Thanks for saying these things. It is sorely needed.
It's called societal gaslighting
Authorities understand that people are more easily controlled while fearful(learned from the Nazis I believe), it’s my suspicion that the Hoi polloi are considered cattle.
People dropping out of society, or society failing to support and include them?
I am stunned by your statement that social media has no effect on children's mental health. That is one one of the most insane things I have ever heard.
... Blaming a medium of communication is pretty dumb.
We've been socially sharing media since cave drawings 😂
@DWbo-r7v wow a true believer...
@DWbo-r7v M*ron.
I don't think that was what he said. I think his point is that it's too easy to blame this all on too much social media when there is more at play. No one is denying social media is part of the problem; just not the only cause. Social media is the creation of a privaledged elite and with that they command enormous control over the populous. This is more aligned to the message in the video.
I believe that social media does play a role too. .. it is not the only reason obviously and I see and agree with the points Richard is making. I am not a child and I was not using social media very much but have fallen into a social media vortex during the weeks before Christmas and I have never been as stressed as now , fear and anxiety going up as soon as I spent a few hours online. A lot of the content is divisive and made to split everyone apart. Moderate views are hard to find. I certainly think it does have an impact and accelerates things and makes hatred boil over. It is used as an instrument of extreme propaganda in many ways and I hope it can be tamed to allow more peaceful and level headed discussions.
I wish I kept the reference but I remember a study that showed that the "natural" human state to enable progress and non-destruction is a state of mild depression. It encourages empathy, self reflection and avoidance of irrational self aggrandisement
Most countries, institutions and corporations are being run like a concentration camp 😢
I totally agree.
It's when one listens to those that allegedly "know better" and makes no sense, when one drills down into the meat of their utterances.
It becomes like python's "lumberjack song" except that the majority go along with the whole proposition, no matter how absurd it becomes.
This is what has happened since 1979.
Regarding social media; there was a time when lies and BS were more difficult to detect, especially with Legacy TV/print media held sway and were gatekeepers as to what was and was not news.
These days the plethora of information is phenomenal and it's a matter of sifting it to get an idea of what's happening.
This world is absolutely insane since its inception.
What drives me crazy is all the people my age calling them malingers but in their next breath claiming their mental health problems prevent them working. Double standards 🤬
Drives you crazy? See a doctor, pal.
@OP; A good start is to study what “work” even is…? Paid work (employee) is quite recent as the single possible option to sustain a life.
I say “single possible option”, because other options (varieties of capital income, rents, direct agrarian sustenance etc.) are available choices for way less than 1 in 10, quite flat ratio last 150 years.
What? Write that again in a clearer way please.
Also do you mean malingerers btw?
David, I worked in youth service in the early 2000s, back then NEET became a political concern. What was very evident and a figure that might need more analysis is the disparity between young men and women. Young women were nearly twice as likely to fall into the neet bracket. Today the figures show almost parity. Nearly 1 million young people 16-24 NEET. A generation of lost kids with no stake in society and feeling left behind. No wonder we have a mental health crisis. Unfortunately Politicians will always resort to blaming the individual or something existential rather than the structural problems that exist within our society.
Was born in a working class family in the fifties, had a marvellous childhood. Don’t think that is the same now.
A perfect description of where the real 'madness' is.
Peer-reviewed science including the National Institute of Health confirms social media usage causes poor mental health. However, Richard is correct that the massive division in wealth is highly problematic and must adversely affect people's wellbeing
Much of the issue is caused by too much indoor screen time with too much information/stimuli and nowhere near enough physical activity or social interaction with real people to balance it.
That’s bad enough for adults, but during formative years is much worse.
I have long thought that children need to meet adults other than their teachers and parents. They need to learn to interact with adults in all sorts of roles. But fundamentally the parents are too scared to let them. What has scared them? The world has; which brings us back to Richard's point! The high-functioning adults need to change things so that everyone can be happier.
@@tlangdon12 apologies if I’m misinterpreting what you intended, but what are “high functioning adults”? Leaders in society? Surely ALL adults, particularly parents have an obligation individually to make these things happen, not expect society to change magically around them ( someone else to solve their problems for them.)
