The Social Fabric of the U.S. Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling
Why, in the world's richest country, is every metric of mental health
pathology rapidly worsening?
Glenn Greenwald, System Update
August 28 2020, 11:23 a.m.
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Today's episode of SYSTEM UPDATE that explores this topic - the data
demonstrating this unravelling, the factors causing it, and the consequences
from it - can be seen on The Intercept's YouTube channel or on the player
below.
THE YEAR 2020 has been one of the most tumultuous in modern American
history. To find events remotely as destabilizing and transformative, one
has to go back to the 2008 financial crisis and the 9/11 and anthrax attacks
of 2001, though those systemic shocks, profound as they were, were isolated
(one a national security crisis, the other a financial crisis) and thus more
limited in scope than the multicrisis instability now shaping U.S. politics
and culture.
Since the end of World War II, the only close competitor to the current
moment is the multipronged unrest of the 1960s and early 1970s: serial
assassinations of political leaders, mass civil rights and anti-war
protests, sustained riots, fury over a heinous war in Indochina, and the
resignation of a corruption-plagued president.
But those events unfolded and built upon one another over the course of a
decade. By crucial contrast, the current confluence of crises, each of
historic significance in their own right - a global pandemic, an economic
and social shutdown, mass unemployment, an enduring protest movement
provoking increasing levels of violence and volatility, and a presidential
election centrally focused on one of the most divisive political figures the
U.S. has known who happens to be the incumbent president - are happening
simultaneously, having exploded one on top of the other in a matter of a few
months.
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Lurking beneath the headlines justifiably devoted to these major stories of
2020 are very troubling data that reflect intensifying pathologies in the
U.S. population - not moral or allegorical sicknesses but mental, emotional,
psychological and scientifically proven sickness. Many people fortunate
enough to have survived this pandemic with their physical health intact know
anecdotally - from observing others and themselves - that these political
and social crises have spawned emotional difficulties and psychological
challenges.
But the data are nonetheless stunning, in terms of both the depth of the
social and mental health crises they demonstrate and the pervasiveness of
them. Perhaps the most illustrative study was one released by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month, based on an extensive
mental health survey of Americans in late June.
One question posed by researchers was whether someone has "seriously
considered suicide in the past 30 days"- not fleetingly considered it as a
momentary fantasy nor thought about it ever in their lifetime, but seriously
considered suicide at least once in the past 30 days. The results are
staggering.
For Americans between 18-24 years old, 25.5 percent - just over 1 out of
every 4 young Americans - said they had. For the much larger group of
Americans ages 25-44, the percentage was somewhat lower but still extremely
alarming: 16 percent. A total of 18.6 percent of Hispanic Americans and 15
percent of African Americans said they had seriously considered suicide in
the past month. The two groups with the largest percentage who said yes:
Americans with less than a high school degree and unpaid caregivers, both of
whom have 30 percent - or almost 1 out of every 3 - who answered in the
affirmative. A full 10 percent of the U.S. population generally had
seriously contemplated suicide in the month of June.
In a remotely healthy society, one that provides basic emotional needs to
its population, suicide and serious suicidal ideation are rare events. It is
anathema to the most basic human instinct: the will to live. A society in
which such a vast swath of the population is seriously considering it as an
option is one which is anything but healthy, one which is plainly failing to
provide its citizens the basic necessities for a fulfilling life.
The alarming CDC data extends far beyond serious suicidal desires. It also
found that "40.9% of respondents reported at least one adverse mental or
behavioral health condition, including symptoms of anxiety disorder or
depressive disorder (30.9%), symptoms of a trauma- and stressor-related
disorder (TSRD) related to the pandemic (26.3%), and having started or
increased substance use to cope with stress or emotions related to COVID-19
(13.3%)." For the youngest part of the adult population, ages 18-24,
significantly more than half (62.9 percent) reported suffering from
depressive or anxiety disorders.
THAT MENTAL HEALTH WOULD SUFFER materially in the middle of a pandemic - one
that requires isolation from community and work, quarantines, economic
shutdowns, and fear of illness and death - is not surprising. In April, as
the realities of isolation and quarantine were becoming more apparent in the
U.S., we devoted a SYSTEM UPDATE episode to a discussion with the mental
health experts Andrew Solomon and Johann Hari, both of whom described how
"the traumas of this pandemic - the unraveling of our way of life for
however long that lasts, the compulsory viewing of all other humans as
threats, and especially sustained isolation and social distancing" - will
exacerbate virtually every social pathology, including ones of mental
health.
But what makes these trends all the more disturbing is that they long
predated the arrival of the coronavirus crisis, to say nothing of the
economic catastrophe left in its wake and the social unrest from this year's
protest movement. Indeed, since at least the financial crisis of 2008, when
first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration acted to
protect the interests of the tycoons who caused it while allowing everyone
else to wallow in debt and foreclosures, the indicia of collective mental
health in the U.S. have been blinking red.
In 2018, NBC News, using health insurance studies, reported that "major
depression is on the rise among Americans from all age groups, but is rising
fastest among teens and young adults." In 2019, the American Psychological
Association published a study documenting a 30 percent increase "in the rate
of death by suicide in the United States between 2000 and 2016, from 10.4 to
13.5 per 100,000 people" and a 50 percent increase "in suicides among girls
and women between 2000 and 2016." It noted: "Suicide was the 10th-leading
cause of death in the United States in 2016. It was the second-leading cause
of death among people ages 10 to 34 and the fourth-leading cause among
people ages 35 to 54."
In March 2020, the New Yorker's Atul Gawande published a survey of data from
two Princeton economists, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, under the headline:
"Why Americans Are Dying from Despair: the unfairness of our economy, two
economists argue, can be measured not only in dollars but in deaths." The
decadeslong economic stagnation for Americans, the reversal of the American
Dream, and the shockingly high mass unemployment ushered in by the pandemic
are obviously significant reasons why these pathologies are rapidly
worsening now.
Observing these trends is necessary but not sufficient for understanding
their breadth and their impact. Why is virtually every metric of mental and
spiritual disease - suicide, depression, anxiety disorders, addiction, and
alcoholism - increasing significantly, rapidly, in the richest country on
earth, one filled with advanced technologies and at least the pretense of
liberal democracy?
One answer was provided by Dr. Laurel Williams, chief of psychiatry at Texas
Children's Hospital, to NBC when discussing the rise of depression: "There's
a lack of community. There's the amount of time that we spend in front of
screens and not in front of other people. If you don't have a community to
reach out to, then your hopelessness doesn't have any place to go."
That answer is similar to the one offered by the brilliant book on
depression and modern western societies by Johann Hari, "Lost Connections,"
along with his viral TED Talk on the same topic: namely, it is precisely the
attributes that define modern Western societies that are crafted perfectly
to deprive humans of their most pressing emotional needs (a book by Hari on
addiction, "Chasing the Scream," and an even-more-viral TED Talk about it,
sounds a similar theme about why Americans are turning in horrifyingly large
numbers to serious problems of substance abuse).
Much attention is devoted to lamenting the toxicity of our discourse, the
hate-driven polarization of our politics, and the fragmentation of our
culture. But it is difficult to imagine any other outcome in a society that
is breeding so much psychological and emotional pathology by denying to its
members the things they most need to live fulfilling lives.
Today's SYSTEM UPDATE on The Intercept's YouTube channel is devoted to
exploring this unravelling of the social fabric: not just the data
demonstrating that it is happening, but also what the causes are, and what
the consequences are likely to be for our politics, our culture, our society
generally. And the answers to the question prompted by all of this - where
is the exit ramp to prevent these trends from worsening even further? - are
as elusive as they are vital. It can also be viewed on the player below:
