ExiledInIllinois Posted May 16, 2020 Posted May 16, 2020 10 hours ago, Bill from NYC said: To some people who have already experienced events which led to PTSD, this pandemic is just another trauma to face. The people in New Orleans standing on a roof with their children, watching coffins float by and waiting for a helicopter probably think that Katrina was worse than Covid19. As I said earlier, we have millions of people in America who never faced what I would consider truama, and this is a good thing. That said, seemingly lesser events can be very trying for them. Covid19 welcomed them to an ugly world that for instance correction officers face every day. Yes, it's a good time to be a psychologist, or so I think. 2002 birth year. My daughter. Conceived pre-911. Born post-911. Now that class of 2020... doesn't get to walk as high school grads. No prom. Virtual graduation. It does really suck. For now... College is on hold. Who knows what will be. 1
Hapless Bills Fan Posted May 16, 2020 Posted May 16, 2020 On 5/15/2020 at 5:08 AM, Bill from NYC said: I think that many folks will acquire PTSD from this. I hope I am wrong but I'm all but sure that millions of people will get cases of long lasting PTSD that weren't there before the virus. A lot of health care professionals are battling PTSD, that's for damn sure. 4
SoTier Posted May 18, 2020 Posted May 18, 2020 (edited) On 5/15/2020 at 1:03 AM, ExiledInIllinois said: Or make people tougher: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8256573/Why-crisis-making-Snowflake-Generation.html (I know it's the Daily Mail... look past it.) Look what the Great Depression did for a generation On 5/15/2020 at 5:26 PM, ExiledInIllinois said: Would you say the "Silent Generation" has PTSD too. I would say yes! Yet. The Great Depression, living through it at a young age allowed the trauma of the eventd to channel the PTSD in positive ways... MORE positive ways. Just like now. The ability to save money and hunker down away from the trappings of rampant consumerism. My inlaws are a classic example. NOT missing a beat during these lockdowns. Same here. Its how I was raised. So... Basically, what I am saying... Channel the so-called "negatives" into positive. Everything in life can be PTSD. Today there's a tendency to romanticize the Great Depression and find many positives that stemmed from it, but millions of people died from starvation, domestic violence, addiction, suicide, disease, crime, etc. It was a horrific experience for anybody who lived through it, and it scarred them forever. For example, the extreme poverty many people experienced during the Depression turned many survivors into hoarders. My father never, ever threw anything out. My step-mother was just as bad. They even saved used plastic bread bags to wrap things in rather than throwing them out even when they had collected so many that they could never use them all. I don't buy the narrative that surviving the Great Depression enabled the American people to persevere through WW II. It's a nice story but in reality the American people were very reluctant to commit to even helping Great Britain against the Nazi much less to actually going to war because so many were so disillusioned by their experience in WW I. The attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized sentiment against Japan, but there wouldn't have been support for war against Germany if Hitler hadn't declared war on the US on December 11, 1941. I suspect that the American people's response to WW II would have been exactly the same if the Great Depression had never occurred. On 5/15/2020 at 7:49 AM, Back2Buff said: That is just not true. COVID has killed over 80k in a couple months here, you just won't see that with suicide. There is also a lot of kids that were in school that were getting bullied getting a relief now. There are gives and takes with everything. Mental health is more than just death from suicide. As others have mentioned, PTSD is likely to be a permanent part of millions of people's lives because of the pandemic. There's been a significant rise in domestic violence reports and opioid deaths are also manifestations of how the isolation during the pandemic is impacting people's mental health. I expect there probably has been increases in child abuse incidents as well. Edited May 18, 2020 by SoTier 3
rockpile Posted May 18, 2020 Posted May 18, 2020 On 5/15/2020 at 8:59 AM, Gugny said: I think you are 100% correct. I lost my job ~6 years ago (layoff) and it turned my entire life upside down. Ruined me financially for years. I've bounced back, but I am never comfortable. I will never feel secure in a job again. I'm not saying I have PTSD. Just pointing out that this pandemic is going to alter a lot of lives. Even people who've been able to collect unemployment (with the $600 weekly kicker) may be able to go back to jobs from which they've been furloughed, or find new employment when things open up. But when the IRS wants their money come tax time, many are going to be in for a shock and find themselves going up against owing the government money. It's not pretty. Even with a payment plan, penalties continue to accrue. This is going to affect a lot of people for a very long time in ways that are not physical-health related. Sad times. I lost my job of 27 years, when my company dissolved our department. I collected unemployment, worked contract jobs, part time, etc. But, it taught me that the company does not give a rats ass about you. No bitterness, it is about profit and loss. This just made me refocus that MY future was up to me, but it was a wacky decade getting through it all. I worry about the kids who miss their friends or are NOT receptive to the home schooling on a tablet classroom. They do not understand and some may never completely recover! If they are lucky they are in a healthy home with good parenting. 2
