This makes sense. If you believe that society is ultimately fair, then poverty is a personal shortcoming rather than a failure of the system. If being poor is a personal shortcoming, the mental health impacts of living in poverty must also be your own responsibility to be dealt with, not a source of sympathy.
This is another reminder that there’s no excuse to dismiss the damage done to human beings when they are abused. Kids do not get over it, or barely remember it. They are impacted in myriad ways well into adulthood. Not doing everything we can to limit trauma, let alone arguing for policies that create more trauma for certain groups of children, cannot be tolerated.
Think of it this way, we don’t ask trauma survivors to try healing from their trauma when their current situation is unsafe. That would be silly. We get them into a safe situation first, before they can even begin to heal. The same goes here. Kids who are safe and feel secure in their parents’ love and support look forward beyond the trauma.
Kids who are unsafe and not secure in the love and support of parents relive their trauma on a daily basis. It’s no wonder they are slightly more likely to immediately think of it when surveyed.
You can see how it’s not simple. Mental health across a generation of individuals defies every attempt at a one-size-fits-all narrative, because we are not all one size. On the other hand, our brains want a simple narrative because what they want more than anything else is a reason to think that this won’t happen to our kids or us. So we run to simple solutions like bees to a hive. Sometimes that causes us to miss a lot of the details.
Let’s hope we continue to see improvements, but understand that there are a host of things we can and should be doing that don’t involve social media at all.
I work with AI professionally. I use it to get things done and to support research, but I never trust or depend on it. It’s a tool. For mental health, it can also be a tool, and I’m sure many of you are finding it helpful. I would caution all of us to be careful, though. Mental health professionals have serious reservations; I would keep them in mind.
I think this is interesting. Of course, access to a park or walkable neighborhoods would lead to better mental health outcomes. At least that is what we’d expect. But for some young people, when that park or neighborhood isn’t safe, it might turn into yet another place to be hyperalert and anxious about.
