How to Help Raving Mad People

[Doktor Howl]

That second link ties directly into what we've been saying about "kids these days".

That one is going to take some serious and uninterrupted reading.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

From the first link:

In humans, prenatal stress (PS) is linked to an increased
vulnerability for developing various psychosocial problems
that are observed both in childhood and adulthood. In children,
PS is associated with cognitive, behavioral, physical and
emotional problems (King and Laplante, 2005; King et al., 2009;
Laplante et al., 2004, 2008; Talge et al., 2007) as well as with
autism

Ain't life grand when a wild-ass guess turns out to be possibly accurate? 

(reading more now)

Ah, as of the last book I read on prenatal stress no link had surfaced, that's interesting to know.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I also think it's worth mentioning that having studied the history of the treatment of mental illness in Western society, the way the mentally ill were treated in 17th-century Europe was absolutely horrifying. I'm a little concerned that there's some romanticizing of the past going on here. There was very little compassion and the mentally ill were treated largely as brutes and animals, although at least social views were undergoing a shift away from exorcism or simply stoning them to death.

Hell, you don't even have to go that far back.  Just go back to the 1980s.

I mentioned the 17th century because you brought up 1600's Germany, which was a notably terrible place to be mentally ill in. Essentially, mentally ill people were either put in prison or poorhouses to die, or subjected to inhumane and often fatal "treatments" including trepannation (unsterile and without anaesthetic) and flogging.

The 1980's were a cakewalk by comparison.

[Doktor Howl]

I think it would be very difficult to say that there are "more" stressors, because you could also, using your logic, either split all of the internal components of each pre-industrial stressor and count them individually, or you could lump all of the modern stressors you just mentioned into one category, "media". So I think that's a spurious argument with poorly-defined boundaries, and literally nothing to support it.

Yes, as I say, I am definitely anally-orating here, I'm just speculating on the subject based on things I've noticed.  I am most definitely not ready to publish.

So lets look at your claim that the end of the Cold War resulted in more stress. Can you support that? What I've read indicates that the opposite is true, except in adults who were raised with the constant fear of nuclear war. The fear remains even after the threat is removed; that's the hallmark of chronic stress.

Yeah, what I was getting at was that it was an imminent threat, a clear and present danger that was easily definable and could be compartmentalasized (SP?). 

However, having browsed your first link and part of your second, it's ALSO likely (more likely, actually), that "kids these days" were gestated after the threat of the bomb went away.

There is lots and lots of research on stress, how we respond to stress, and how it affects the body. It's true that the immediate threat of attack and death, that is resolved by escape, is handled by the body far better than the stress of, for example, a shitty but not-immediately-threatening work environment, or poverty, or being the target of racism.

That's what I was getting at, and the first section of your second link seems to bear that out.

But you're still going to be hard-pressed to convince me that overall, blacks or women or the poor are more stressed now than they were in pre-industrial times.

I was talking in terms of the overall population.  And I'm not certain I CAN convince you, because I am by no means certain that it's true or even likely, and I should have worded it that way in the beginning.

In any case, I have some really interesting reading to do.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I would like to clarify, for the sake of setting goalposts, that I am not arguing that stress is not a problem in modern society. Rather, I would argue that stress is the main health problem in modern society. But I am also arguing that this is not because our stressors are worse than they have been in the history of civilization, but because overall, things have improved to the point that we can now turn our attention to stress.

Sort of like how hunger is one of the worst problems facing people in impoverished regions, partly because so many of the other things that were killing them have gone away.

Problems always exist within context. Sometimes, that context is simply that layers of other problems have been peeled back to reveal the one we are now tackling. 150 years ago, stress researchers couldn't have gotten a job. Now it's a respected and expanding field.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

FWIW the threat of nuclear holocaust is generally classified as one of  those vague looming uncertain chronic stressors, because it was an ongoing external threat that could not be escaped, unlike the kind of blood-pumping adrenaline-releasing threat posed by being attacked by a leopard or being nearly hit by a bad  motorist.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interesting: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140602104857.htm

It's a bit of an aside but you seem to have been spot on!

Summary:
A new study finds a link between prenatal maternal stress and the development of symptoms of asthma and autism in children. Scientists have been studying women who were pregnant during the January 1998 Quebec ice storm since June of that year and observing effects of their stress on their children's development (Project Ice Storm). The team examined the degree to which the mothers' objective degree of hardship from the storm and their subjective degree of distress explained differences among the women's children in asthma-like symptoms and in autism-like traits.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But you're still going to be hard-pressed to convince me that overall, blacks or women or the poor are more stressed now than they were in pre-industrial times.

I was talking in terms of the overall population.  And I'm not certain I CAN convince you, because I am by no means certain that it's true or even likely, and I should have worded it that way in the beginning.

I'm not trying to be a dick, but I needed to come back and pull this out, because it's something people frequently do but it leads straight to fallacy; you don't have an overall population if you exclude blacks and women and the poor, and taken together, blacks and women and the poor make up far more than half of the overall population. So if blacks and women and the poor had more stress a century ago, your overall population had more stress a century ago.

