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 grandparents left school by 14 at the very latest and went to work in a factory or in service. My mum is only 75. That is not really ‘attending secondary school’ in my book. My Gran was raised a son who became a professor, but had to herself work in a cotton mill, the lack of choice about which must by anyone’s standards have been a bit crap.

Latest science supports putting a brave face on it/stiff upper lip as actually being better for your mental health after all.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/mental-health-depression-negative-thoughts-b2415200.html

So maybe they're right.

One study does not "the latest science" make, but also, that study is referring specifically to anxious thoughts about things that might never happen, not traumatic events which have happened. It also only looked at effects over 3 months. It probably is useful for thoughts triggered by anxiety, but more research would be needed on the technique.

I think older generations had to deal with a lot more as society has changed so much. People expect a lot more now I guess. I do think people look at life previously with rose tinted glasses. I'm just a carer and looked after a lovely lady. She told me about meeting a man at a dance..."he danced into my life and danced right back out". She had (and breastfed) the baby for 6 months but her father had left. So there was only her and her mother to make ends meet. She had to give her baby up. I think people now don't appreciate how lucky they are for the most part.

I think there was more help for MH difficulties forty or fifty years ago than there is now. It was not better help, and hospitalisation was used too frequently, but there was more likelihood of some intervention at that time. Now, although people understand more about mental illness, services are so stretched and underfunded that there is little professional help available when it is needed.

I disagree. My DM spent half my childhood in psychiatric units. Apart from being chemically coshed and electrocuted she received no treatment, certainly no form of talking therapy. People were terrified to admit to having MH problems because this was the type of barbarism that was called ‘treatment’. People talk about there having been a stigma in the old days, but it went far beyond stigma. Women with post natal illness could be locked up for life. It’s easy to see why the majority of people would keep their mouths shut and suffer in silence.

@Menomeno I agree with you. However, it seems like there a NO services, not even bad ones, available for some mental illnesses today.

The study is about techniques for suppressing anxious thoughts about possible bad things that could happen, not about putting a 'brave face' on painful experiences that are already happening.

In any case, the real point of what's been said on the thread is not so much about whether people are helped more by talking about their traumas or by avoiding talking about them, but about whether we have a misleading idea that older generations didn't have the traumas because they didn't talk about them. Often they did, and showed the effects in other ways than verbally.

The harmful effects of the hurry and strain of modern life'; 'The present tendency to give children the feeling that everything must be arranged for their enjoyment'; 'Many parents...allow them to live in complete disregard of the claims of others and to consider themselves of paramount importance'; 'There is far too much sentimentality...as regards corporal punishment. The consequence is the hooliganism and bad behaviour so frequently seen'. Tut, tut, tut, the youth of today! ...By the way, all these quotations come from M.E. Sadler: 'Moral Instruction and Training in Schools: Report of an International Inquiry'. Publication date: 1908.

@ToWhitToWhoo so when children were still working in factories and sleeping on the streets.
The quote is obviously taken out of context.

Well, one thing that never changes is how money makes all the difference.

My parents are in their 90s. Listening to my mum, you would think that life was so much better then but she lived in a big house with several acres, horses, staff etc. Whereas my dad had 5 siblings in a 2 bed terrace and an out of work dad because he had emphysema from working in a factory.

The book, and the quotes, were about schoolchildren (education was then compulsory until the age of 12), not teenagers, who were indeed mostly already working; and were about children living with their parents, not homeless orphans or workhouse children. It is unlikely that the comments about children being given 'the feeling that everything must be arranged for their enjoyment' or parents allowing them to live 'in complete disregard of the claims of others and to consider themselves of paramount importance' referred to homeless street children or even to 13-year-old factory workers and farm labourers.

But yes, whatever the problems of modern life, things are much better now for most children than they were in 1908- not to mention that many of the boys were soon to be cannon fodder.