U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-new-highs.aspx

by harambae • 3 years ago

82 118 3 years ago

news.gallup.com

206lol• 3 years ago

Economic uncertainty and exploitative labor practices, increasing wealth gap and decreasing wages? Seems like a recipe for depression.

GiorgioG2• 3 years ago

In the last few years inflation has hurt the fuck out of all but the richest Americans. Financial stress leads to depression. Add both political parties are constantly telling us the other side is ruining everything and it's just piling it on. A recession is here/coming.

oh_sigh• 3 years ago

Why does the US have higher depression rates than any country in Africa then? Aren't there a lot of people there under financial stress?

ne0flex• 3 years ago

My assumption would be that they have something to look forward to. Some parts of Africa have improved a lot over the years, whereas the US, for the most part, had it good and now is seeing it slowly decay in real time.

George83728• 3 years ago

Just spitballing here, but a culture which focuses more on individualism, less emphasis on family and community. People disown their families over petty things like political differences, don't engage in their communities because they're shut up inside watching TV all day, then find themselves without social support networks to help when they're feeling down.

nostrademons• 3 years ago

Usually people are more depressed if they had something and were forced to give it up than if they never had it at all and are working hard to attain it. Same reason that the American Dream is alive and well among immigrants at the same time that the former American middle-class is dying of despair.

ChatGTP• 3 years ago

I've not been to Africa, but several other less developed parts of the world and my take is that it's different being poor in these types of places rather than in the US.

In some countries, other people don't have much of anything, so people just kind of help each other out, others don't judge you for being short on cash and people even tolerate a bit of hustling. Kindness is important.

I find developing countries also often have a kind of homogeneous culture with shared beliefs and practices, which makes everyone feel like they're part of a community.

The USA puts money on a pedestal like nowhere I've ever seen before, ever, so not having money is bad in the USA. We can't even get healthcare without money. It's quite tragic.

tayo42• 3 years ago

I read a book that suggested some clues, it was a pretty opinionated and cynical book (Dark star safari). So im not an expert. The commentary he had suggested its cultural. They know what they know, kind of accepted how things are. Dont really care about getting ahead, buying, and accumulating wealth. those kinds of are effected by economies. but just one viewpoint someone had

Saturn5• 3 years ago

It is very difficult to compare the numbers directly. I would expect that on many African countries there is less acces to mental health professionals to diagnose people, maybe also more prejudice agains seeking help for mental health. Also it could be that people seek help in their community or religion without a formal medical diagnosis. Possibly for regions where there is war or food insecurity seeking a diagnosis is less of a priority. I have no idea how much of an impact these have if any, but I don’t think you can just compare numbers directly.

shrimp_emoji2• 3 years ago

In Africa, you can't even afford to be depressed.

Silverback_VII2• 3 years ago

I suspect it has less to do with specific parameters of modern society and more with the general experience of living in it. It's a rat race that, for many, lacks any meaning. another point to consider is the psychological difference between being a big fish in a small pond as opposed to being a small fish in a very large one. With the Internet, we now have the means to compare ourselves with everyone else, and our minds can quickly reach the conclusion that who we are and what we have is simply not good enough. From there, it's an easy slide into a downward spiral.

mc323• 3 years ago

I think it's complex and hard to breakdown. Modern life may have something to do with it, but it certainly isn't more difficult to live today than it was during the great economic depression. Additionally, the internet should tell us that If you live in the US you are way better off than people in places like Ukraine, Mexico, Argentina, Uganda, etc. Now, if they are comparing themselves to the Kardashians or erroneously to pretend-rich Social media personalities, that's on them.

sieongioetnio4• 3 years ago

I don't understand this concern about inflation. It was never that high, didn't last very long, and wages kept up pretty well (real wages are higher today than they were a year ago [1]). People are panicking over a problem that has done little real harm.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/05/economy/real-wages-inflation/...

GiorgioG2• 3 years ago

Not everyone got a raise or changed jobs since last year. Everything is still expensive, and continues to get more expensive.

colpabar• 3 years ago

Should everyone just eat cake then? Nobody cares what CNN or any other org says when they can see with their own eyes that milk and eggs and everything else cost more now than they did just a few years ago.

mc323• 3 years ago

I can't believe we're worse off financially than during the great economic depression. Do we have numbers from back then?

