To think the people have a romanticised view of the last few generations?

[safari111]

Whenever I bring up my mental health with my dad or husband, especially since having kids, instead of support or understanding I receive a speech on how my grandma or my husband's grandma "coped with so much, had so little, and were SO HAPPY. Everyone was happy, blah blah blah" that's all I get. That no one had the mental health issues and neurological problems that people have today and all of that. It enrages me that 1. My mental health is invalidated. 2. Everyone else's mental health problems are invalidated and 3. Everyone romanticises the fact that people were absolutely happier a generation or 2 ago, despite poverty, war, poor health etc.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you experienced similar?

My great grandfather killed himself. As did two family members of my parents's generation. My grandmother had some kind of mental health issues (I'm not sure what they were - depression maybe) which resulted in her not working. So of course it isn't true to say everyone in the past was happy with great mental health.

We all do it, weren’t things great etc etc, but then I think most people acknowledge the shortcomings and downright atrocities of the decades that came before. It’s a tough one op because while I think things have come leaps and bounds for mh, I also agree with the issues people put forward about today and I worry about this generation’s ability to cope with things not being handed to them, issues coming up etc.

Argh - I missed my main point.

The depression ptsd /depression was all minimised by the other people in their lives.
Basically, it doesn’t matter “why” you are struggling, people have always been dismissive about it and the narrative told is always the same - x had it worse than you. Then you may or may not become x!

My grandmother was neglected (and god knows what else) to the point she was removed from her family in the 20s. She was incapable of loving her children or even pets and suffered anxiety all her life and I remember her as a very cold, very detached person who I never saw truly smile or laugh. My grandfather sexually abused my aunt who in turn suffered mental health issues such as suicidality and anorexia. She has been sad her entire life. My mother growing up in such an awful environment led to her own chronic anxiety, depression, mood swings, dissociation and cruelty. She doesn't have any understanding of love or empathy. It also meant she simply repeated it all with me, leading her to turn a blind eye and enabling my own sexual abuse within the family. My father was highly unstable who yes, didn't talk about anything, held down a job, didn't 'naval gaze' but took out his issues on his children. All this led to me having my own mental health issues for which there is no real help despite all the social media posts and people bewailing how soft as a society we now are. I suppose years ago I would have been locked away in an asylum rather than living with the continual threat of homelessness and destitution so....apples and oranges? Either way, people are shit

That’s so sad 😭.
not sure much has changed though?
I had an early miscarriage(obviously not nearly as traumatic as a still birth). I had to go for a scan. They sat me in the same waiting room as all the ladies waiting for their 20 week scans.

I’ve seen comments from people like your dad calling millennials “snowflakes”. We’re snowflakes because we value our happiness and comfort in modern times.

It’s as though because central heating exists and we’re less likely to be using one potato to feed a family of 10, we don’t have the right to feel stressed or sad.
Some people can’t afford to heat their homes or eat. But because Ethel grew some spuds 100 years ago we should stop complaining and get on with it.

I think expectations were lower too.

I think you just followed a path rather than agonised over what that path should be. For some this was probably pretty depressing but for many it probably suited them better.

I don't think our grannys complained about not having enough 'me time '.

There was probably a greater degree of physical exhaustion from more manual labour, childcare, housekeeping so that there was less time to contemplate anything.

I think the idea of 'am I living my best life ' rather than just 'am I living ' is quite detrimental.

My god, I'm so sorry, how can the medical staff not see how hideously insensitive and cruel that is?

Added to that, time lessens the pain of most things.

Look how much rose tinted 'lovely summer of lockdown ' there is.

Or 'oh how I loved the newborn snuggles ' (forgetting how it felt to be near out of your mind with tiredness)

People feel entitled to be happy and comfortable and unchallenged 100% of the time and expose themselves to too much information. The unfulfilment held up against the picture perfect lives on social media creates a perfect storm headfuck, which is then the rest of the worlds problem to sort out.

People weren’t so self obsessed. I’m only 38 and am sick to death of hearing about mental health, triggers, speaking your truth, identifying as etc etc blah de fucking blah.

I don't think people were any happier - I remember the 70s being pretty awful, but there was generally no support available, so we didn't bother asking or expecting any help.

According to my mum, the 50s weren't great either.

I suspect 'people' mean that they managed without help (or drank, smoked etc to cope) and they expect every generation to do the same.

I don’t agree that people were happier with less choice, it’s just another rose-tinted thing we say now. My grandparents left school at 14 because they had to but they didn’t want to. Just because there was no choice doesn’t mean people were happy about it.

They sound uneducated. I live near a former large asylum, there was an exhibition of photos and records at a local community hall. I’d be very tempted to take them to something like that.

My grandmother definitely had mental health problems. She lost her brother in WWII. & her middle daughter died at 18months old from pneumonia. my grandmother became so depressed she underwent electric shock therapy! I've no idea if it was voluntary or not.
But it wasn't talked about.

