Why are so many people struggling with life?

[Letsgetgoing888]

Not just due to covid, but it’s definitely been highlighted more recently....

But in recent years there seem so many more angry people, stressed people, depressed people, people that can’t control their temper, mental health issues, obese kids, obese adults, people who don’t look after themselves or their kids properly...

I know mental health services are woefully inadequate, but generally as a society we are talking more about mental health, provide benefits, charity support, free healthcare and so much more than in the past.

But more people seem to be really struggling in many different ways, health wise, financially, mentally, emotionally. Suicide rates are higher now than in the past (even pre-covid).

Did they have it right in the old days of stiff upper lip? And if not, why are things so much worse now when there is so much more awareness?

@rc22

I think society is very polarised too. Relationships have changed. The person I would have said was my best friend has a different opinion on Brexit and it has sadly affected our personal relationship negatively. I think the pandemic is deepening the rift between people who work in the private sector and those that work in the private sector.

I think people are very judgmental and are losing their sense of compassion and empathy. There was the most horrendous fight on my local facebook group where people went after people whose medical conditions meant they were exempt from wearing masks in the most vicious, unempathetic way I have ever seen.

Divide and rule is always a facet of Tory governments.

My area suffered a lot from Thatcher in the 80s and has done better since but Covid is going to prove a disaster financially and it's already causing a lot more divides and Brexit on top of that.

All good theories. Modern society seems to breed mental health difficulties.

My own simplistic pet theory is that we have a mismatch between reality and expectation. The gap between is where mental health suffers.

It's difficult to compare the past to now. My great grandma 'suffered with her nerves'. I'm diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Our symptoms are very similar.

Everything from PTSD to postnatal depression was pushed under the rug until recently.

Even comparing my experience to my younger cousins shows how far we have come in understanding and accepting mental health problems. In the 00's I hid in the school toilets having panic attacks that I didn't understand. 10 years later, my cousin had counselling provided at school.

Even suicide had historically been under reported to protect people's reputation/ the feelings of the family.

Do like your story NewPapaGuinea, Although the reality is most of us work hard for a very simple life and work hard and still struggle to cope financially. It isn't all joy when bailiffs come knocking and we can't eat or heat our home. It does show that the pursuit of extreme wealth is totally pointless though.

Our society is becoming more spoilt. If you think of a spoilt kid, who sees themselves as the centre of attention, has high expectations of getting what they want which includes many luxuries, who blamed everyone else (usually parents) when they don't get their way and will have tantrums until they do....well, that's more and more what our society is becoming.

Even suicide had historically been under reported to protect people's reputation/ the feelings of the family

It was a criminal offence until 1961.

I happen to know that my mother and my grandfather struggled with exactly the same anxiety/depression issues that are also affecting my dd and to some extent me.

My gran didn't have a bad life, even by my standards, but she was required to function as a therapist as well as a wife because otherwise her family would have fallen to pieces. My dad (though lovely) wasn't really up to the job of doing the same for my mum, so that fell to me, from the age of 8 or thereabouts.

My MIL, who had been an evacuee during the war, relied on a heroin-related drug to get her through the 50s and 60s. Not because she had experienced anything traumatising in the war, but because the general tediousness and lack of purpose of her life as a young adult in post-war Britain. She was a lovely person but loved shopping and drinking. We found 50 handbags stacked away in her cupboards after she went into the nursing home. So much for the thriftiness of the older generation. She also was a hopeless cook, so dh was brought up on SPAM and mushy peas.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2018registrations

Actually suicide rates fell from early 80s to mid 2000s and have wobbled around since then.

The world feels too small now. There is no adventure or escape anymore really. All feels very monotonous.

My own simplistic pet theory is that we have a mismatch between reality and expectation. The gap between is where mental health suffers.

I'm probably going to get slaughtered here, but I think it starts in school/school age, where that gap starts building.

There is praise for everything, no matter what a schoolchild actually achieved, you tried your best even when they blatantly didn't, there is little constructive criticism and that doesn't help with realistic expectations or a realistic appraisal of your own abilities and it actually holds children back because they don't even have to try hard.

I might well be wrong though, my own are long out of school.

funkbus yes, great post. You've captured so much of what is considered normal now.

However I'm still reeling from a PP who said there are parents who do on line shopping for their kids at uni!!!

@LiveintheNow

Inequality. The gap been rich and poor has been widening. People living in the most equal societies are the happiest. That is why people look back to the 1970s and think it was better, people had less but most people you knew had the same as you.

That is what my mum (married and bringing up kids in 70’s) says. She is in no way political but definitely noticed a change with Thatcherism and a push for social mobility. Which of in itself is not necessarily a bad thing but certainly she didn’t feel or wasn’t made to feel a failure for being poor. I think that nowadays we are forced to compare our situation to others all the time and having less is seen as a failure, and people try and look for reasons for that failure lack of education, mental health issues etc. This is bound to make you feel inadequate if you have less, something that simply wasn’t an issue when my mum was growing up/first raising us. Also late 60’s early 70’s she said you felt you could just walk in to a job if you needed one. Not sure how much of her view is rose tinted , I find it interesting none the less.