Are people today more apt to become depressed, are we conditioned to get more depressed, or is diagnosis better, or are we classifying and identifying more things as depression?

Back then we had no social services, no soup kitchens, "food stamps" etc. There was no governmental help (other than job creation such as WPA). There may have been more social cohesion and more reliance on the (extended) family though.

AnimalMuppet2• 3 years ago

Anecdote, not data: My father was born into the Great Depression. He said you couldn't buy thread - not because you didn't have money to buy it, but because all the thread factories had closed, and there was literally no thread to buy.

Data: The US unemployment rate peaked at 25%.

So, yeah, things were (much) worse during the Great Depression. I have no data on whether people were depressed then (though the final lines of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, his message to the country, were "Buck up" and then "Smile"). But I know that it left deep marks on people. When there just wasn't stuff, and there was no promise that there ever would be stuff, it affected people for decades after it was over.

rocho• 3 years ago

It's not only related to financial conditions. Loneliness has been increasing, and it's a big contributor to depression. Social media are another massive contributor.

petercooper3• 3 years ago

The rates of people diagnosed with depression. Things that were once taboos, had stigma attached to them, or were poorly defined may once have been more often kept under wraps. See ADHD or ASD diagnosis rates, for example.

Julesman• 3 years ago

Depression is not a disease for most people.

sgift• 3 years ago

In the context of the article - and in most conversations - depression is short hand for "clinical depression" or "major depressive episode", i.e. the form where it is a disease, not the normal feeling of short-term depression after a bad event.

MattGaiser3• 3 years ago

History of left handedness:

https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedn...

Nothing caused the population of left handed people to soar. We just stopped hitting them in schools for using their left hands.

olalonde3• 3 years ago

Not a big fan of this comparison. Just because it was true of left-handedness doesn't mean it's true for other things. It also shows that hitting left-handed kids in schools was actually working, whereas it's not possible to "cure" depression or sexual orientation this way.

dimitrios1• 3 years ago

I still think this is a overall net increase. The stigma wasn't preventing people from getting diagnosed and treated

Zoloft was Pfizer's second best selling drug during most of the 90s. So people were still going to get diagnosed and treated despite the stigma. They just wouldn't tell anyone about it, other than their therapist.

petercooper3• 3 years ago

The diagnosis of "hysteria" dropped by two thirds in the mid twentieth century with the diagnosis of "depression" replacing it. People may well have been going to the doctor, but they were not necessarily being diagnosed with the conditions we now associate with their symptoms.

To your final paragraph, that also highlights the flaws in Gallup style polling. Even if people were being diagnosed in equal number, it doesn't mean they would admit to it in a poll.

olalonde3• 3 years ago

The observed increase could be attributed to two key factors:

1) The rate may have been constant over time, but we're only now observing the "true" rate because societal taboos have decreased.

2) The diagnostic criteria may have lowered over time. Thus, we may now be diagnosing people who wouldn't have previously met the criteria for diagnosis.

I've been wondering the same about the notable rise in self-identified LGBT+ individuals across generations[0]. Are we witnessing this surge merely because societal acceptance has improved, enabling more people to openly identify as LGBT+? Or could it also be because the definition of what it means to be LGBT+ has broadened and it's increasingly desirable for young people to identify as such?

[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/18228/share-of-americans-iden...

Mezzie5• 3 years ago

One change is that bisexual people are more likely to come out. This has actually had some interesting effects on queer spaces over the past 30 years: Most of them used to be populated by homosexuals but now most queer spaces seem to be mostly bi/pan. Basically a lot of people who either only date or settle down with the opposite sex can be openly queer now whereas before there was no social benefit to telling someone you're bisexual.

I still find it weird when queer spaces are full of people in hetero relationships but the demographics make sense.

pseudalopex3• 3 years ago

Young people now identify as LGBT+ at rates comparable to historic rates of same sex experience.[1]

[1] https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/historical...

shipscode2• 3 years ago

Depression isn't taboo or stigmatized anymore? There's plenty of government forms you'll have to check a box and explain if you've been depressed still. Maybe it's more of a lack of awareness of the taboo and stigmatization.

the_af5• 3 years ago

Depression definitely still has a stigma associated to it.

