In this article, we are going to talk about why mental health for society could be doomed and what to do about it. Some of the things you are about to read about might make some people mad because they may think I am attacking them or talking to them personally but it is not the case. I am just trying to prevent people from being part of a statistic.
I have been pondering mental health for quite sometime now. I always been wondering why people’s mental health keep declining and not getting any better. It is wasn’t until my mental health was at an all time low was when I decided I have to look deeper into this. When I got my mental health back up was when I figured out the issue.
If you are in the psychology field, and going to be a therapist or a psychologist then this is the perfect time to do it. While AI(artificial intelligence) is going to replace many jobs and careers, it will not replace the need for a therapist. Mental health in the world is at an all time low and it is getting worse everyday. So if you plan on being a psychologist then right now is the perfect time to start.
Now there is 4 reason why I think society’s mental health could be doomed. Before getting into the reasons I want to give you some statistics.
These statistics are from the World Health Organization(WHO):
One in every four people have a mental disorder. The United States have the highest rate of mental illness. Anxiety being the most common and depression being the second most common. 40 million people have anxiety in the United States. 16.4 million people before 2017 suffered from depression, now it’s far over 17 million people suffering from depression. 300 million people in the world suffer from depression also. These statistics aren’t getting better, they are increasing everyday.
Let’s talk about mass shootings and stabbings. Now what you may not know is that there is mass shootings and stabbings everyday. Only a few appear in the media. A lot of people are blaming the president, they’re blaming everything but one thing and that is MENTAL HEALTH. I believe the reason for these mass shootings is because of mental health, their mental health is suffering. People’s mental health are so affected by everything that they act out and act irrational. I also believe that the kids that participate in these mass shootings and stabbings are being exposed to too much. There is so many video games and TV shows that display killings and murder. The subconscious mind(which governs 95% of the brain) can not tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake. These violent things on TV like horror movies and even sexual material affect the viewers mental health. The exposure to the things on TV is declining people’s mental health.
Mental Illness have nearly tripled in the last few decades.
The 4 Reasons Why Society’s Mental Health Could Be Doomed
1.We Are Living Wrong
How we are living is affecting our overall health, not just our mental but even our physical health. We are designed to be hunter gatherers. We aren’t designed to be living this way. There is a type of fulfillment when you go on a hike and reach the top of the hill. It’s soul filling. The issue and why people are suffering from many mental illness’s is because they are living wrong, they are living unfulfilled lives. Many of us are living in unfulfilling ways. Where you are going to an office in artificial light, doing things you don’t want to do all day long and then you get home and you are exhausted. On top of that, you are eating crap. You are eating potato chips and you are drinking sugary soda. Your body is like what the heck is this?? We are supposed to be outside, walking up hills, looking for animals or farming vegetables. We are designed to be hunter gatherers. We are designed to be in nature. Nature is our medicine.
In 2011, depression sky rocketed, because the increase of ownership of smartphones. More people own smartphones, now more people are exposed to so many bad things, that weren’t meant to be exposed to.
Also, we are getting so much unnatural dopamine release from these smartphones that our dopamine receptors have to lower to stay on a equilibrium, so with having less dopamine receptors mean that you are more likely to have a anxiety and depression.
The way to world is going is amazing, but it is a double edged sword. It’s amazing that I can reach someone across the world and make a living from the internet but in the other side of the sword my mental health declines. This too much screen time messes with your brain and spirit. I believe the biggest decline of mental health is the social media usage. Once again, it is a double edged sword, it’s awesome to reach many people and do amazing things with social media for free but now you are depressed because your body isn’t as nice as the person on your feed or your car isn’t as nice as theirs or you want to be at the beach too. So many people are participating in this thing called FOMO(fear of missing out). That is why snapchat is the second worst app for causing depression and anxiety. An example of this is: Let’s say you are sitting home all weekend because you got no plans but you open up snapchat and you see that everyone on their is out having a good time but you aren’t. So now you are even more sad.
The way we are living is causing our mental illness.
2. Increase Of Pharmaceutical Drugs
I remember many years ago I was looking at a picture of a normal brain and a brain on amphetamines(adderall aka college drug) and the difference between the two was crazy. According to a study it takes several months for your dopamine center to come back to normal after taking amphetamine for a year. These drugs mess with your brain chemistry.
