[wdewind]

I've read a lot of your posts on this thread and appreciate your perspective. I agree with a lot of it. Honest question for you though: isn't it a bit weird to label something as a disorder if 5-10% of the population has it? Isn't it just a fairly standard human existence then? I think that's where a lot of the discomfort comes from.

[maroonblazer]

Not the parent, and I don't mean this sarcastically, but isn't that akin to saying "Only 5-10% of people fracture a bone, so why bother treating it. It's just a standard part of human existence."?

[ed312]

Also poor eyesight, color blindness, partial deafness, &c. The reality all of these diseases/disorders are readily and inexpensively treated and not an issue in modern society.

[wdewind]

There is a wide difference in the prevalence, severity of condition and extremity of treatment in some of these conditions.

Poor eyesight afflicts a large portion of the population, but the severity of the issue and the extremity of the treatment are not high. It doesn't impact your ability to maintain social relationships, for instance, and the treatment is very well understood and has low/no side effects.

Color blindness, partial deafness etc., are readily and inexpensively treated, but they do not afflict 5-10% of the young and healthy population.

The issue comes in when we start saying 5-10% of the population has an extreme condition (ie: impacts ability to maintain work, social relationships etc.) with a relatively severe (ie: fairly large % of users experiencing side effects) treatment necessary. When you put that in the context of our massively volatile understanding of mental illness over the last 50 years, as well as the massive incentives for pharmaceutical companies to push a specific narrative, it is difficult for me not to see a red flag.

[Izkata]

> Color blindness, partial deafness etc., are readily and inexpensively treated, but they do not afflict 5-10% of the young and healthy population.

Isn't color blindness in men right in that range?

[wdewind]

Off hand I have no idea, but it's also the severity aspect here that is different. Color blind people do not have problems with executive function, maintaining social relationships, depression etc.

[axiometry]

"...massively volatile understanding of mental illness over the last 50 years...": The sort of volatility you undertake on a path toward drastic improvement.

[wdewind]

And yet by many measures mental health issues are increasing not decreasing so where is all this drastic improvement?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-changing-culture/20...

[mjburgess]

Improvement is in treating.

Don't false equivocate. If we were to open more mines than there were in 1900 we may well see more broken legs. However we're far better at treating a broken leg.

Though it is not at all clear that "mental health" is deteriorating. It may be that some forms of mental health issues are more prevalent today (eg. anxiety and depression). But that is no where near the whole picture.

An entire generation of people were traumatized by WW1 and WW2, and by the generation of parents who through that traumatization, traumatized their children.

Extreme disorders of the personality, PTSD, etc. simply were seen as normal then because they were so overwhelmingly common. PTSD didnt exist as a diagnosis till 70s, and yet it would characterize a generation of people under war.

If I were to speculate, I would say that we are overwhelmingly better in our general mental health.

That we recognise it as an issue suggest a profound advancement.

[FullMtlAlcoholc]

A significant amount of blacks worldwide had sickle cell anemia. In the past when humans lived in more isolated and homogeneous societies this was the standard existence. In fact, it conferred a resistance against malaria. Today, we have better treatments for that disease that don't carry the same side effects.

A more prescient and present example is that almost all humans are subject to cognitive biases. A wise man known as Citizen G'Kar once said "In the past, we had little contact with other races. Evolution taught us that we must fight that which is different in order to secure land, food, and mates for ourselves. But we must reach a point where the nobility of intellect asserts itself and says no, we need not fear those who are different. We can embrace those differences and learn from them."

[wdewind]

> In fact, it conferred a resistance against malaria.

I think this is one of my main points: if such a large percentage of the population has something that we think of as a large negative, it's probably a good time to take a step back and wonder if we aren't understanding the whole picture because evolution tends to take care of such low hanging fruit.

[TheCoelacanth]

Evolution takes care of things that stop you from reproducing, not things that make you unhappy.