Both "it's not a real disease, you are not dying of something" and "it's not real, just snap out of it!".

ndiddy• 3 years ago

I think this is false, as the suicide rate has also gone up.

petercooper3• 3 years ago

It's right in the article: "The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%"

To your point on suicide, though. The OECD has some data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#/... .. It's hard to say. US is flat. Norway is up a bit. Most countries are down or flat. I don't see any particular upward trend over the past 60 years.

sieongioetnio4• 3 years ago

Suicide rates have been rising rapidly since 2000. They are now the highest they've been since WWII.

Granted, suicide is also under-reported due to stigma, but it's another data point.

pwpw• 3 years ago

There could be numerous factors not normally considere for increases in ADHD diagnosis rates such as the decline of tobacco usage in society that ADHD users were self-medicating with[0].

I also believe that ADHD still carries a stigma in the workplace. I wouldn’t personally discuss it in an interview.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2758663/

endisneigh• 3 years ago

I'm curious how much of this is related to doomerism and heightened access to the 24-hour news cycle.

candiddevmike• 3 years ago

I have an unfounded theory that it's all related to our diet and the food we eat.

chrisco255• 3 years ago

Yeah, agree diet is a big part. Would also add physical activity and social structure though.

bluedino2• 3 years ago

And maybe the fact that we're all 40lbs overweight

jackmott42• 3 years ago

Perhaps it is related to doomerism getting more and more real?

avbanks2• 3 years ago

What period of time was less "doomy"?

bluedino2• 3 years ago

Most of the stuff on the news doesn't really affect us.

The Royal Family? War in a far off land? Latest tiff between Republicans and Democrats? Beer brand controversy?

avbanks2• 3 years ago

Cal Newport touches on this in Digital Minimalism. But the Media's need to produce incessant clickbait articles (to generate ad revenue) contributes to this. Basically, avoid News Media and social media.

maxerickson• 3 years ago

I think very little of it is related to doomerism. People that buy into all that stuff are angry, raging at phantoms, not sad.

I expect it's because we've gotten so good at being impersonal. Not necessarily in actual day to day relationships, but a lot of the things we do are basically designed to be alienating, because it's marginally more profitable to have them that way than to have them be convenient.

Like a favorite pet peeve of mine is that the Amazon Music app on android has the occasional modal advertisement to upgrade to a different plan or whatever. I literally never want to see those ads, but there's no way to turn them off because the app is designed to make Amazon as much money as possible, not to be convenient for me. Our lives are full of little "Fuck yous" like that one.

boringg• 3 years ago

1. Media narratives and sites like reddit -> focusing on the extremes is robbing people of the qualities of the life around them. 2. Keeping up with the Jones per se in the world of social media really knocks people down.

carimura• 3 years ago

i'm sure it's a lot of factors but to your point one could look at this problem from a dozen angles and there's almost no way to conclude that social media and 24/7 race-to-bottom engagement model of news has been a net positive on our mental health.

themagician• 3 years ago

Social media is destroying society, particularly among those “new” to the internet which is a bimodal distribution of those <30 and >60. There’s nothing special about those in the middle other than the context they may have for how we got here.

You now have a situation where more than half the population doesn’t know what’s real and what’s fake. It’s an, “I don’t know what I don’t know situation.” You can easily identify individuals who don’t know, because they still have a positive view of social media and say things like, “It really depends on how you use it and who you follow.”

What has happened to the internet and social media sort of tortures me, because I spent about 15 years contributing to the current problem in not-so-insignificant ways. I feel dumb for not having had the foresight to see what was happening.

ikt• 3 years ago

they point to the pandemic as the source of the issue but rates have been rising significantly since 2011...

nofum3• 3 years ago

Given the increase in 2020 alone was 3x the increase over the preceding 5 years, it appears to be a valid theory as to the source.

1-6• 3 years ago

I find it hard to detach from work and focus on my well-being. Work from home was convenient and necessary to a certain extent but I miss being able to get off the clock as soon as I left company doors at the end of the day.