“Our society actually exists as a kind of negative afterimage. We all live in a crazy, backward world, often unaware of the lies and double messages we are given. If we could be free for a moment to catch a glimpse of our true situation, if we could view our society as a visitor from another planet, we would be stunned at the nightmare in which we live. The things we are expected to believe about ourselves and about society are frequently the very opposite of the way things really are. Unhappily, the individual and all the members of our society are often unconsciously working together to maintain a largely defensive and dishonest way of living” Robert Firestone “Psychological defenses in everyday life”*_
Children have always had difficult pressures, sometimes way more threatening immediately, but they are versatile and they usually cope. Either the pressures are too relentless and too continual or there are new modern pressures. Social media pressures and smart phones / PC's are new and are a factor.
People realising they’re in a life long stage show but ego and identity is holding on to denial, this makes one cranky. Don’t avoid the void, get out the other side much faster.
Amazing video as always, thank you Richard!
A week or so ago I was waiting outside a major shopping realier with my dog while his 'mum' was shopping. And this mum and her little boy stood next to us waiting for a taxi or dad to come pick them up, eventually we got to talking. The mum was obviously upset / anxious as they'd been moved - I don't know the details, and hated where she'd been moved to. The boy had just seen his old school friends, as they were shopping in their previous area of residence - and they were there for him to visit them at school. She said, with a shopping cart full of food: "I don't know what I am doing. I don't know if I am going back....!?"
This happened under a Labour Government. My 'partner' arrived back and we said some pleasantries and went to catch our bus home. The bus overlooks the site where we'd been and the mum and her boy were still there. I was just thinking I wonder what's going on. It was cold and a mum and her lad standing around in the cold seemed pretty vulnerable, but yeah, under a Labour Government we uproot people from the lives they are happy with. Clearly this woman HAD to go back to this new place of residence, but something was causing her such misery that she couldn't even make the call to go back!? I dunno.
I just know one thing this world has been corrupted by neo-liberalism! Everything has a price but no-one knows it's value. It's only the psychopaths who know how to operate in this world. Good honest conscientious people cannot function in a system where it is kill or be killed. The reason we call ourselves civilised is because we don't treat each other like animals, but then I'd argue even animals treat other animals better than we do. True in the natural world it is kill or be killed - you're either the tiger or the gazelle. But that's not even what we do. We have the social contract that keeps us 'inline,' most of us follow the rules, but we are not protected by that - it is being used to abuse us.
I agree with your conclusion but make two points. 1. I think that social media does feed into poor mental health but as you stated is not the underlying cause. I think it feeds into poor mental health in two ways , by showing the person more of what is wrong with the world and also by showing them (often falsely) the ways that they are missing out or inadequate. This then feeds into their poor mental health but I take your point that it isn’t the underlying cause which is as you stated a rationale response to economic and social policy that is harmful to wider society, their family and them as an individual.
2. I take issue with the idea that therapy or counselling on school would only give them a diagnosis. It is established through research that play therapy is an effective therapy for children and young people which would benefit them even when the underlying cause is a rational response. Where that is not available work around emotional literacy is still useful for the child. The reason we don’t offer this is that neo liberalism situates blame in the individual or in case of children in the parents therefore the system doesn’t accept the part it plays and as a result doesn’t help mitigate it for those affected by it. Interestingly, those in the top wealth bracket who are benefiting from the transfer of wealth upwards are also affected by worsening mental health (read affluenza) and often fail to see the correlation that wealth inequality is detrimental to everyone. My main concern is that a downtrodden people who have been socially gaslighted and distracted and manipulated for years are unlikely to rise up against the systems that control us as it feels to abstract and removed from their daily struggle. And the systems that control especially around protest, benefits sanctions and now zero tolerance schools are tightening so fast that I’m not sure how we mobilise in an effective manner anymore?
My therapist has this sign in his praxis; Wer heute noch nicht verrückt ist, ist einfach nicht informiert. Translated; Anyone who is not crazy today is simply not informed.
"Although thought maybe seen by some as subjective, it is the actions one takes by using one's own definition of the situation and the social relationships between the interaction of the participants and how others respond to the actions taken, which create socially real consequences."
Clive Burgess
13th July 2005
This is true. We have peeps worshipping oligarchs now! We are also living in very different times”realities” due to social media.
Due to use of social (and mainstream) media for pro neoliberal (and other) propaganda. I'm not sure we can blame all ills on neoliberalism because people are inherently selfish (no matter that most of us do try not to be) and there will always be someone who trys to use that against us (the conman is one example, the narcisist is another): selfishness makes us prone to stupidity!
Neoliberalism is definitely one (major) reason for mental ill health and in my opinion should be stamped out as it corrupts people's thought processes but it is only one reason, not the only reason.