Hapless Bills Fan Posted May 18, 2020 Posted May 18, 2020 1 hour ago, SoTier said: Today there's a tendency to romanticize the Great Depression and find many positives that stemmed from it, but millions of people died from starvation, domestic violence, addiction, suicide, disease, crime, etc. There's also a tendency to exaggerate the effects of the great Depression. I would like to understand your source for the "millions of people died from..." claim. I'll go first....this well-researched peer-reviewed source states "We used historical life expectancy and mortality data to examine associations of economic growth with population health for the period 1920–1940. We conducted descriptive analyses of trends and examined associations between annual changes in health indicators and annual changes in economic activity using correlations and regression models. Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930–1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites. .......the recessions of 1921, 1930–1933, and 1938 coincided with declines in mortality and gains in life expectancy. The only exception was suicide mortality which increased during the Great Depression, but accounted for less than 2% of deaths. Correlation and regression analyses confirmed a significant negative effect of economic expansions on health gains. The evolution of population health during the years 1920–1940 confirms the counterintuitive hypothesis that, as in other historical periods and market economies, population health tends to evolve better during recessions than in expansions." Deaths from suicide are tragedies. In 2017, 1.7% of US deaths were from suicide - horrid. The suicide rate changed from 13 per 100,000 in 1929 to 17 per 100,000 in 1932 - an extra 5 deaths per 100,000 people is significant and tragic. But the death of 5,000 people in a population of then-106 million people doesn't justify a claim that "millions of people died from...." Quote Mental health is more than just death from suicide. As others have mentioned, PTSD is likely to be a permanent part of millions of people's lives because of the pandemic. There's been a significant rise in domestic violence reports and opioid deaths are also manifestations of how the isolation during the pandemic is impacting people's mental health. I expect there probably has been increases in child abuse incidents as well. I'm not sure where you're going with this - please respect the request not to turn every thread into a covid-19 thread. But I think we need to be careful, as is being done in some places, to conflate effects of the pandemic with effects of public health mitigation efforts resulting from the pandemic. For example, suicide has been linked closely to unemployment rates. Clearly, viable businesses that could re-open and employ people have been closed. But others depend for economic health upon more complex factors. If restaurants or movie theaters or gyms open, but fewer people patronize them, due to health concerns or budget concerns, they will still struggle. If a business re-opens but has supply chain issues because of global pandemic impacts and thus increased costs, or doesn't have many customers or must cut sale prices, likewise. It's just unclear to me that ending closures will heal economic woes while the pandemic is still present.
Gugny Posted May 18, 2020 Posted May 18, 2020 18 minutes ago, rockpile said: I lost my job of 27 years, when my company dissolved our department. I collected unemployment, worked contract jobs, part time, etc. But, it taught me that the company does not give a rats ass about you. No bitterness, it is about profit and loss. This just made me refocus that MY future was up to me, but it was a wacky decade getting through it all. I worry about the kids who miss their friends or are NOT receptive to the home schooling on a tablet classroom. They do not understand and some may never completely recover! If they are lucky they are in a healthy home with good parenting. Amen to all of this, brother. I hope you and yours are well. 3
SoTier Posted May 18, 2020 Posted May 18, 2020 6 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said: There's also a tendency to exaggerate the effects of the great Depression. I would like to understand your source for the "millions of people died from..." claim. I'll go first....this well-researched peer-reviewed source states "We used historical life expectancy and mortality data to examine associations of economic growth with population health for the period 1920–1940. We conducted descriptive analyses of trends and examined associations between annual changes in health indicators and annual changes in economic activity using correlations and regression models. Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930–1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites. .......the recessions of 1921, 1930–1933, and 1938 coincided with declines in mortality and gains in life expectancy. The only exception was suicide mortality which increased during the Great Depression, but accounted for less than 2% of deaths. Correlation and regression analyses confirmed a significant negative effect of economic expansions on health gains. The evolution of population health during the years 1920–1940 confirms the counterintuitive hypothesis that, as in other historical periods and market economies, population health tends to evolve better during recessions than in expansions." Deaths from suicide are tragedies. In 2017, 1.7% of US deaths were from suicide - horrid. The suicide rate changed from 13 per 100,000 in 1929 to 17 per 100,000 in 1932 - an extra 5 deaths per 100,000 people is significant and tragic. But the death of 5,000 people in a population of then-106 million people doesn't justify a claim that "millions of people died from...." My statement was "millions of people died from starvation, domestic violence, addiction, suicide, disease, crime, etc.", and I think that that's accurate over the span of what is generally considered "the Great Depression" by historians as starting in late 1929 and lasting until at least through 1939 when an increase in defense spending finally brought real recovery. Tapia Garandos' 1930-1933 time span for the Great Depression is ahistorical and seems to have been used to make the data fit his thesis: if the period between 1934 and 1937 is considered a recovery like the one after 1921, then the period between 1930-1933 can be considered similar. Historians, however, estimate that unemployment between 1930 and 1939 never fell below about 20% (actual unemployment statistics weren't tracked or calculated at the time). Moreover, some of the causes of death that I mentioned like disease -- there was an increase in the incidence of tuberculosis during the 1930s -- don't necessarily happen quickly, and other causes, like domestic violence, weren't tracked. 2
rockpile Posted May 21, 2020 Posted May 21, 2020 On 5/18/2020 at 11:55 AM, Gugny said: Amen to all of this, brother. I hope you and yours are well. Same to you, brother! We are managing well. I hope you are too! 1 1
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