The American Lifestyle Causes Mental Illness

I get so sick of hearing the same old drug company advertising platitude that mental distress is caused by chemical imbalances.
Heres some of the hard to find research into the environmental causes of mental illness. I say it's hard to find because drug companies wont pour hundreds of millions of dollars into research of cultural causes of mental illness simply because there is no money in it for them.
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In a fascinating study published in 1998 in the Archives of General Psychiatry, William Vega, an American public health researcher at Rutgers University, showed just how psychologically corrosive American culture can become for those who drop into it from the outside.

Vega focussed on recent immigrants from Mexico. When they first arrived in the US, he found, they were much healthier than the Americans they settled among, with half the incidence of psychological dysfunction. But the longer they stayed, the sicker they got. During the first 13 years, their chance of developing a disorder in their lifetime was 18 percent. After 13 years, whatever cul-tural protection their Mexican heritage offered them had worn off, and their rates of depression, anxiety and drug problems had risen to the same level as the general population’s (32 percent).

Among Mexican-Americans born in the US, meanwhile, the rate of those afflictions soared to 49 percent. Mexican men born in the US were five times as likely as recent immigrants to experience a "major depressive episode." Drug misuse among Mexican women born in the US was seven times as high as that of recent immigrants.

Could it be that Mexicans are somehow uniquely vulnerable to this particular American cultural virus? Apparently not. Other studies have both replicated William Vega’s findings and extended them to other ethnic groups and problems, such as domestic violence. Acknowledging that "components of Mexican culture are protective against mental health problems," Vega concludes that "socialization into American culture and society [will] increase susceptibility to psychiatric disorders."

http://adbusters.org/metas/psycho/proza ... lturetour/

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan ... grant.html

No real disease acts like this.

To reduce mental distress/illness we need to simplify our lifestyles. It has nothing much to do with chemical imbalance or faulty brains.
Faulty culture and cultural imbalance cause mental illness.

America leads the world in mental illness.

See for yourself.
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/14/15253/7082

I am very much looking forward to leaving the USA and goingn home. It\'s a very sick society. The above makes article is so true.

I think our culture makes us want more and more of everything. We think everyone has more than us, so we get depressed and angry. Also, many of us are little more than slaves to work because we work so hard, so long to pay for all the stuff we have--much of it on credit. Many of us have no time to enjoy the stuff because we have to work so hard to pay for it.
James

James,

I watched a TV show called Status Anxiety, heres a bit of the rave off the related web site.

"Status Anxiety

There are few more powerful desires than to be treated with respect. We long for status and dread humiliation. But such an aspiration is rarely spoken about, or at least not without sarcasm, embarrassment or condemnation.

The word status refers in a narrow sense to one’s legal or professional standing within a group (married, a lieutenant, etc.). But in the broader – and here more relevant – sense, to one’s value and importance in the eyes of the world.

Increasingly, status in the West has been awarded in relation to financial achievement. The consequences of high status are pleasant. They include resources, freedom, space, comfort, time and, as importantly perhaps, a sense of being cared for and thought valuable – conveyed through invitations, flattery, laughter, deference and attention.

High status is thought by many (but freely admitted by few) to be one of the finest of earthly goods.For this reason, we worry whenever we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society. We worry that we may be stripped of dignity and respect, we worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

We might not worry so much if status were not so hard to achieve and even harder to maintain over a lifetime. Except in societies where it is fixed at birth and our veins flow with noble blood, our position hangs on what we can make of ourselves; and we may fail in the enterprise due to stupidity or an absence of self-knowledge, macro-economics or malevolence.

And from failure will flow humiliation: a corroding awareness that we have been unable to convince the world of our value and are henceforth condemned to consider the successful with bitterness and ourselves with shame"

http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites ... alain.html

I heard a quote that went, "we work in jobs we hate, to buy things we really don't want, to impress people we don't like!"

Seems about right to me!

James,

I watched a TV show called Status Anxiety, heres a bit of the rave off the related web site.

"Status Anxiety

There are few more powerful desires than to be treated with respect. We long for status and dread humiliation. But such an aspiration is rarely spoken about, or at least not without sarcasm, embarrassment or condemnation.

The word status refers in a narrow sense to one’s legal or professional standing within a group (married, a lieutenant, etc.). But in the broader – and here more relevant – sense, to one’s value and importance in the eyes of the world.