There has always been mental health crisis. It gets more publicity today, but its nothing new.
True. I’ve known mature adults (in their 40s) to have nervous breakdowns at work.
The child sees the emperor has no clothes.
That description of neoliberalism is succinct and accurate. Unfortunately children absorb their parents emotions, from before birth, and those feelings remain subliminal for the rest of their lives. Hopefully this will soon give rise to a mass rejection of neoliberalism and a search for something better.
I’ve never seen so many people explode in public over nothing at all, the smallest things triggering up a stored anger, walking time bombs i call them and i’m seeing it happen 20/30 times a day.
What no-one mentions in regard to young people is how restricted their lives are until they reach 18. They have not been allowed to “grow up”, they have been stripped of all responsibility, and then, in a binary manner they are adults.
Think of all them beeps and bong at the checkout for age restricted goods that I could freely purchase as a child in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Nowadays they could maybe purchase an Airfix kit, but they’d never be able to buy the glue to put it together, and don’t even mention the craft knife.
The “childhood industry” is out of control, infantilising generations.
I am aged 70 and have studied insect science as an academic all my life. When I was ten years old I was able to buy chloroform for scientific purposes (killing specimens) from my local chemist and was only required to sign the poisons register. When I was eight years old I proudly wore a large sheath knife in my belt everywhere I went outside of school (many boys did). Me and my friends would roam the town for up to five miles around, totally unsupervised. From the age of ten we would cycle thirty miles a day out into the countryside and back. Again, no supervision. Enough said.
Well, we can be certain the Tories will do nothing, Reform will do nothing and Starmer's Labour will do as little as possible. Thus there is no realistic way out of the problem until we have a genuine party of progressive politics that is capable of growing and sustaining electoral support. This is no urgency or determination for any such alternative politics at the moment.
Little chance of that while they are in command of Google censorship. We can not even speak about it.
No chance while they control Google censorship.
If you want this then join the Green party.
@robmaslen6446 Great example. Unfortunately, the green party supports the mass people trafficing. Ethnic sabotage of the UK.
It also supports the legalisation of drugs.
So I cannot...
@indricotherium4802 Oh, look how many comments have I had removed by Google this morning.
spot on mate.
No wealth without poor people
Your task is to balance body & mind
I recall headlines from the 80s stating that anxiety and depression in youths and young adults was rising significantly. No surprise given the changing workscape and the disappearance of old industries.
There's an old statement of truth about ptsd. The individual isn't the problem. Their trauma is a healthy, normal response to an abnormal situation. In othet words, they don't need fixing, its their experiences that need recognition and processing.
You look at this from a neoliberalist point of view. A good analysis. Other points of view that take a more equable and just approach would be more thoroughly damning. Collective compassion and cooperation against the small number who divide and exploit is the best way forward towards a truly equal, global society.
Mostly agree, but there is considerable evidence of bullying via social media, which is a recent phenomenon. This adversely affects many children.
Another great video
that's the premise of Catch 22--
I agree on most points, but social media does play into the equation.
The evidence is in the hyper wealth not giving their children smart phones. Obviously not good for them.
Anxiety is not only a poor man's problem.
A story as old as the hills, Romeo and Juliet, Morden day West Side Story, environmental and social factors.
Who had the mental health problems in these plays and why?
High levels of inequality will always have a derogatory effect within societies.
