French people is going mad

[bernard]

Hi SomaSimplers,

Last week, listening to TV, I heard something about French people and mental disorders.

They were saying that almost 1/3 of population was suffering from mental disorders.

The next day, they were talking about jailed population in France. The man was alerting the authorities that something was wrong because they found 14% of jaileds with mental disorders! They wanted to change this fact and send the patients in public/open hospitals.

It seems now that Jail is a better place for living!

[nari]

Bernard

As the incidence of cognitive disorders seems to be increasing world-wide, but particularly in the developed nations, I wonder if Australia and other similar countries are any different?

Nari

[Anonymous]

Hi!
Norway is on the top of the list conserning depression!One of the riches countrays in the world Even though we "have" everything,materialisticly speaking,our cognitive health sucks!
The reason:"Time pressure" in work and and at home,unciertenty in our work."what is happening tomorrow?"
Just some thoughts!
RIN :wink: :wink: :wink:

[nari]

Hi Rin

That is amazing - I would have thought Scandinavia, in the top 10 of desirable places to live according to surveys, would not have this problem.
That is scary.
Our worry are our teenagers - drugs and depression- rather than adults.

Do you think there is a direct relationship, then, between wealth and high living and depression? Life is too easy, perhaps??

Nari

[Diane]

I don't get it. Like Nari says, what's to be down about in Scandanavian countries? Or anywhere for that matter?

A hundred years ago there was far more to be down about. The risk of dying or having a family member die of an infectious disease was 2800 to 100,000 compared to 10 in 100,000 today. That doesn't count death by childbirth or infant mortality. Wars took most young men away. In the Brit army anyone exhibiting signs of shellshock was killed straightaway by a superior officer. Nice way to select for paychopathic tendencies! That flu epidemic in 1918 spared almost no country. Out of a world pop. of 2 billion, 20 million died of flu. Antibiotics were still 40 years in the future. There were no social safety nets, no medicare. If the breadwinner died, the family starved, or prostituted itself, or depended on church run charity.

Here we are, and we are 6 billion, we have very little to complain about, birth control is legal and widespread, almost no one dies in childbirth, almost no one dies of communicable infection, there is no need for true misery, there is a bit of pie for everyone who is left is dire straits, government services are overflowing with those whose fundamental belief system is that all should be equal in life, so I ask you, what the heck is going on? There is less war per capita than at any time in the recorded history of the whole world. Has nature allowed for a bunch of malcontents to be born and then, to live? And pass on misery genes?

I wonder if the crabiness, angst, discontent, depression, anxiety etc is that the new world, the socially engineered world, the secular world, the safer than ever before in history world, is just still so new that no one can believe it's real.. maybe everyone thinks they are dreaming and they will wake up and be back in the dark ages. Maybe there's some gene that won't let us relax into our splendid human social constructions, that makes us think we don't deserve it in some deep way. What in the world do we have to moan on about? These ARE the good old days.

Maybe this is just the part of my brain talking that likes to be by the computer with the sun lamp turned on full blast on deep December mornings.
:),
Diane

[nari]

I think an operative word here is 'freedom'. Albert Camus has a lot to say about this in his books. Various singers have sung about it for generations.
If there is too much freedom to choose, we want more, and more until our parameters of lifestyle implode (or explode).

The more we ask for, the more we get, and when it is taken away, we moan about it, and race around to find a replacement.

In the past, as Diane refers to, we knew we did not have good chances of surviving beyond 40..then 50...etc. So we made the most of it.

Now, if a threat comes along to our personal ecosystem, we demand a solution, or pursue litigation, or fall in a heap. I think we have stolen our real freedom, because we do not recognise we have too much.
I was talking to a thirty-something female who was moaning about setting up house, and the huge cost of all the appliances. When I said that a dishwasher is not really necessary, or a clothes dryer, or a European oven, she looked horrifed, as if I had just landed out of the Ark. We seem to get innumerable choices thrown at us from all directions, and therefore feel obliged to take one or twenty..

Maybe I am just weird..

on a philosophical Sunday..

Nari

[Diane]

I thought a bit more about this thread while reading Nature Via Nurture by Matt Ridley (a really good read!)

In it he discusses oxytocin receptors and their expression in the brains of voles. There are two kinds of voles, prairie voles that mate for life, and mountain voles that don't. Oxytocin is a "bonding" hormone. When voles mate, both types of voles develop receptors... but the prairie voles develop masses more receptors that last a lifetime. It makes them "fall in love" with their mates. Apparently they even gaze into each others' eyes as they nest build. (How sweet is that!?) The moms are really good moms.

The mountain voles' oxytocin receptors are not present in any abundance and stop being expressed after a few weeks. These voles don't seem to fall in love.. they probably look at each other after and ask each other in vole language, "Why are you still here?" The mom retains the receptor sites long enough to bond to and tend to her young.. just long enough for them to be able to fend for themselves, and then she likely boots them out of the house, in a purely mountain vole-ish kind of way...

Maybe that's what's happening with humans, angst that revolves around an oxytocin crisis. Sue Carter is a researcher who studied oxytocin release in men and women. She found differences: When stressed, men tend to go into "Fight or Flight" response. Women when stressed tend to favor "Tend and Befriend" mode. Two distinct strategies, gender specific. Guess which gender has more oxytocin hormone being made and being received at any given moment?

Maybe for some humans, family life was never meant to be, and the lack of bonding leaves a bunch of people walking around with varying degrees of sociopathy. Maybe some of them have the capacity to build receptors and would bond, but have never gained a social skill set that would facilitate that, and feel bereft.

Maybe others really want a tight family life but pick people to make a family with who have incompatible numbers of oxytocin sites expressed when it really counts, and their families fall apart, causing emotional tsunamis that they can't get over, that they allow to destroy their ability to ever be happy.

Maybe still others have a family that all have compatible and ample numbers of receptors for oxytocin, and all bond well, but find all around them that the world crowds in and the family is simply too small to be a comfort zone.

Matt Ridley, of course, is careful not to make assumptions about humans in his book, because there's still no way to count these sites in people... but mice (related to voles and invariably expressing the mountain vole type of bonding) have a lot of genes in common with us...

Just a thought, trying to make sense of it all, glad to be single and childless, but capable of bonding (by some other pathway apparently) to my cat,
Diane

[bernard]

Nice trials all together, Diane and Nari but...

Of course, life is longer than before with progress of Medicine. I take this one about some infections and prevention about childbirths. But... It is also because Doctors took more precautions when intervening with patients. And there is a lot of work to do yet in that way. A recent study shows that only 1 third of generalists doctors wash their hands before seeing the next patient. It is here in France.

Antibiotics saved lives for millions but created, as the same time, some of best resistant microbes. Streptococcus Aureus and some others are no longer our best friends and some virus, like flu, continue to kill around 3 millions people every year. There is no change, here. Malaria, tuberculosis... HIV is a new one, in term of evolution and actually there is more than 37 millions people infected.

But the real monster is son of progress and pollution. It is called cancer and listening to some authorities do not let me any doubt: There is a constant progression and treatments haven't made any progress! Only prevention.

About oxytocin => I'll be a bit realistic there! In mountains there are less chance to survive then it is preferable to have less children! :wink:

[fapt]

Don't care about that Bernard.
They just gave some information about your country.
Mental disorder does not mean anything.
Take it easy!!

Cheer up!