MattGaiser3• 3 years ago

The in person jobs are the ones having issues recruiting, so it should be easier for you to change that situation than the opposite at least.

lostcolony2• 3 years ago

I set up everything to basically turn off at 6. Close the work laptop, and either set up time based notifications for everything on my phone, or a work profile (Android) that I turn off. While meetings have had a tendency to spread out (due to more spread out teams and trying to make calendars work), so I have a bit less time detached, I still feel like I'm able to detach, even with my work area being the same as my personal PC (though I step away from that for a decent amount of time as well).

andsoitis• 3 years ago

Does your company have an office you can use?

maegul• 3 years ago

As nice as WFH is for many of us (or society at large), the truth is I think that many of us and society at large isn't really set up to do it well. For working from home to be balanced with also living at home, you need some physical separation and space so that work spaces and living spaces are easily compartmentalised.

This requires bigger homes with probably some layout adjustments. Some will already have the homes for such things, but many, not at all.

I always figured from the early days of the pandemic/WFH that distributed/decentralised workspaces would be a nice shift, so that most residential areas could have a not-too-distant workspace with no substantial commute. Then you decouple work's office location and/or personal home ammenities from your actual working conditions. Dunno if this is an actual thing or actually viable.

nofum3• 3 years ago

Obvious lockdown residue. Could also be COVID itself but far fewer people were directly affected by that.

lostcolony2• 3 years ago

Could also be the increased income disparity, the huge leap in housing costs without associated pay increase, the obvious inability of the US to change the direction it (and the world) is heading...

I mean, it's rising most amongst young adults and minorities; given the political climate alone I can understand the correlation there.

nofum3• 3 years ago

Exactly, lockdowns caused a huge spike in precisely all those things. Income disparity skyrockets as the laptop class gets raises and stock bonuses while the servant class delivers their food while inflation skyrockets. Housing costs explode as the fixed supply in suburbia is swamped with urban exiles working remote and lockdowns cause supply chain disruptions.

vorpalhex• 3 years ago

Clinical depression had been slowly rising in the U.S. prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but has jumped notably in its wake.

That finger points at the social isolation hypothesis (though is obviously not hard proof).

I wonder if social media is to socializing what fake sugars are to real. It occupies the same sort of space without the benefits, and is more desirable on the surface while generally being worse for you. It's a discount but more easily obtained substitute.

rib3ye• 3 years ago

Probably a vastly unpopular opinion in HN but don’t we think sitting at home alone all day, working remote, could be related?

Humans evolved to be physically social, is 100% remote really the right direction for American society?

higeorge13• 3 years ago

Besides the hn/tech bubble, what percentage of people work remote jobs? Probably 0% according to my circle (in Greece). Is it different in the US?

cm2012• 3 years ago

Less than 20% of Americans wfh (we are in a white collar bubble), would have to be an insane effect size.

ch4s3• 3 years ago

Most Americans don't work from home, but social isolation is increasing.

bilsbie• 3 years ago

I just think we need more coworking though and field offices. Commutes need to die.

viraptor• 3 years ago

Working remotely doesn't make you sit at home all day. It doesn't force you to not socialise either (at work or after).

The way the work is organised and other factors that make home and surroundings not social for many people may be a factor. But looking at the remote work specifically here feels like holding the wrong end of the stick.

(source: Working remotely, having nice chats with coworkers, inviting others once a week to my home for work, meeting people otherwise)

barbazoo• 3 years ago

Probably true for people whose work is their primary source of social interaction which might be the bigger issue. Maybe it's the way we live that's against our nature, not the way we work.

laratied• 3 years ago

I think the sitting part is the bigger variable.

It is hard to be happy when your physical condition is a mess.

Personally, I never have quite as good of a day as when I start my day with an hour walk. Literally never and I have performed this experiment over a thousand times now.

the_only_law• 3 years ago

My social life improved with remote work. Suddenly, I wasn’t mentally exhausted at the end of the day and could go out and hang out with people instead of passing out at 7pm.

xyst• 3 years ago

Huh? I would say that I am more happier WFH than I was in the office. No more daily stress of driving in rush hour traffic. No more wasted hours spent commuting. Reducing my GHG output.

Get to spend more time with family/friends or personal projects.

Edit: want to add that I also finish my work in less than half an actual work day (2-3 hours). Compared to in office, the same tasks took 4-5 hrs due to constant nagging, interruptions.

