Saturday, September 11, 2010
Closing Our Minds
America is a crazy country; Americans themselves frequently remark on the fact. But while this craziness enjoys a perverse popularity, the consequences of our corrupted culture around the world are anything but popular. The colossal consumption of drugs and guns that feed this craziness creates calamities we only avoid by closing our minds.
William Vega, an American public health researcher at Rutgers, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1998, observed that Mexican immigrants have roughly half the incidence of psychological dysfunction as Americans. After 13 years, though, these immigrants develop depression, anxiety and drug problems at the same level as the general population (32%). Additional studies have extended these findings to other ethnic groups, leading to the conclusion, that "socialization into American culture and society increase susceptibility to psychiatric disorders."
Studies from the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2000, as well as from the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1992 and 1996, document that the overall rate of depression in the US has doubled since World War II; for women, it doubled between 1970 and 1992. Even more startling, "American school children today are taking four times as many psychiatric meds as all of the rest of the world combined."
The World Health Organization has found that schizophrenia in developing nations is up 45% from 1985, due primarily from "significant disruptions in cultural practices, social routines, and traditional roles in work and family." The WHO predicts that "depression will become one of the most common disabling disorders in the world by 2020, second only to heart disease."
We have the capacity to end this madness, but it requires we open both our hearts and our minds. Anything less will fail.
William Vega, an American public health researcher at Rutgers, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1998, observed that Mexican immigrants have roughly half the incidence of psychological dysfunction as Americans. After 13 years, though, these immigrants develop depression, anxiety and drug problems at the same level as the general population (32%). Additional studies have extended these findings to other ethnic groups, leading to the conclusion, that "socialization into American culture and society increase susceptibility to psychiatric disorders."
Studies from the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2000, as well as from the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1992 and 1996, document that the overall rate of depression in the US has doubled since World War II; for women, it doubled between 1970 and 1992. Even more startling, "American school children today are taking four times as many psychiatric meds as all of the rest of the world combined."
The World Health Organization has found that schizophrenia in developing nations is up 45% from 1985, due primarily from "significant disruptions in cultural practices, social routines, and traditional roles in work and family." The WHO predicts that "depression will become one of the most common disabling disorders in the world by 2020, second only to heart disease."
We have the capacity to end this madness, but it requires we open both our hearts and our minds. Anything less will fail.
