"This is a post long on problems and short on solutions".
Thank you for having the modesty not to suggest solutions. I wish more people did.
Often pointing out the issue in itself leads to mitigations while many proposed solutions (Marx etc) disastrous.
I wondered how successful a society would be where you can self select to either point out problems or to suggest a solution. Then i remembered we call them "The loyal Opposition" and "The government" and its been going quite well for longer than most other societies.
Thanks for writing this (or I guess, thanks to the paid subscribers!). One of the most significant problems facing humanity today, and under discussed and under appreciated.
Footnote 14 ends mid sentence (and thought)
glory.Partygate is either looking for a space or a .com at the end.
"Much of this was done in the name of the Public Sector Equality Duty [which] requires public institutions to "
"Based on the results - a society increasingly polarised [on] political, identity and cultural matters"
"with housing perhaps in this case in the UK" should lose the first in, or swap case for state.
"We should certainly take care [something is missing here] does not lead us to embrace"
I don't understand why schizophrenia rates are up 67% in the chart you share. I thought schizophrenia was very genetic, and should be very stable? I admit this isn't very relevant to your hypothesis, other than throwing doubt on the veracity of the chart.
Re schizophrenia, I am not remotely an expert, but the NHS doesn't think that schizophrenia is entirely genetic but claims it is a 'combination of physical, genetic, psychological and environmental'.
There are lots of other charts by Haidt and other data people (Twenge, Burn-Murdoch) that show the core lines going the same way, so I'm not that doubtful about the veracity:
Twin studies show schizophrenia is 80% genetic, which I claim matches my 'very genetic' claim. You say 'the NHS doesn't think that schizophrenia is entirely genetic', and of course they don't - it isn't, and I wasn't claiming it was. But it would take something seriously funky in the environment to produce a 67% increase in something that is 80% genetic. As a result overdiagnosis is by far the most likely explanation.
This is what I was getting at in challenging the veracity of the chart. I don't mean "someone literally typoed all these numbers", I mean "if the number that is likely to be extremely stable is showing as up 67% due to overdiagnosis, then there's a good chance the other numbers in this chart are distorted by overdiagnosis".
I don't think this is the whole of the effect (the other diagnoses are up by more than 67%, and I think suicides are also up), but spotting it altered my perspective from "my word mental health among the young is in free fall" to "my word overdiagnosis of mental health conditions is strapped to a rocket, and also real mental health is getting a bit worse".
I've checked WebMD and they agree with your stat. That's quite disappointing of the NHS website to downplay the genetic element so much.
Yes, I fully agree that over-diagnosis is playing a big role here, and that there is also some actual mental health getting worse too (and this matches the less genetic ones going up more). They may also be feeding off each other (you are on the edge of formal depression, get diagnosed as it and then are able to sign up for welfare with no work requirements; as a result of the isolation, your mental health tips over into full-blown depression).
From a 'having children' perspective, it may also be that overdiagnosis and changing attitudes are important alongside any rising real cases (if someone believes they have ADHD and alters their life choices because of it, that's an impact that may make them less happy and less likely to have children, even if they wouldn't have met the criteria for diagnosis a generation ago).
I'm not sure if your numbers are right. If the TFR is 1.0, then each parent has (on average) 1 child, who have on average 0.5 children. So each grandparent has on average 0.5 grandchildren. If the TFR is 1.4, then each parent has (on average) 1.4 children, who have on average 1.4*0.7 = 0.98 children. So 100 randomly selected grandparents have 98 children. Your numbers work if you mean 50 grandparent couples, but if you mean 100 unrelated grandparents, I think you are out by a factor of 2. So maybe it's that we mean different things, but it's not as bleak as I understood from my reading of your numbers!
"This is a post long on problems and short on solutions".
Thank you for having the modesty not to suggest solutions. I wish more people did.
Often pointing out the issue in itself leads to mitigations while many proposed solutions (Marx etc) disastrous.
I wondered how successful a society would be where you can self select to either point out problems or to suggest a solution. Then i remembered we call them "The loyal Opposition" and "The government" and its been going quite well for longer than most other societies.
Thanks for writing this (or I guess, thanks to the paid subscribers!). One of the most significant problems facing humanity today, and under discussed and under appreciated.
Footnote 14 ends mid sentence (and thought)
glory.Partygate is either looking for a space or a .com at the end.
"Much of this was done in the name of the Public Sector Equality Duty [which] requires public institutions to "
"Based on the results - a society increasingly polarised [on] political, identity and cultural matters"
"with housing perhaps in this case in the UK" should lose the first in, or swap case for state.
"We should certainly take care [something is missing here] does not lead us to embrace"
I don't understand why schizophrenia rates are up 67% in the chart you share. I thought schizophrenia was very genetic, and should be very stable? I admit this isn't very relevant to your hypothesis, other than throwing doubt on the veracity of the chart.
Thank you! And wow, what a lot of typos.
Re schizophrenia, I am not remotely an expert, but the NHS doesn't think that schizophrenia is entirely genetic but claims it is a 'combination of physical, genetic, psychological and environmental'.
https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/schizophrenia/causes/
I also found (in a very brief search) a John Hopkins report suggesting there was overdiagnosis.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/2019/04/study-suggests-overdiagnosis-of-schizophrenia
There are lots of other charts by Haidt and other data people (Twenge, Burn-Murdoch) that show the core lines going the same way, so I'm not that doubtful about the veracity:
https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/research/the-evidence
Twin studies show schizophrenia is 80% genetic, which I claim matches my 'very genetic' claim. You say 'the NHS doesn't think that schizophrenia is entirely genetic', and of course they don't - it isn't, and I wasn't claiming it was. But it would take something seriously funky in the environment to produce a 67% increase in something that is 80% genetic. As a result overdiagnosis is by far the most likely explanation.
This is what I was getting at in challenging the veracity of the chart. I don't mean "someone literally typoed all these numbers", I mean "if the number that is likely to be extremely stable is showing as up 67% due to overdiagnosis, then there's a good chance the other numbers in this chart are distorted by overdiagnosis".
I don't think this is the whole of the effect (the other diagnoses are up by more than 67%, and I think suicides are also up), but spotting it altered my perspective from "my word mental health among the young is in free fall" to "my word overdiagnosis of mental health conditions is strapped to a rocket, and also real mental health is getting a bit worse".
I've checked WebMD and they agree with your stat. That's quite disappointing of the NHS website to downplay the genetic element so much.
Yes, I fully agree that over-diagnosis is playing a big role here, and that there is also some actual mental health getting worse too (and this matches the less genetic ones going up more). They may also be feeding off each other (you are on the edge of formal depression, get diagnosed as it and then are able to sign up for welfare with no work requirements; as a result of the isolation, your mental health tips over into full-blown depression).
From a 'having children' perspective, it may also be that overdiagnosis and changing attitudes are important alongside any rising real cases (if someone believes they have ADHD and alters their life choices because of it, that's an impact that may make them less happy and less likely to have children, even if they wouldn't have met the criteria for diagnosis a generation ago).
I'm not sure if your numbers are right. If the TFR is 1.0, then each parent has (on average) 1 child, who have on average 0.5 children. So each grandparent has on average 0.5 grandchildren. If the TFR is 1.4, then each parent has (on average) 1.4 children, who have on average 1.4*0.7 = 0.98 children. So 100 randomly selected grandparents have 98 children. Your numbers work if you mean 50 grandparent couples, but if you mean 100 unrelated grandparents, I think you are out by a factor of 2. So maybe it's that we mean different things, but it's not as bleak as I understood from my reading of your numbers!