Unfortunately, Richard I'm not sure the import of your message has really hit home looking at the bottery in the comment section. The message that you are trying to get across is that economic deprivation fosters mental ill health in neoliberal economies. Remove the economic deprivation - which is the result of the misallocation and ineffective and inefficient distribution of resources within neoliberal economies - and societally-wide mental ill health will signifucantly decrease. Humans love stories, but their no substitution for the truth. Myths dominate our thinking and are relentlessly and neoliberalism's biggest myth is that money is wealth, and that those who do not have money, who are poor are to blame for their poverty. This myth is built on another myth - that being wealthy is a sign of virtue or talent. And the people who push this myth are often the asset wealthy, who spend their money buying media outlets to push these lies. The truth is that both cream and sewage float to the top. Luck as inherited asset wealth is the reality, and how deeply embedded this myth is in our culture, is reflected in our obsession with class, and other ways to "divide and rule". There are hard working, talented people who never get asset wealthy, or even enough money to live. I'm thinking of Robert Tressell, the author of the novel "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists." Tressel was an Irish migrant working as a decorator, who wrote his novel at the kitchen table at night. Poverty ensured he never lived to see his novel published, as he died of Tuberculosis, a disease of deprivation, before his daughter got it published. This all happened at the beginning of the 20th century, and yet in the 21st century we're repeating the same myths and the same mistakes as were perpetrated in the early 20th century. And the world is in some ways even more malevolent than the 1910s. We have forgotten the lessons people in this country at that time learned, because the problems they were dealing with, are still being fought with in the 21st century. And in many ways, we are in danger of going backwards. That's what people don't realise, that we've been here before, where the asset wealthy were unperturbed by the loss of the poor and deprived. Qui Bono? Who benefits from that? It may have taken two world wars and a global financial crisis to persuade people to look at things differently, but at least they walked around and examined the elephant in the room, and decided to clean up the growing pile of poop. We're not even really looking. Intergenerational forgetting? Probably, and we're self-harming the fabric of our society as a result. And increasing mental ill health is a symptom of our neglect of the basic realities of running an effective economy. For it to be effective, capital - social and economic - can't be hoarded by a minority, at the detriment of the majority, because it's unsustainable in the long run. That's why we are endangering ourselves. And a those suffering from depression and anxiety are exhibiting a sane response to an insane world, where the winners spend money to gaslight everyone else. Reality can't be ignored, because that way madness lies. I hope we wake up and start resisting the myths and the lies, because it's not only damaging the economy, it's damaging us as people.
Glaringly obvious as are the solutions.. Economic activities should work for us all not the few.... and while we're on it end the rediculous exploitation and price gouging of our utilities (water and energy)
If I invest my own money, the profit is for me. If my profit is somebody else, why should I invest? I could simply buy gold and bury it.
@george11419 Level the playing field first George
When our politicians and prime ministers like Sunak invest in disaster capitalism it’s no wonder the future looks bleak.
Even the people that are supposed to make our lives better are actively making everything worse for their own financial gain🤯
We live in a backwards and upside down world and it’s no wonder people are going mental. Most people try not to even think about it or even give excuses for them and this is why it won’t change. It’s getting worse but people still keep voting for their preferred team and keep blaming the other side but the reality is they are all the same. Their donors are all the same. The corporate interests are the same and they all support the same disaster capitalist agenda.
When will it change?
When people start paying attention to what’s really happening and stoped voting for their favourite team.
Did Elon Musk and Bill Gates invest in ‘disaster capitalism’?
@ neither of them were prime minister of Britain nor a part of British politics. However 🪨 supports
All our political parties when they take power. As for musk and Gates I don’t know what they have shares in other than their direct businesses.
Sunak was directly involved in crashing the pound and so were many donors that supported Brexit. The point is our politicians are actively making our country and economy worse for the sake of their own fortunes and their donors fortunes. So it’s no wonder things ain’t getting any better.
Comments keep disappearing on this channel?
It's not just here, it's YT in general. They don't want a two sided discussion seemingly. It's infuriating.
@@billB101 It happens all the time on You Tube. Right wing comments are ok and all over You Tube, as well as racism but it is not removed. I have reported comments that should be deemed in breach of the community guidelines and they are returned below the line most of the time.
As usual your enquiries point to the political sphere and it's sociopathic structure(s).
The mental health crisis is a economic problem than a actual mental problem.
Very few people can understand it and see through it , others just keep blaming each other and gets no where.
Conservatives do understand and prefer sickness to socialism. We voted for this on purpose.
Exactly, falling real wages, housing, job, insecurity and failing education provision where post baby boomer generations are actually poorer undermines any sense of belonging, direction or purpose. Thatcher got her wishes, there is no community (which she single handed lay destroyed) just individuals. As to the Labour Party, it’s more right wing than a 1950’s conservative government. Blair and now Starmer follow the neoclassical economics that is embedded into neoliberalism and have shown themselves not to care.
Time for new leadership before the ultra right wing creates that fictitious sense of belonging and direction. We know where that leads us (the US is about 5 years ahead!). That should fill anyone with fear and dread.
Real wages are falling because the personal tax allowance has been frozen until 2028. For decades, the PTA has kept pace with inflation. Not now. Council taxes will also rise. VAT remains at 20%. And kids won’t inherit much because of inheritance tax. It’s tax, tax, tax and more tax.
@@george11419 But where does the tax go? It's not going to pay for new stuff, it's generally going to pay the higher prices of the services that we have always had. Inflation is killing us. If we don't reduce inflation to the same rate that tax income is increasing, we are not going to be able to spend any tax on new initiatives without reducing the payments for existing services.
As a youngster, my son was always keen to give money to homeless people. In high school, anxiety attacks led to school refusal. So he was tested and found to be autistic. Then we learned when he was a youngster, a teacher told the class if they didn't study, they'd end up homeless. He's autistic. He took it literally.😹He was convinced at 10 that he would be a homeless person by the end of school 😭
Hopefully someday people will understand that a wealth of understanding other human beings has immense value.😢
Out of the mouths of children does Truth come!! We are Socially disconnected and no longer feel "part of" our Society!
👏👏👏
I never got this "social media" angle; I have struggles mainly from T1D. I do not partake in social media, a part from YT & the occasional hobbyist forum. Never used facebook, instagram or doom scrolled twitter. Tbf I have never even read a tweet nor a facebook message.
But children are hooked on social media.
I guess since you don't use social media that hundreds of millions of kids worldwide don't either. I can see you have a very strong imagination there. lol
@@george11419 True, even though social media didn't effect me, I can not deny the young folk might have issues.
People need to "be the change". "Physician heal thy self" is their best bet. Most change requires struggle. The sacred four of Food, Fire, Water, and Shelter, are enough to sustain life. Learn to derive these from nature, and you have freedom.
Very difficult to do that in the UK everything is owned by someone
When is being anxious normal?
Being anxious has always been normal, it's how we survive. However when your levels of anxiety are constantly overwhelmed it can turn into a General anxiety disorder which can become a real problem.
Remove the threat to existence.
This is so wrong headed it is difficult to know where to start. Childhood is a natural state of anxiety. Once upon a time before the age of entitlement middle and working class life had structure. The extended family. This unit was bound by mutual and enduring obligation. Within this I thrived as a child despite my anxiety. Where is that structure now? I would submit that Roy Jenkins is more responsible than Margaret Thatcher for its demise.
Just as it is possible to have a weak body without a medical condition causing it (more likely lack of exercise) it is possible to have a weak mind without a mental illness causing it. Same solution- exercise.
Children today have vast amounts of entertainment, vast amounts of educational resources, vast amounts of food choices, are often driven to school and receive little in the way of discipline. Life has never been more comfortable. A bit of harsh realism would benefit them.
In many ways, you are not wrong. But harsh realism is just likely to scare them more than they are already scared. I would argue that they need to be exposed to the real world in a kindly manner. They need to be drip-fed the harsh realities at a rate that they can cope with. I didn't have to go to work at 15 years of age like my dad, and I'm very grateful for that. I was allowed (by virtue of my parents and my society's wealth) to put off having to work for a living until I graduated at 23.
Linked to this is the long term illness levels in the UK. Interestingly from 2000 to 2019 this declined from 2.4 million to 2 million but since then has surged to around 2.8 million. A link perhaps to improved and then degraded healthcare of which mental health is a part. Of course, the IEA has a different take on this: ruclips.net/video/Fs0gkyPpI3o/видео.html.
I think that you have been moving along a potentially terrifying path these last months Richard. I'm no accountant (in fact I've been frightened of all things numerical since childhood) but one observation of people that I can put some weight on is that none of us are "rational".
We have the term Mental Illness because those rational men who studied human distress which did not appear to have its roots in physical causes were medical doctors.
It seemed rational to split, Descartes-like, areas such as thought, feeling and behaviour as if, by defining them, we could somehow analyse them like entries in a spreadsheet.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly we have no word for the thought-felt despite the fact that virtually every thought we have has intrinsic feeling mixed with it whether the thought is 'what shall I have for supper' or 'should we invade Greenland'.
I suspect that beginning to accept the irrational, the thought-felt, our own distress, may be useful in your journey.
I can't agree. I was born in the early 1950s. The world was a far poorer place, still traumatised by WW2 and the possibility of a nuclear WW3.
Reminds me of the "ADHD-Pandemic" in the 2000s. I always found it silly that people would force young children to sit down, study and behave all day long and then wonder why they are acting out. And instead of trying to understand the reason behind the childrens behaviour, they slapped a disorder-label on them. With the apparent rise of Anxiety and so on Disorders now, I'm getting quite the deja-vu. Not all, but a lot of therapy might be rightfully called organized gaslighting by a sick system that is setting young people up to fail, then blaming it on the individual.