Let me break this down for you: This is where the drugs lead to issues. First the kid that can’t sit still and focus in school gets prescribed adderall to help their ADHD then after a year or so of constantly taking the prescribed medication the patient needs antidepressants because their dopamine center is all out of wack, so that causes them depression and then they keep taking stronger and stronger pills. Here is the hard truth, these pills only cure the symptoms not the disease or illness. If the pills cured the illness then you wouldn’t need to constantly refill the prescription.
If you ever seen a commercial for antidepressant, one of the common side effects is depression. So the patient is taking antidepressants because they are depressed but the side effect of the pill is depression. That makes no sense. Or on the other hand, the side effect is anxiety, so now you need to take another drug to help your anxiety because you have anxiety from the pill to help your depression.
And this all comes back to the kid that couldn’t sit still in class because he is so stimulated by his smartphone, TV, and video games. That now he can’t focus in class. Of course class is going to be hard to focus, first of all you are taking subjects you don’t like and have zero interest in and the teacher is just lecturing and boring the class. So on top of the kid being stimulated too much from technology, they are now being thrown into a class that they have zero of interest in.
3. People Do Too Much Running Away From Their Problems & The Truth.
No one wants to hear the truth, because the truth hurts sometimes. An example of this is the person who is overweight. They want to lose weight so they start taking weight loss pills. Or they come up with some excuse like: it’s genetics or it’s because it runs in my family. If that is the case then everyone in your family would be overweight.
The quick fix to the problem and the constant using of excuses are the reason I believe society could be doomed. The quick fix weight loss pill is always a bad idea because if it’s easy to fix then it’s easy to break again. Do you think it took that person that is overweight three months to gain that weight? No it probably took them over a year or so to gain it. So it’s probably going to take you around the same time or less to lose it. That’s the truth and people run away from this.
Then you have the person with the constant excuse to why they are overweight and they believe this “false truth” and then they remain overweight. If that person would just run towards the truth, then they could get to the core of the problem and fix it and be happier. Maybe the truth is they don’t workout or their eating habits are bad. All they would have to do is change these two things and that could fix their problem. It’s better to fix the core of the problem than to mask over it with some weight loss pills or excuses.
This goes the same for any other problem in your life. People are living unfulfilled lives so they party and drink on the weekends and they overindulge in watching TV during the weekdays because they are running from the truth. Or it could be because they are so stuck in this society’s programming that they think they are living the correct way. They think they are living the truth, when they aren’t
The truth will set you free
4. Too Stress And Pressure From Society’s Expectations.
We get pressure from a couple places. From our family, our peers, and social media. People have too much stress from society’s expectations. You could launch a business, have millions of growing dollars in real estate, have a beautiful family and then you open up a social media platform and you see that Jimmy just started a skateboard company that sells decks and wheels. Now even though you have achieved so much, and you have so much going for you now, but you are now thinking that you should launch a skateboard company too because Jimmy is doing, why can’t I? There is too much comparison going on. Comparison is the number one thief of joy.
Then you have expectations that you should be graduated and have a job by 23, and be married by your 25 years old. So if you don’t have a degree by the time you are 23 and have job then you feel this pressure and stress that you are looked at as “dumb”. This is 100% not the truth, it is just a mindset.
Also you have parents who think you should go to university and get a degree and maybe the child wants to go to trade school but the parents think the best thing for that child is to go and get a degree. Truth is no one knows whats best for you, you only know whats best for you.
So we have this stress from these expectations that society, our family, and friends place on us.
To wrap this up, I am going to share a personal story with you. I remember when I quit going to university because I wanted to pursue a different career path in the field of writing, and online businesses. I remember sitting in my friend’s car and everyone in the car was talking about when they are graduating and how excited they were about it. And I remember the feeling and the pressure that was put on me. I loved what I was doing and I don’t ever regret making the changes I have made but I couldn’t help but feel like crap and knots in my stomach because I wasn’t graduating, not because I want to graduate but because my friends always talked about it and put that expectation on me that if you didn’t graduate you weren’t allowed in this conversation. Which again is far from the truth but it was just a mindset I had back then. No one wants to feel left out, it’s one of the worst feelings, that is why so many people follow the crowd and do what everyone else is doing even if they don’t want to or like what they are doing. So they aren’t left out. The truth is, the crowd is lost. They don’t know where they are going, they are just pretending.
It’s better to go in the right direction by yourself instead of the wrong direction with the crowd.
So I hope this helped you understand more of where people’s mental health suffer. By understanding these 4 things you can not be doomed for the future.
Disclaimer: I am not a licence therapist or psychologist
Wolf Wisdom Empire 