0zemp2c• 3 years ago

no exercise, ever

+ crappy diet

+ addicted to porn

= depression

surprised?

fix those three, depression will vanish

pills will not fix it

your therapist is incentivized to keep you "sick"

shipscode2• 3 years ago

Maybe running people out of their jobs for not getting an experimental drug that is no longer recommended in most working age Americans was bad public policy?

andyfos• 3 years ago

This may be due to the excessive use of antidepressants, which can inadvertently exacerbate depression, transforming a temporary episode of sadness into a long-lasting and severe condition.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7428926/

Mezzie5• 3 years ago

Oh look, it's me. (I started the SNRI for non mental health reasons but it fucked me up good.)

tivert• 3 years ago

I propose we accelerate and amplify current social changes. The only solution is more. /s

NopeSlide9• 3 years ago

calm down nick land

shrimp_emoji2• 3 years ago

Praise GNON!

ultra_nick• 3 years ago

People work twice as much for the same wage. Most households now have two full time workers. Strangers raise our kids. Affordable small houses are no longer built. There're few legal or free places to rest. The rich pay significantly less taxes than when America was in its prime.

Poverty is the cause. The US will only get worse until citizens vote for corporations to pay their historical tax rates and reduce outsourcing.

account42• 3 years ago

People work twice as much for the same wage. Most households now have two full time workers.

It's really absurd how accepted/unnoticed this regression is. And of course it also makes the isolation problem worse as now single person households will be able to afford even less.

Mezzie5• 3 years ago

And those of us who have to be breadwinners are not in a good spot. I'm responsible for an adult who's bipolar and can't hold down a job. Supporting multiple people on a single income is absurdly difficult right now.

And many families with children are in a no win scenario where they either make due with a single income or one parents' income is completely eaten by child care.

m_fayer• 3 years ago

I support UBI but it’s not in the cards any time soon, fine.

Then, we should aim for one overarching economic policy target: most people should be able to land a job that would enable them to generously house, feed and equip one adult and several children without working themselves to the bone. This should include a reasonable amount of leisure and luxuries, and a thorough safety net.

How to achieve this? I’m not sure. I’m open to ideas from all sides of the political spectrum as long as the goal is achieved.

This should really be our bare minimum, if we’re going to insist on thinking of ourselves as an advanced society.

Short of that, I truly don’t know what all of this is really for.

danaris3• 3 years ago

One absolute prerequisite for this would be making the minimum wage a thriving wage. Until and unless that happens, jobs traditionally seen as "bottom of the barrel"—things like fast food, grocery cashier, etc—will remain an important source of jobs for those in dire straits (very much including adults with families), while also still paying so little that even a teenager looking to make some money over the summer might think twice. And that's before seeing how the people working those jobs get treated.

Any non-mandatory "incentives" or "initiatives" to get people jobs that can keep them and their families fed, clothed, and housed will invariably leave tens of thousands to millions of people behind as companies just shrug and say "don't wanna".

prottog5• 3 years ago

The rich pay significantly less taxes than when America was in its prime.
The US will only get worse until citizens vote for corporations to pay their historical tax rates

When do you consider America at its prime? Because I guarantee both taxation and government expenditure as a fraction of GDP were less than what they are now.

If you're talking about the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, there literally wasn't an income tax on either people or corporations, and federal spend was single-digit percent of GDP. Yet America accomplished many feats like the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, and poverty rates fell greatly.

If you're talking about the 80s when the tax rate in the highest income bracket was 70%, the top 1% of income earners actually paid a considerably smaller share of all income tax receipts than they do now. The poverty rate didn't change much between then and now.

Poverty is the cause.

Sure. But there is no empirical evidence to suggest that more redistributive taxation and bigger government alleviates poverty. The War on Poverty has been about as effective as the War on Drugs or the War on Terror.

deprecative3• 3 years ago

The war on drugs was never about drugs. The war on terror was never about terror. The war on poverty was also never about poverty. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the intent behind these programs. For example, the War on Drugs was to disrupt minority and leftist populations explicitly.

taylodl• 3 years ago

We would expect depression rates to reach new highs in late state capitalism, would we not? I thought we all understood things were going to get worse before they get better? This is similar to getting concerned why so many men having stage IV, terminal cancer are losing their hair. We know why. We also know Rogaine isn't going to help.

To me this is related to the other article on HN earlier today about the dramatic decrease in birthrates since 2007. They're all symptoms of a society in decline.

U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

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