I do agree with a lot of what has been said. But I also think that in the past the voice of about 1/3 of our society went completely unheard.

So, go back to industrial revolution. Families in awful living conditions, poor health etc. No-one wrote down their story, or made a record of what they thought or felt. How many of them became alcoholics, or were severely depressed. But they just had no choice but to go to work, whatever mess they were in in their heads. We simiply don't know if they were resilient, or coping, or struggling etc, as no-one asked them

Follow that same group through pretty much any poor area. Saw last night the Booker Prize winner talking about growing up in tenemants in Galsgow in 1980s. How well do those families cope? We don't know because nobody recorded it.

Those same people now are being heard via social media.

One reason is there are fewer acceptable outlets for stress. In my own lifetime it was OK for teachers and parents to beat their children or bosses to bully their apprentices and trainees. People used to let out their stress in this way. Completely wrong but was socially acceptable. Now it's only socially acceptable to be permanently joyful and perfect. Which is bloody exhausting.

Resilience varies no matter what your age, in WW1 some people developed shell shock and others didn’t. Why don’t you ask yourself why the right wing press keep pedalling this lie that war brings resilience and young people need to be more resilient? It’s usually repeated by 60-70 year olds who grew up as the first generation with incredibly comfortable lives compared to their parents generation.

Maybe as a species as a whole, we arnt designed to be happy. Maybe all the negative things describe above are there to keep us developing and surviving. It keep our biology going regardless of the impact on how we feel. Maybe it isn't society, but it is our very makeup.

When I was a child reading the more accessible bits of Punch and Woman's Weekly in the 70s I would often see adverts for Sanatogen.

It was a tonic! It brightened your day! It made you feel healthy! Have a couple of glasses once your husband has gone to work in the morning!

It's a fortified wine.

For me, I'm a product of an abusive neglectful childhood (NC with mother for over a decade) that resulted in PTSD, severe depression and anxiety. Plus recently diagnosed ADHD.

I'm a single parent to 3 DC, a Microbiology student. On the outside all looks fine.

But I'm on a fuck tonne of medication, on my second year of therapy, and have a CPN visit fortnightly.

My brain is fucked from years of being stuck in fight or flight mode as a child/teenager.

I'm in Y3 of my degree and have been advised by medical team to suspend my studies this year, right now, because I'm spiralling.

Mental health issues were just as prevalent but they were literally hidden away in institutions. I'm only 48 but can remember my Aunt having a nervous breakdown when I was a child. She was taken to the local asylum, she escaped one night and turned up on our doorstep. The police took her back.

My Mum spent much of my childhood on valium. I remember the blue pills at breakfast very clearly. Most of the Mums on our estate seemed to be the same.

this is interesting too: The Myth of the Blitz Spirit

I read something interesting the other day about how the shift in how children were/are treat has caused some massive issues. It looked at millennials who were given trophies for everything and praised and rewarded for everything, with the message of 'every one did a great job' even when they hadn't. The children saw that everyone got the trophy and the praise even when they hadn't done anything or had performed badly, that lead to a generation of people who simply don't have faith in their abilities or believe when they are given positive feedback- they have constant self doubt and second guess everything.

It's not a healthy state of mind to be second guessing every single interaction or move you make, and here we are with anxiety and MH disorders common in so many.

We also have a falling standard of living, a climate crisis, housing shortage and, well look around us the world isn't in a good place, but we are constantly hearing how lazy and entitled the millennials are when actually a lot of the problems were caused by previous generations who now deride and ridicule us while refusing to acknowledge or do anything to correct the damage they did.

The world feels too small now. There is no adventure or escape anymore really. All feels very monotonous
I think it's the exact opposite. My parents and grandparents had much less free time and much more chores to do then I. Their free time was an hour listening to the radio in the evenings for my GPs and 1 1/2h of TV for my parents.

They didn't get to browse on the internet or play on game consoles for hours on hands. They didn't get to go shopping or the cinema after work, nor going out to eat /drink in the week. Sport was only a weekend activity.

Their lives were much more monotonous than mine but they appreciated their down time much more.

Your whole premise is faulty. Try reading more.

There is a lot of expectation now. Like others have said 100 years ago people would have been happy with a roof over their head and enough to eat. When I was researching my family history I came across an awful story in a 1916 local paper about 2 boys who had been in court for stealing a pork pie. Despite their pleas of poverty they both received the birch. Those kids couldn't have imagined a world of holidays and Nintendo and treats. We've moved on (generally) from starvation and cruelty being usual but as my grandma used to say much wants more. As the standard of living goes up so do people's ideals and unfortunately outward perfection has become more sought than ever. A doer upper house and charity shop clothes while you save up are seen as a sign of failure to achieve a 5 bed detached new build and designer labels where my parents age group saw it as aspiration and building yourself up. New mums have to be a size 8 and eating organic this and healthy that within days of the birth. My grandma was still in bed in her nightie at that stage. Workplace appraisals set constant improvement targets, just being reliable and getting the job done won't cut it anymore. And let's not even start on parenting. Social media has made everything more visible and instant and we are now in a constant miss world (or whatever) contest being judged and compared. The reality is of course that it's all BS but when you're totally immersed it can be hard to see the wood for the trees.