In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt lays out his argument that smartphones and social media are the key driver of the decline in youth mental health seen in many countries since the early 2010s.
The early 2010s were crucial, Haidt argues, because that was when smartphones really began to transform childhood into something unrecognizable. In June 2010, Apple introduced its first front-facing camera, and a few months later Instagram launched on the App Store. For Haidt, this was a fateful combination. Children were suddenly always online, always on display, and connected in ways that were often detrimental to their well-being. The result was a “tidal wave” of anxiety, depression, and self-harm, mostly affecting young girls.In Haidt’s telling, though, smartphones are only part of the problem. He thinks that children in the West are prevented from developing healthily thanks to a culture of “safetyism” that keeps children indoors, shelters them from risks, and replaces rough-and-tumble free play with adult-directed organized sports or—even worse—video games. For evidence of safetyism in action, Haidt contrasts a picture of a 1970s playground merry-go-round, (“the greatest piece of playground equipment ever invented”) with a modern set of play equipment designed with safety in mind and, thus, giving children less opportunity to learn from risky play.
Next steps? Go back online, find a venture capital backed mental health provider, take a quiz, get a diagnosis that confirms your self-diagnosis, have drugs sent to you in the mail.
When a psychology professor in Michigan looked through his data on interpersonal conflict a decade ago, he discovered something unexpected. The study, which examined differences across cultures and age groups, seemed to show Americans got wiser as they got older. Richard Nisbett was used to research showing poorer mental skills among elderly adults, but his work found they were better at recognizing multiple perspectives, encouraging compromise, and acknowledging the limits of their own knowledge.
Perhaps, he reasoned, navigating conflict got better with age because it was such a specific, experience-based skill. Working memory, which stores short-term facts like newly learned names, may decline but, as people get older, they inevitably accrue more knowledge from having navigated similar situations throughout their lives. Now 82 years old, Nisbett recognizes the improvement in himself. “I’ve noticed situations to avoid, comments not to make, and the importance of apology,” he said.
Nurse practitioners had the largest increases in prescribing incident prescriptions across the 5 drug classes. This is consistent with a study that found that behavioral health visits among Medicare beneficiaries conducted by psychiatric behavioral health nurse practitioners increased by 162%, whereas those by psychiatrists decreased by 6% from 2011 to 2019.35 Our study, based on incident prescription data, suggests an increasing contribution of nurse practitioners initiating medication treatment of behavioral health conditions compared with other health care practitioners.
Chai G, Xu J, Goyal S, et al. Trends in Incident Prescriptions for Behavioral Health Medications in the US, 2018-2022. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online January 10, 2024. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.5045 — https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2813980
Welcome to our new world of self-diagnosed ADHD, online pill mills, and “shortages” of prescription medications.
The past couple of decades have seen a continuous increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses. National population surveys reflect an increase in the prevalence from 6.1% to 10.2% in the 20-year period from 1997 to 2016 and experts continue to debate and disagree on the causes for this trend.1
I was doing my usual Saturday morning routine, catching up on whatever was catching my attention and I came across this Scary Chart looking for ADHD incidence in Millennials. Whoa…check out the early CAD percentage increase.
Anorexia has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric illness. People with anorexia are 18 times as likely to die from suicide as their peers. Fewer than half of those with anorexia make a full recovery.
“We found that alcohol and THC together significantly reduced, and in some cases prevented, the ability of the prefrontal cortex in drug-exposed rats to undergo plasticity in the same way that the brains from control animals can,” said Linyuan Shi, a graduate student in the Gulley lab. “The effects were apparent in rats exposed to either drug alone, and they were most pronounced with co-exposure to both drugs. We also found the impaired plasticity was likely due to changes in signaling caused by gamma-aminobutyric acid, a chemical messenger in the brain. When we used a chemical that enhances GABA, it could rescue the deficits we saw in the animals that had been exposed to the drugs.”
Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Combined use of alcohol and THC can affect rat brains, study finds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 November 2023 — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231130121946.htm
I’m glad I am not a rat.
Young adults who simultaneously use alcohol and marijuana (SAM) consume more drinks, are high for more hours in the day, and report more negative alcohol-related consequences.
On SAM use days, participants consumed an average of 37% more drinks, with 43% more negative alcohol consequences, were high for 10% more hours, and were more likely to feel clumsy or dizzy, compared with non-SAM use days.
“We found that alcohol and THC together significantly reduced, and in some cases prevented, the ability of the prefrontal cortex in drug-exposed rats to undergo plasticity in the same way that the brains from control animals can,” said Linyuan Shi, a graduate student in the Gulley lab. “The effects were apparent in rats exposed to either drug alone, and they were most pronounced with co-exposure to both drugs. We also found the impaired plasticity was likely due to changes in signaling caused by gamma-aminobutyric acid, a chemical messenger in the brain. When we used a chemical that enhances GABA, it could rescue the deficits we saw in the animals that had been exposed to the drugs.”
Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Combined use of alcohol and THC can affect rat brains, study finds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 November 2023 — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231130121946.htm
lifeunderwriter.net 
You must be logged in to post a comment.