Particularly if we're talking about the effects of prenatal stress.

[Doktor Howl]

But you're still going to be hard-pressed to convince me that overall, blacks or women or the poor are more stressed now than they were in pre-industrial times.

I was talking in terms of the overall population.  And I'm not certain I CAN convince you, because I am by no means certain that it's true or even likely, and I should have worded it that way in the beginning.

I'm not trying to be a dick, but I needed to come back and pull this out, because it's something people frequently do but it leads straight to fallacy;

No worries, I'm good for that.  That's why there's a Nigel and an LMNO and a Cain.

Particularly if we're talking about the effects of prenatal stress.

 

WHAT DO WOMEN HAVE TO DO WITH PRENATAL STRESS?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In fact, once you exclude blacks and women and the poor, then what you have left, statistically speaking, is middle-class or wealthy white men. Which is exactly the model "average person" researchers have used for the last couple of centuries, leading to an astonishing range of health disparities among blacks, women, and the poor.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But you're still going to be hard-pressed to convince me that overall, blacks or women or the poor are more stressed now than they were in pre-industrial times.

I was talking in terms of the overall population.  And I'm not certain I CAN convince you, because I am by no means certain that it's true or even likely, and I should have worded it that way in the beginning.

I'm not trying to be a dick, but I needed to come back and pull this out, because it's something people frequently do but it leads straight to fallacy;

No worries, I'm good for that.  That's why there's a Nigel and an LMNO and a Cain.

Particularly if we're talking about the effects of prenatal stress.

 

WHAT DO WOMEN HAVE TO DO WITH PRENATAL STRESS?

[Doktor Howl]

I would like to clarify, for the sake of setting goalposts, that I am not arguing that stress is not a problem in modern society. Rather, I would argue that stress is the main health problem in modern society. But I am also arguing that this is not because our stressors are worse than they have been in the history of civilization, but because overall, things have improved to the point that we can now turn our attention to stress.

Sort of like how hunger is one of the worst problems facing people in impoverished regions, partly because so many of the other things that were killing them have gone away.

Problems always exist within context. Sometimes, that context is simply that layers of other problems have been peeled back to reveal the one we are now tackling. 150 years ago, stress researchers couldn't have gotten a job. Now it's a respected and expanding field.

I'd say that's intuitively obvious, just looking at behaviors in kids back in the day, when things like bullying were institutional in nature, and today.

Another thing that has changed is we're finally getting away from that horrible "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger" bullshit, both in terms of psychology and physiology (ergonomics, etc).

[Doktor Howl]

Interesting: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140602104857.htm

It's a bit of an aside but you seem to have been spot on!

Summary:
A new study finds a link between prenatal maternal stress and the development of symptoms of asthma and autism in children. Scientists have been studying women who were pregnant during the January 1998 Quebec ice storm since June of that year and observing effects of their stress on their children's development (Project Ice Storm). The team examined the degree to which the mothers' objective degree of hardship from the storm and their subjective degree of distress explained differences among the women's children in asthma-like symptoms and in autism-like traits.

Now, my question is, is autism actually more prevalent now, or is it simply being diagnosed as autism recently?

[Doktor Howl]

In fact, once you exclude blacks and women and the poor, then what you have left, statistically speaking, is middle-class or wealthy white men. Which is exactly the model "average person" researchers have used for the last couple of centuries, leading to an astonishing range of health disparities among blacks, women, and the poor.

It's amazing to me that I never thought of that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I would like to clarify, for the sake of setting goalposts, that I am not arguing that stress is not a problem in modern society. Rather, I would argue that stress is the main health problem in modern society. But I am also arguing that this is not because our stressors are worse than they have been in the history of civilization, but because overall, things have improved to the point that we can now turn our attention to stress.

Sort of like how hunger is one of the worst problems facing people in impoverished regions, partly because so many of the other things that were killing them have gone away.

Problems always exist within context. Sometimes, that context is simply that layers of other problems have been peeled back to reveal the one we are now tackling. 150 years ago, stress researchers couldn't have gotten a job. Now it's a respected and expanding field.

I'd say that's intuitively obvious, just looking at behaviors in kids back in the day, when things like bullying were institutional in nature, and today.

Another thing that has changed is we're finally getting away from that horrible "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger" bullshit, both in terms of psychology and physiology (ergonomics, etc).

Yes. I think that, although it's hard to see sometimes (especially with the problems that we DO have, which are still bad, bad problems) that things are nonetheless getting better overall.

Our society is trained to breed catastrophists. Something going wrong? The sky is falling! All is lost! The world is going to Hell in a handbasket!

I think that part of the reason for that is that people don't tend to feel like they can tackle catastrophes, whereas if it's presented as a social problem and not a giant out of control snowball of disaster, people will try to do something about it. Those in power are benefited from the status-quo, so the fewer people out there trying to change things, the happier they are.

Shit's changing anyway, because enough people are willing to scream at the ocean.