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?

We rent privately.
It is the most soul destroying experience. It takes over every decision you make.
You can’t give your children the bedroom they would like, the pets that would help them, the garden space to grow things (as you might not be there to see them fruit). Being 2 months away from eviction, panic and tidy up in case there’s an inspection.
That big dining room table you’d love so you can have everyone over for Christmas, well that’s pointless might not fit in the next house, that nice sofa, pointless.
I have a council garage full of kitchen bits (cooker, dishwasher etc) as this house had everything fitted but the last didn’t and the next might not
Being priced out the area so there’s no point getting involved with community stuff as it makes it harder to leave. Our last landlord put our rent up 40% in one month.

ALOT of families live like us.

It’s shit Never having roots really shit.

@PatriciaPerch It was awful to read, my Grandma found all of this out after her Dad died, he never spoke about his family at all. I asked during lockdown about family history and she sent me copies of everything. I sobbed. I just feel so awful for my GGGM, to feel that was her only option, I can't imagine how she must have felt. No funeral, just tossed into one of the ditches at the side of a cemetery with no record of where she is.

The 2 siblings I mentioned have ensured they will never have DC of their own. I'm the only one of us that has DC. Which means I am now busting my arse to make sure this bloody curse ends with me, breaking the cycles that have caused so much misery, trying to ensure (as far as I can, anyway) that my DC don't have a childhood that they need to recover from.

@EvilPea Same here. Private rent. Student and work part time. Single parent. Will likely never own a home, a car, or be able to help my DC with those things either.

Yep, same EvilPea. We've done the whole moving to a cheaper area thing, so are now quite far from family. Feel like we have no real roots or links to the community. It's very isolating. I'm worried that the current mass exodus out of London will price us out of this area too.

Also, I'm a freelancer because my DS is disabled and can't go to afterschool clubs etc. So it's the only thing that fits into our life, so I have zero stability with work. It's scary and I try not to think about how quickly it could all go very, very wrong.

I agree with the posters who say that we are simply more aware of problems now. I think this insistence on sentimentalising the past is a complete misconception. People just suffered in silence, and they suffered more.

Something specific that brought this home to me a few weeks ago was reading this article about the Aberfan disaster.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47

The families of the victims were treated so utterly appallingly by the government and by society afterwards. They had to fight relentlessly for justice and still didn’t really get it. They were offered little help for their PTSD and other mental health problems. They were stigmatised and the community was devastated. At least 20 of the bereaved parents are thought to have died prematurely as an indirect result of the disaster.

Here’s another appalling story which clearly indicates that the past wasn’t the beautiful rose-tinted place some people like to pretend it was. Stiff upper lip is just another way of saying ‘suffer in silence - and brush problems under the carpet’.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/ztdfudx91d/the-boarding-school-monster-who-always-walked-free

I don’t understand how anyone can read stories like this and how the victims and their families were treated and still idealise the past.

My dad is one of those ‘people were more resilient in the 50s’ types. And some of the things he says just appall me. In the summer we were talking about Operation Yewtree and historic child sex offences. And he said ‘I don’t understand why people get so upset about this stuff nowadays. When I was at school, we all knew which teachers liked to look at us in the shower, and you just made sure you were never left alone with them.’ Ok then....

[quote HigherFurtherFasterBaby]@EvilPea Same here. Private rent. Student and work part time. Single parent. Will likely never own a home, a car, or be able to help my DC with those things either.[/quote]
Is all consuming isn’t it? And feels very much a 1st world problem, as we have a roof over our head so are lucky in that respect. But the mental health impact is huge. The constant worry about the future.

@zafferana I didn’t said they were halcyon days! I know that both my own grandmothers had exceptionally difficult lives during the 50s. My point though was in relevance to this thread and the expectations people have for their lives. The truth is that social mobility is rare it always has been except for a brief time in the post war era when it was at least a bit less rare. We still labour in this country under the misapprehension that it is possible to get on through hard work alone when it is simply not true and sociological research backs this up.

As someone who was married to an alcoholic who is on the absolute extreme end of someone who struggles with life and can't actually be happy, my take on it is that we have become a society too, too focussed on individualism. My XH's whole personality is focussed on the self, on getting more for himself, on what he should have and should be and should have achieved. He has absolutely no ability whatsoever to focus on everything he does have and is all about the little things he doesn't have. He sees the things that friends and colleagues have that he doesn't and he laser focusses on that, despite the fact there were plenty of things that we had that we didn't. To the point that he could be jealous of a friend with crippling health problems that severely curtailed their choices in life, because they had achieved something within those choices that he hadn't. He wasn't bitter that they had it, but it made him feel deeply inadequate that he didn't have it. A number of friends had high qualifications in academia and he was laser focussed on the fact that he didn't have a PhD despite the fact that he had reached a very high level, in a highly competitive industry where a higher qualification would have been of no benefit whatsoever. And because all he could see was what he didn't have, he drank himself into a state where he lost everything. (And yes I know there is a physical addiction element to alcoholism, but he was stuck in a deep, deep loop of being focussed on what he didn't have and it fuelled his drinking.) I'm naturally very different to him. I tend to focus on what I do have and how lucky I am. Even when my life was unrelenting shit because I was deeply in love with a man who was ruining his life and in the process mine for as long as I stayed with him. I was still very focussed on everything I did have. A warm dry home, all the food I needed and then some. Broadband. Even when my own physical health deteriorated from the stress, I was pretty focussed on a worse diagnosis a friend had received and how very lucky I was that my problems weren't so bad. Which isn't to say my way was the right way. I get walked on. I was abused in every way in my marriage and my inclination to focus on the good kept me in it for far, far longer than was reasonable. So truly there is a balance to be found between individualistic desire and appreciation of what you have. It's good to have a balance between the two but if I could only have one, I'd rather be someone who can find happiness in the shittest of situations than someone who feels like shit even when things are amazing.