I think it's just arrogance. The human experience hasn't really changed that much. I think even in medieval times people had the same worries. We are more child centred but have less kids and tech to help so still busy. We still have sexual and platonic relationships. It's just victorian times that were uptight not most of history. Being a serf or servant wasn't better than being poor now.

People pick and choose their memories, we as individuals question more, example doctors, but we don't seem to learn new things, just re hash old things.

Women can vote, we can get divorced and not be ostracised from society. Men can prefer openly not to spend time in pubs but with their family

People can't look forward and foresee change to their situation as it is too disruptive to face perhaps, so they look back and mould history as its based on facts and some artistic licence. One can't go back in time. To look forward means change and people generally don't like change on a personal disruptive scale

Yes, many people definitely romanticize the past!

E.g.

In my day, children of fourteen and fifteen didn't dress in the height of the fashion; go to parties, as nearly like those of grown people as it's possible to make them; lead idle, giddy, unhealthy lives, and get blase at twenty. We were little folks till eighteen or so; worked and studied, dressed and played, like children; honored our parents; and our days were much longer in the land than now, it seems to, me.

Spoken by a 70-year-old grandmother in Louisa Alcott's 'An Old-Fashioned Girl' (1869).

Incidentally, this book includes the attempted suicide of a 17-year-old girl.

People talked about it less, but I reckon people’s mental health was worse- not better. it was just normalised.

You only have to hear stories of the way some older people were brought up to realise there were some pretty messed up people around 100 years ago!

People suppressing their sexuality.
people being beaten for expressing any sexuality
pregnancy outside marriage considered shameful.

Then look at the trauma from WW2 - my mum remembers a neighbour getting drunk and crying in the street regularly due to what he experienced …he was lucky in that his family cared for him.

Our fathers of old were robust, stout, and strong,
And kept open house, with good cheer all day long,
Which made their plump tenants rejoice in this song—
Oh! The Roast Beef of old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

But now we are dwindled to, what shall I name?
A sneaking poor race, half-begotten and tame,
Who sully the honours that once shone in fame.
Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

(From a song by Henry Fielding, 1731)

As I always say: Things ain't what they used to be- and they never were!

It's a classic case of rose tinted glasses. They used to lock people up in asylums for 'lunacy', 'melancholy' and 'mania'. Mental health problems very much existed, patients were treated like prisoners, tested on, lobotomised and neglected.

I think what people mean is they were expected to be more independent tougher and resilient. Sometimes that resulted in serious problems not being addressed or bad things happening ( seeing lots of flashers etc etc) or sometimes it meant but sometimes the freer more simple life with lots of tone spent together playing out, living close together etc meant you had that safety and security and felt really happy, despite having much less belongings etc.

@safari111 , I’m pretty sure I will be shot down in flames for this but you asked for views. Here is mine:
I am 60, I have a pretty decent understanding back to my grandparent’s generation. My maternal grandmother was Victorian.
There has, I believe been a quite significant shift in people’s expectations. Nowadays people seem to expect so much more for themselves, their joy appears to me to be much more self centred. I also and importantly believe that now many people are horribly fixated by the negatives of their existence and compounded by increasing numbers of people who feel that responsibility for their feeling happy lies outside themselves.
I should make it abundantly clear that there are and always have been people who genuinely suffer mental health issues but I consider that to be separate from those who suffer from ‘Oh woah is me, I abdicate responsibility for myself; someone else must do everything because I’m too damaged’ issues.
Obviously I have no idea which camp you fall into OP. In years gone by most people, myself included had our fair share of crap, we had lows, we had troubles. We understood that that’s life and did the best with what life gave us but we also felt grateful for each good thing however small. Our expectations were much lower too at the same time we accepted responsibility for ourselves and our families both young and old.
Make of my honest response what you will but my final word is this:
Past generations had a better attitude to life and consequently a better experience of it despite often being every bit as challenged as we are now, if not more.

I really agree with everything you’re saying here OP

I am so so glad things have changed for mental health. It's not perfect but I dread how my 17 year old dd or my 8 year old dgs would have been treated even when I was at school in the 70s and 80s. Or my friends son with crippling bipolar when medication wasn't available. These kids would have been classed as 'slow' or 'aggressive'. Even in my senior school in the middle 80s there was a special place in the school called the 'remedial block'!!! I do sincerely apologise for using that term. But it was a stigma to be in there and how those poor kids just have felt being ostracised and not in any beneficial therapeutic way. My dgs school has a sensory room, quiet areas and other adaptions for children who can't cope in a noisy environment and any other Sen. I just hope those kids from my day have the help they do now. My eldest has just been diagnosed adhd as an adult. When we tried to get her help as a teen we were laughed at. She has struggled all her life and has attempted suicide twice. Now thankfully she has been diagnosed and is on the right pathway.

My grandmother on my father's side, and my great-grandmother on my mother's side, had serious bouts of depression. Two of my mum's cousins took their own lives; that was in the 50s. I know several people who may not have 'navel-gazed' in response to the stress and deprivations of their 1930s and 40s childhoods: they only became alcoholics, neglectful of their own children, and/or pathological hoarders.