Is America Going Insane? Literally.

Americans know that many in the rest of the world consider them insane. Violence, sex, eating habits, rap, movies, politics, war making, vacations, employment...the list of outlier behavior is as lengthy as it is bewildering to those not born to it (and even to many who are).

But data are beginning to show that charges of mental illness are not merely an amusing offhand criticism, but a troubling reality. As the following article explains, mental illness has reached 'epidemic proportions' among US citizens.

The leading variety is depression. Approximately 16 percent of Americans suffer from some sort of clinical depression. Or put another way, almost one in five Americans has wrestled with depression, mild to severe. 20 percent of the most severe are likely to attempt suicide.

This would all be academic were it not for the country's role as the world's economic bellwether and leading military power. In fact, at the intersection of mental illness, violence and military service, one of the greatest problems faced by the US armed forces is the degree to which serving soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines engage in domestic violence and/or commit suicide.

The larger societal question is why mental illness appears to affect Americans more than others. While no definitive answer is yet available, it appears that the plethora of choices available to people unprepared to make them, concerns about economic failure, rootlessness and feelings of inadequacy are among the causes, in addition to still open investigations into eating habits and other lifestyle choices.

Whatever the underlying reasons, this is an issue for which US policy makers and the rest of the world must be prepared to confront for the foreseeable future. JL

Liah Greenfield comments in Project Syndicate:

The exclusive focus on economic indicators has prevented consideration of the geopolitical implications of a US domestic trend that is also frequently discussed, but by a separate group of experts: America’s ever-increasing rates of severe mental disease (which have already been very high for a long time).

The relative global decline of the United States has become a frequent topic of debate in recent years. Proponents of the post-American view point to the 2008 financial crisis, the prolonged recession that followed, and China’s steady rise. Most are international-relations experts who, viewing geopolitics through the lens of economic competitiveness, imagine the global order as a seesaw, in which one player’s rise necessarily implies another’s fall.

The claim that the spread of severe mental illness has reached “epidemic” proportions has been heard so often that, like any commonplace, it has lost its ability to shock. But the repercussions for international politics of the disabling conditions diagnosed as manic-depressive illnesses (including major unipolar depression) and schizophrenia could not be more serious.

It has proved to be impossible to distinguish, either biologically or symptomatically, between different varieties of these conditions, which thus constitute a continuum – most likely of complexity, rather than severity. Indeed, the most common of these illnesses, unipolar depression, is the least complex in terms of its symptoms, but also the most lethal: 20% of depressed patients are estimated to commit suicide.

Both manic-depressive illness and schizophrenia are psychotic conditions, characterized by the patient’s loss of control over his or her actions and thoughts, a recurrent state in which s/he cannot be considered an agent with free will. Obsessive suicidal thinking and paralyzing lack of motivation allow depressed patients to be classified as psychotic as well.

These conditions are often accompanied by elaborate delusions – images of reality that confuse information generated in the mind with that provided from outside. Often the distinction between symbols and their referents is lost, and patients begin seeing people solely as representations of some imagined force. The judgment of such people cannot be trusted, to put it mildly.

A massive statistical study, conducted from 2001 to 2003 by the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), estimated the lifetime prevalence of major depression among American adults (ages 18-54) at more than 16%. Lifetime prevalence for schizophrenia was estimated at 1.7%. There is no known cure for these chronic diseases; after onset (often before the age of 18), they are likely to last until the end of the patient’s life.

Surveys among US college students estimated that 20% fit criteria for depression and anxiety in 2010, and that nearly 25% fit these criteria in 2012. Other studies have consistently shown rising rates of prevalence with each successive generation, and it is argued that, if older statistics were faulty, they erred on the side of underestimating the spread of mental illness.

All of this suggests that as many as 20% of American adults may be severely mentally ill. In view of disputes over the significance of available data, let’s assume that only 10% of American adults are severely mentally ill. As these conditions are presumed to be distributed uniformly within the population, they must afflict a significant share of policymakers, corporate executives, educators, and military personnel of all ranks, recurrently rendering them psychotic, delusional, and deprived of sound judgment.

If it is deemed sensationalist to characterize this situation as terrifying, one may add that a much larger share of the population (estimated at close to 50% in the NIMH study) is affected by less severe forms of mental disease that only occasionally disturb their functionality.

Comparative epidemiologists have repeatedly noticed something remarkable about these illnesses: only Western countries (or, more precisely, societies with monotheistic traditions) – particularly prosperous Western countries – are subject to prevalence rates of this magnitude. Southeast Asian countries appear to be especially immune to the bane of severe mental illness; in other regions, poverty, or lack of development, seems to offer a protective barrier.

As I argue in my recent book Mind, Modernity, Madness, the reason for high concentrations of severe mental illness in the developed West lies in the very nature of Western societies. The “virus” of depression and schizophrenia, including their milder forms, is cultural in origin: the embarrassment of choices that these societies offer in terms of self-definition and personal identity leaves many of their members disoriented and adrift.

The US offers the widest scope for personal self-definition; it also leads the world in judgment-impairing disease. Unless the growing prevalence of serious psychopathology is taken seriously and addressed effectively, it is likely to become the only indicator of American leadership. The rise of China is unrelated to this.