added by Keely Adler and · updated 2mo ago
America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety
“If you’re looking for something that’s special about the countries where youth unhappiness is rising, they’re mostly Western developed countries,” says John Helliwell, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia and a co-author of the World Happiness Report. “And for the most part, they are countries that speak English.”
from America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago
although mental illness is global, the experience of mental illness cannot be separated from culture. If there is a surge of Anglospheric gloom among teenagers, we have to study the culture that young people are consuming with their technology. In the past generation, the English-speaking world, led by the U.S., has experimented with a novel approa
... See morefrom America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago
If smartphone use is global, why is the strongest evidence of surging teen anxiety mostly in English-speaking countries and not in their less-English-speaking neighbors?
from America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago
More anxiety diagnoses lead to more hypervigilance among young people about their anxiety, which leads to more withdrawal from everyday activities, which creates actual anxiety and depression, which leads to more diagnoses, and so on.
from America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago
“diagnostic inflation”—the slapping-on of more (and more, and more) clinical labels to pathologize everyday sadness and stress.
from America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago
globalization and the internet may be flattening the world’s once spiky terrain of mental disorders
from America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago
“Between 2006 and 2023, happiness among Americans under 30 in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand declined significantly [and] also declined in Western Europe,” the report says. But here’s the catch: In the rest of the world, under-30 happiness mostly increased in this period. “Happiness at every age has risen sharply in Central and Easter
... See morefrom America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago
A simplistic explanation of Hong Kong’s anorexia surge—along with koro and hysterical fugue—would be that mental illness is always and everywhere a case of social contagion. That’s wrong. What we call worry and sadness are universal human traits, and many psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, show up around the world. Watters’s most interes
... See morefrom America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago
Put it all together—diagnostic inflation in medicine; prevalence inflation in media; negativity inflation in news—and one gets the distinct sense that Americans might be making themselves sick with pessimism, anxiety, and gloom. But that’s not all. Just as the U.S. has long been the global economy’s chief cultural exporter—from Coca-Cola to Mickey
... See morefrom America’s Top Export May Be Anxiety by Work in Progress, The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago