The most common cause of their anxiety — the future.
Completely reasonable. I'm a Millenial and I also have a lot of anxiety about the future. Previous generations screwed us all really hard.
GenXer here. What drives me nuts is that climate change was taught to me as scientific fact in year 9, back in the early 80s.
The science was clear but collectively every government said "well, I'll be dead by then so why should we care now".
Not to mention all the shit we went through already.
I can tell you (professionally) that the people who saw less anxiety during the pandemic were people with severe anxiety. Statistically.
I can tell you personally it was because we could say, "Something catastrophic finally happened and I've been preparing for this my whole life."
This article is terrible. First off, where do they get 60% from?
They link to the wrong research. The research they link to is a survey of people who already have anxiety. If you look at the research of the actual survey of the whole sample, not just those with anxiety, (here), it says that 42% have a diagnosed mental health condition, which includes an anxiety disorder amongst other disorders like depression, ADHD, and so on.
90% of the diagnosed conditions (90% of 42%) is anxiety, which would mean the actual number for only anxiety would be 37.8%.
78% of those 42% (32.76%) have depression as well. So a lot of those people with anxiety also have depression.
So the actual title should be 38% of Gen Z have an anxiety disorder. Which is only a bit higher than the total population.
According to large population-based surveys, up to 33.7% of the population are affected by an anxiety disorder during their lifetime. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610617/
Let's also not pretend that older generations arent likely wildly under diagnosed because of stigma and lack of any resources. That means Gen Z may just have a totally normal amount of anxiety.
To be fair, we have a much better understanding of mental disorders now. Back when I was little, people basically fell under four categories (and these terms aren't my choosing, just what it was back in the early 80's): gifted, normal, slow or retarded. That was the extent of our understanding. At least based on my personal experience in an american public school system. I'm sure for older generations things were even more misunderstood.
It's also important note that people have always had mental disorders. We just didn't know it was a mental disorder. The main difference is that we know what to look for and we can diagnose the disorder and assign treatment.
This is the same reason people get the ignorant idea of "vaccines cause autism" and then point to the number of people with autism...not realizing all of these new terms aren't 100 years old. Same with cancer...must be the clean water that keeps our teeth healthy past our 30s....
Why wouldn't one be anxious about impending environment crisis and inability of institutions to act quickly enough.
If more than half of a population has it, is it really a disorder? The disordered thing is clearly our society, but rather than fix that we medicate all the people having a hard time living in such a world.
Edit: looks like this headline isn't true.
Article headline is bullshit.
Their source doesn’t say 61% of Gen Z.
It only surveyed people who already have anxiety.
So it’s 61% of gen z with anxiety have a official anxiety diagnosis from a medical professional.
Is it a disorder if most of them have it? Wouldn't that make the anxious the baseline and 40% of them are weird calmies?
It's a disorder if it affects your ability to function in society.
But maybe we need to change society so it didn't make everyone so anxious.
Is it really a disorder if it's just a normal response to circumstances?
I'm Gen X, not Gen Z, but I think it's definitely a normal response to circumstances. Retirement has gone from "something I'm going to do someday" to "suddenly on the horizon." However, my finances aren't lining up with how much I need to have to retire. (I'm not alone. I saw an article recently that said under 20% of Gen X-ers have enough saved to retire.)
I'm definitely feeling anxious about this. I don't want to be 80 and working a full time job so that I can pay my monthly bills because my bank account ran dry and the Boomers wiped out Social Security.
It's going to take everyone going to the streets and demanding social security reform. Americans need to stop being so complacent
It's a disorder if it gets in the way of your making profits for your masters.
They were born into an absolute shit show, maybe don't blame them too much.
Stop reading crisis media.
Turn off ALL notifications on your phone
Disconnect occasionally.
Or just weed. Copious amounts of weed.
I don't think putting your head in the sand makes all the world's problems go away, just makes you ignorant and less prepared to handle them.
Reading about world problems without acting on them will just give you anxiety.
Agreed. Paying attention to the local and national news is important. Ignoring the 24 hr crisis news cycle is what I’m referring to.
I know that climate change is happening, am current on recent studies discussing causes, and read about what I can do personally to help. But I don’t watch every broadcast that blame every single possible situation on it, and then continue to harp on it constantly for days on end.
I do have to wonder how these figures compare to older generations and to what extent underreporting due to stigmas around mental health could be corrected for between generations.
(I hope this already comes across, but I absolutely don't mean to diminish the severity of the mental health problems faced by Gen Z or anyone else.)
I'm actually surprised that 40% are do not have an anxiety amongst those growing up in an environment of constant marketing pressure and social pressure to compare themselves against carefully selected images of other (i.e. real me vs facebook others) all the while slowly realising they're not going to have access to the same opportunities as they're parents, will inherit a World shafted in many many different ways and in some countries are pretty much starting their adult lifes in debt slavery.
Maybe those 40% are a mix of those who can't afford to seek health and those too mentally simple to realize any of this (if you're so dumb that you "see" very little beyond your little bubble and everything that happens to you is a surprise, you're not going to be anxious about the future).
Future and finances - both things that have been screwed for us
They couldn't even write the subheading without making a typo so yeah top quality shit here
They are wise beyond their years.
I know an excellent therapist. In her professional opinion, she feels that other therapists and psychiatrists rush to diagnose any patient who comes to them with any type of normal worry or anxiousness about a situation that any normal person would also be worried about. It sort of like physicians who over prescribe antibiotics just because the patient insists. Just slap a label on the person and have them keep coming back for the fee. So, I do not believe the numbers are real. I feel like 60% may be diagnosed, but the number for people with the actual condition is likely much smaller.
I recently went to a therapist for a few sessions because I wanted to talk through some major life changes with an unbiased third party. I have no diagnosed anxiety disorders, but I was told in our earlier meetings that he was going to "diagnose" me with something like "adjustment reaction with anxiety" (or put another way "difficulty working through change") so that he could continue to see me. This isn't the serious anxiety disorder that many people struggle with, but would almost certainly be lumped in to the category of "anxiety disorders." This was apparently done mostly for paperwork reasons; I imagine somewhere on the backend someone might be asking why he's providing therapy to someone who "doesn't need therapy" without something entered in.
I still don't have an anxiety disorder, but that diagnosis is going to be on my chart forever unless I go through a lengthy process to purge it. I'm not saying this is the way every doctor will do things, but it might explain some of the increased prevalence of "disorders" in the population.
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