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If you don’t yet have a “mental problem,” just wait for the next updating of psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — because you will. Many will thus conclude with a new survey showing that 50 percent of millennials (ages 23 to 38) and 75 percent of Gen Zers (ages 18 to 22) have quit jobs because of psychological issues. In contrast, only 10 percent of baby boomers said they’d done so.
The study, conducted by Mind Share Partners, Qualtrics and SAP, “looked at mental-health challenges and stigmas in the U.S. workplace, [and] polled 1,500 respondents ages 16 and older working full-time,” reports CNBC. “Another recent study, by the American Psychological Association, found the percentage of young adults experiencing certain types of mental health disorders has increased significantly in the past decade. In particular, the percentage of people dealing with suicidal thoughts increased 47 percent from 2008 to 2017.”
“The Mind Share Partners, SAP, and Qualtrics study also shows that the younger … people dealt with a mental illness at about three times the rate of the general population,” CNBC continued. “The findings are corroborated by another recent study, which shows that while the amount of serious psychological distress increased across most age groups, the largest increase between 2008 and 2017 was among adults ages 18–25, at 71%. For adults ages 20–21, the figure was 78%.”
There were racial differences as well. “Results showed that nearly 50 percent of black and Hispanic participants had left a job for mental health reasons in comparison with 32 percent of white participants,” the Daily Mail added.
Of course, how “mentally ill” you are partially depends on how loosely the term is defined. As to this, “The survey questions included how often they [the respondents] experience mental health symptoms (for example, ‘sweating, rapid heartbeat, trembling, upset stomach, dizziness, or fainting’,” CNBC reported in an earlier article.
Note that according to this list, close to 100 percent of us would “experience mental health symptoms.” Yet whatever we call the phenomenon, the reality is that younger generations are far more likely to quit work because of it.
Not surprisingly, many pseudo-elite observers blame the modern workplace. CNBC contends that “burnout” is increasing “because of trends like rising workloads, limited staff and resources and long hours”; as for minorities, they “come across additional challenges in workplace,” CNBC relates, quoting an “expert.”
But one wonders how today’s generations would have fared in a late 19th-century factory or toiling away under the hot sun in an Asian rice paddy. As is said, “First World problems.”
Then, the Mail tells us, “Millennials are three times more likely — and Gen Zers four times — to experience … anxiety at work compared to baby boomers.” This aligns with a June survey showing that most millennials consider their lives more stressful than those of our ancestors. Yet as I pointed out on this, since stress is a feeling, it’s a relative, subjective phenomenon. Are these people’s lives really tougher, as some imply, or is it that previous generations were tougher?
It’s clear where the common man, expressing common sense, stands. As a commenter under the Mail article put it, voicing a popular sentiment, “Study to be a therapist and you will have full employment for decades while the snowflakes continue to melt.”
That said, certain phenomena are melting them. CNBC cites author Jean Twenge, who points out that mental-health problems’ rise coincides with the rise of social media and cellphone use. “Less time sleeping, less time on face-to-face interactions is not a formula for better mental health,” she lamented.
CNBC also cites Boston College professor Peter Gray, who says that society has gradually removed children’s internal locus of control, the sense that they — not outside forces — determine their own destiny. This lack of a sense of control breeds anxiety, is the idea. Yet there’s no doubt far more to it.
Points to ponder:
• Observers reflexively say that young people today are more “aware” of mental-health issues. Yet is this good? After all, it’s perhaps more precise to say that whereas earlier generations viewed problems largely as moral matters (e.g., a lack of the virtue “fortitude,” an inability to cope), people in our mechanistic age — where man is often fancied an organic robot — consider them psychological dysfunction (i.e., malfunction).
In fact, most everything once called a sin now has been diagnosed as a disease or condition of the brain (e.g., the formerly “ill-behaved child” is now an “ADHD sufferer”; the drunkard who can’t resist drink now is in the grip of a “genetic predisposition”). Consequently, “Everyone is a sinner” has become “Everyone has a psychological problem.”
• People readily latch on to excuses. Upon believing they have “issues,” it becomes a handy justification for missing work or even resigning: “I just can’t handle it.”
• While people may talk about “how stressful life today is,” the reality is that we enjoy a lifestyle of which our ancestors could only dream. And with kids often now coddled more than any entitled prince of old, expectations can be stratospheric. Thus, many young people assume they should be made to feel good all the time at work. Yet work is work, not play, and life is tough.
• In this vein, it’s said that young people nowadays know they have “options.” Another way of putting it is that they’re comfortable enough to slack off. Were the options the historical norms — work or starve — their “issues” wouldn’t be issues. As the Chinese saying informs, “When there’s food on the table, there are many problems; when there’s no food on the table, there’s only one problem.”
Of course, with increasing numbers of Americans not knowing the difference between boys and girls, some may conclude that the whole nation is becoming an insane asylum. Yet the reality is that many “mental problems” are actually spiritual/moral problems. So maybe we should consider another correlation: between declining “mental health” and declining faith. For “psychology” is a Greek word meaning “study of the soul,” and it just may so happen that there’ll be a lot more to study when indulging the depressing assumption that we’re all soulless.
Photo: AJ_Watt / E+ / Getty Images Plus