Increasingly, status in the West has been awarded in relation to financial achievement. The consequences of high status are pleasant. They include resources, freedom, space, comfort, time and, as importantly perhaps, a sense of being cared for and thought valuable – conveyed through invitations, flattery, laughter, deference and attention.

High status is thought by many (but freely admitted by few) to be one of the finest of earthly goods.For this reason, we worry whenever we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society. We worry that we may be stripped of dignity and respect, we worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

We might not worry so much if status were not so hard to achieve and even harder to maintain over a lifetime. Except in societies where it is fixed at birth and our veins flow with noble blood, our position hangs on what we can make of ourselves; and we may fail in the enterprise due to stupidity or an absence of self-knowledge, macro-economics or malevolence.

And from failure will flow humiliation: a corroding awareness that we have been unable to convince the world of our value and are henceforth condemned to consider the successful with bitterness and ourselves with shame"

http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites ... alain.html

I heard a quote that went, "we work in jobs we hate, to buy things we really don't want, to impress people we don't like!"

Seems about right to me!

I like what you wrote about stress anxiety. The desire to have a high position in society is very strong. I wonder if it is tied to getting a better mate. In the animal kingdom males fight and/or show off they colors in order to get the best female or the most females. I wonder if achieving a high status in our society gives us more females. Or maybe we believe that the higher status will bring us more females. Many girls do seem to want to have fun. If we have lots of money, maybe we can buy them lots of fun. In some circles having the most or the best drugs will get you more females. These are just thoughts off the top of my head.
Jim S

jims wrote:The desire to have a high position in society is very strong. I wonder if it is tied to getting a better mate. In the animal kingdom males fight and/or show off they colors in order to get the best female or the most females. I wonder if achieving a high status in our society gives us more females. Or maybe we believe that the higher status will bring us more females.Jim S

Thats an interesting point regarding status. From my own schizoid perspective I have no status. I am completely outside of the competition to find a mate or advance my career (or even have a career).
I have no t.v. or expensive gadgets, my clothes are simple and functional and I have never been concerned with what people think of me. The whole consumer nightmare has passed me by.
Consequently I am quite happy with next to nothing. I am oblivious of my status and so have never suffered from any resulting "status anxiety".

jims wrote:I like what you wrote about stress anxiety. The desire to have a high position in society is very strong. I wonder if it is tied to getting a better mate. In the animal kingdom males fight and/or show off they colors in order to get the best female or the most females. I wonder if achieving a high status in our society gives us more females. Or maybe we believe that the higher status will bring us more females. Many girls do seem to want to have fun. If we have lots of money, maybe we can buy them lots of fun. In some circles having the most or the best drugs will get you more females. These are just thoughts off the top of my head.
Jim S

James,

Just touching on what you said " In the animal kingdom males fight and/or show off they colors in order to get the best female or the most females."

Colors and other such markings also play an important role in nature, predominately they are used for identification. Things like baldness, hair color, height, weight for example.

These identification markers used in nature have somehow, now become identification markers of failure and all have industries to sell us crap to over come our market deemed flaws.

The advertising and marketing (media) industry is to blame for this.
Personally, I hate these advertising and marketing people and wish they would just leave the planet. (Their probably reading this and thinking of the niche market they should open up to cater for types like me).

Normality is the mechanism of power that controls society (it's one of my favorite research topics) but with the combination of unbridled capitalism, marketing and advertising, the majority of people are living miserable lives trying to obtain the un-obtainable.

For example; anorexia is predominately a Westernised illness, the media/advertising/marketing machine bombards us with unrealistic images of what a normal body should look like.

People are paying a massive price for this type of artificial lifestyles.

Myself, I don't get too involved it, I prefer meaningful existence too competitive gain, but from what I've read, that’s a recipe for a diagnosis of schizophrenia. (And guess what :loll:).

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Quiet-loner, your "schiziod" lifestyle sounds identical to mine. I live in the mountains by myself (18 years now), I usually only see people briefly when I need to go to town for supplies. Hey, I pulled a Pentium 111, 800mhz, 80 gig PC with monitor, + keyboards and a still in the box 6 in 1 printer, scanner, copier, phone/fax from the tip. I'm talking to you on it now. (pretty cewl) I live off human throw waste, it's amazing what they'll throw out, all real good stuff I don't give a $#%^ about status either .

I like what Nietzsche said, “The best revenge is to live well”