@MrDarcysMa

Austerity Social media Lack of outdoors/ too much screen time Keeping up with the Joneses

This

I would like to see a line graph between social media usage and peoples welbeing. I imagine it would not be pleasant reading.

Constantly comparing, being compared, guilted, shamed etc

Aside from social media. I worked with dieticians. Who tell me that hormones and chemicals in foods have quadrupled. I swear that doesn’t help. The meat. Dairy.

@unmarkedbythat

I think a lot of people feel utterly cheated. The generation that has student loan debt, can't afford a house because house prices have rocketed in comparison to wages, can't access council housing because that has been gutted and reframed as something only people in the direst of need should have, are paying larger pension contributions for longer so that they can retire later on a smaller pension than the generation before them, are aware that provision for health and social care for their generation is totally lacking, are watching the climate change warnings they've heard their whole life come true and still no one is acting, are told they are entitled and lazy and any financial need they have is because they waste all their income on coffees and avocados, are experiencing increasing inequality between the haves and have nots... bit tricky to be cheerful and upbeat in the face of all that, really.

That pretty much sums it up really. You could rely on progress in your life if you put the hours in 30 years ago. Now you can be on a reasonable wage and still not have "wealth" and it all goes out as soon as it enters your account. I drive a 20 year old car and buy second hand clothes off eBay and holiday in holiday parks for weekend breaks out of season. My other half and I earn both earn an average salary for our area, but house prices are just so high and as we both need to work, have to pay in childcare too. Years ago one of you would just work part time or not at all and you would manage. We couldn't do this now.

I agree with the posters saying that mental health problems always existed but are more recognised now. My great grandpa committed suicide and my grandpa and mother suffered from depression. The younger generations of my family have better mental health than their ancestors. Of course that’s just my family, but we can’t be the only ones!

@Happyheartlovelife Not to mention depletion of vitamins and nutrients in fruit and veg due to farming practices only set to get worse after brexit no doubt.

We have been working hard as teachers for 25 years each and yet can't afford to replace knackered car or go on any sort of holiday without huge debt, only naughty pleasure i have is eating so I am obese have been on diets my whole life so while I look like I'm not controlling my weight I actually am, v hard , sometimes more than a skinny person is
Also I am more "0ut" about my mental health struggles more these days as I feel it's safe to do so ( mostly)

Several people have said that mental health issues have risen following the same rise in smartphone availability - although no research has been shared on this thread, I think?

Rather than smartphones, I’d like to see indices of unhappiness plotted against availability of credit.

I have no research, so this is only a musing... financial stability is a factor, and people have owed money for centuries. I am on the debt board on MSE sometimes. The levels of debt are astounding. I don’t know if they’re worse, than in previous generations, but anecdotally I think they are. There are some very low waged people who would be just about OK - if it weren’t for debt repayments.

When I was in my 30s, I moved around some interest free credit cards, never cancelling the last. It worked for me. But I remember once (before cancelling them!) that I had access to £50K credit with a £30K salary (home owner).

I used to get letters from the credit card company, saying, “hey - we added £5K to your limit!” - completely unsolicited.

The amount I could borrow was madness.

There is a point to be made about personal responsibility. But for a person who says, “we didn’t have everything, you youngsters are spoiled” - did they really have better character? Or would they have maxed out a card on presents for their children too, if only they’d had the card?

What others have said and...
there's too much choice now which can be stressful.
Previously you'd get electricity from the electricity board, your phone from the telephone company.
Now, there's so many providers and tarifs. And you're a complete mug apparently if you don't compare and swap providers every year! Just extra stress for not much reward really.

A lot less active,
too much empty free time
a lot more bored
too much time to feel sorry for themselves

Constant pressure on social media to look and act a certain way, have a clean house, nice car, do yoga, eat well, wear teddy fleece tracksuits, have the latest iPhone and do it all with a smile on your face whilst getting more and more in debt etc. Yeah it’s pretty depressing. It is more spoken about but if you actually go to the doctor and say I have depression, usually all they do is prescribe tablets.

When I was growing up there were three tv channels. For large swathes of the day there was quite literally nothing on. Now we have access to endless entertainment 24 hours a day via streaming and catch up services. There’s far less incentive to get off the sofa.

@Hellothere19999 teddy fleece tracksuits!!!! I didn’t even know they existed! Yet another thing to add to my list of grievances about life 😁

Some fantastic posts in this thread that I agree with 100%.

Aside from the changes to daily life which haven't helped, my biggest one would be the trend of over-developing all our towns and villages so we're more and more crammed in together but not as part of a cohesive group, more a bunch of strangers without enough personal space.

That and the roads never get wider. The trains never get longer. The congestion always gets worse and more frustrating.

There's more awareness of what "the good life" looks like, and it's been increasing rapidly since the 1950s, which was the last era in which it was genuinely possible to be ignorant of what constituted material wealth and comfort. If you didn't often visit a large town with smart shopping, you'd settle for the local option. Before television, nobody knew how the rich and famous lived. Grand houses were off limits unless you worked in one. So the sense of failure wasn't everywhere if you lived in an ordinary house, near where you were born, and did a routine job.