ADHD is very real, and so many people are getting diagnosed in middle age now because there wasn't the medical research back in the 70s and 80s that we now possess. The explosion of diagnoses in the 2000 coincided with increasing levels of data on the subject. It many cases it's incredibly debilitating.
@M2Mil7er Cope.
Everything you say is true. But is there not also the fact that social institutions - family, community, religion - have eroded to the point where people spend less time with each other or even leave their house? I am not going to argue that sunday schools will save people. Rather that these social institutions of family, community and a shared spiritual outlook were interdependent and gave meaning and purpose. Take out any one of the three and the other two start to fail. One could consider them a bedrock on which to build your excellent economic-based ideas. The spiritual crisis of modern man has been generations in the growing but we are now beginning to witness its true horror - it is destroying the young.
I disagree about the shared spiritual outlook. One of my parents is spiritual, the other is not, and I am not. I don't need spirituality to spend plenty of time with others - I volunteer with two organisations, I care for my parents, my adult children and my partner. Spirituality is very personal, and I don't agree with indoctrinating children before they have the critical thinking skills to judge whether they want to be spiritual or not. If it does do anythign for social cohesion, is does it in a malign way.
The Canary "The gap in absolute wealth between the poorest 10% and richest 10% of people in the UK increased by 48% between 2011 and 2019, according to a new report from the Fairness Foundation"
This is one of the most contorted arguments I have ever heard. I refuse to accept that the poverty faced by children today comes even close to that experienced by millions of children in the 50s, 60,s and the early 70,s. Children are no longer allowed to be children - even in pre-school nurseries the emphasis is on attainment. Those that struggle are then quickly diagnosed with some defined medical condition to conveniently label them - dyslexic being my favorite. You fail to mention the health and mental consequences of the poison children now consume under the label of 'food' resulting in a tidal wave of ADHD behaviours affecting adults as well as children. To dismiss the responsibility of social media so readily is to ignore its measurable negative impact on adults and children alike - in many instances it is a poisonous cauldron that never stops boiling. I suspect you have used childrens mental health issues to simply push your own political agenda. That said - all the best for the New Year.
I remember when I was young, getting my head around Marx, in particular the statement, 'All property is theft.'
I knew I could not change the world, so my solution was to thieve as much as I can of it.
I worked within the system. For that, I am lucky I suppose.
I think communism is a great idea, unfortunately, it goes against human nature.
My wife is Chinese and grew up in the cultural revolution times, 1960s, so we know a bit about it.
That quote is actually from Proudhon. As to what constitutes human nature, the jury's out on that for the time being.
❤❤❤❤❤
It depends on the specific mental health condition. Depression and anxiety are partly to do with the state of society and the world. The climate crisis and coming apocalyptic effects are another rational reason for depression too.
You’re wrong that social media isn’t a factor in mental heath though. There are plenty of research studies showing a significant uptick in mental health issues around the world in the last 15 years or so since social media became prevalent. It increases polarisation and obsession with image.
For myself I’ve recently realised in my early 40s that I’ve had ADHD all my life and that’s caused mostly by genes and other factors e.g. being born prematurely. I’m keenly awaiting formal diagnosis and medication but it’ll be another two years or so till I can get medication.
Agree with most of this but I do think social media has its place in the story too. Poverty both relative and absolute where much higher in Dickens' time but I'm willing to wager what we would call mental ill health was not the concern it is now. Not for any good reason, of course, work in terrible conditions/steal/beg or die was the order of the day, no time for feelings. The MH crisis of today affects the children of the middle classes as it does other stratas of society. Widening income disparities, an upper tier that increasingly pulls up the drawbridge, dilution of opportunity for the young, the ubiquity of private equity businesses that don't give 2 f's for their 'resources' form the background contrast to social (and some mainstream) media where the young are told they can be anything they want to be with ambition, looks and hard work - and parking their morals and ethics at the studio door. It's all bollocks.
You are completely right, young people's brains have realised that life shouldn't be like this and have reacted in the only rational way possible.
Fear generates profits. The rich like profits.
There needs to be a NES:National Education Service.
From the cradle to the grave!
We have a national education service in the UK. The question is whether the service is fit for purpose, if it is scaring children.
"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." Said the owner of the bootstrap factory who doesn't pay his workers enough to be able to buy the bootstraps they make.
Richard, I have just watch a utube video titled: I have seen this before.
It really illustrate the situation between Democracies and a Dictatorship.
Please let know if you can find it and let me know know what you think?
Terry Wright.