Are We Headed Toward a Psychological Catastrophe?

Psychological Catastrophe

Source: Unsplash/Gift Habeshaw

Part of a series.

Human beings have always lived under stress. Life produces stress. But life today is producing new stresses that are causing widespread psychological collapse and catastrophe. Psychologically speaking, we do not look to be equal to our times.

Let’s remind ourselves how all creatures react to stress. In the animal world, there are seven characteristic stress reactions. First are physical symptoms. Animals under stress experience changes in heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, appetite, and sleep patterns.

Second, there are behavioral changes. Animals under stress display increased aggression, irritability, pacing and hyperactivity, withdrawal and avoidance behaviors, and repetitive behaviors. Sound familiar?

Third, stress can affect an animal's interactions with others in social species. They may withdraw from social interactions, become more solitary, or exhibit aggressive behavior towards other animals (or humans, if we are talking about humans.). Sound familiar?

And our current reproductive difficulties? Stress in animals tends to reduce fertility, change mating behaviors, and even inhibit reproductive processes. Sound familiar?

Fifth are health issues. Prolonged or severe stress can weaken an animal's immune system, making them more susceptible to illness and disease. Chronic stress contributes to the development of various health problems over time.

Sixth, animals may attempt to escape the source of stress if possible. This could involve fleeing from a threatening situation or pacing and exhibiting signs of agitation.

Seventh, animals may freeze or become immobile in response to stress. This behavior can serve as a defense mechanism in certain situations, such as when faced with a predator. Have you been feeling paralyzed and immobilized? If so, it wouldn’t surprise me.

We know that, with human beings, when the stress can’t be reduced—when it is chronic and relentless—we can expect to see physical symptoms, behavioral problems, impaired learning and impaired cognitive function, a negative impact on reproduction, a compromised immune system, a heightened vulnerability to accidents, sleep disturbances, long-term health consequences, a reduced quality of life, a shortened lifespan and, of course, severe psychological problems.

It is time to recognize that because of the number, magnitude, and relentlessness of our current stressors, we can expect widespread psychological difficulties that would amount to something like a worldwide psychological catastrophe. In short, we are breaking. All of our “epidemics”—of anxiety, addiction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, etc.—are examples of a species-wide psychological collapse.

The answer, if there can be one, is not at the material or medical levels. We would wish everyone to have what they need materially, and the current inequitable distribution of wealth is a problem. But a comfortable life is not going to ward off this particular catastrophe. Rock stars, corporate lawyers, scions of old money—in every socioeconomic category, people are psychologically collapsing because material ease means nothing to the mind.

Nor is the answer medical. We are in an era of medicalization, from the medicalization of obesity to the medicalization of desire. This medicalization of everything is part of the problem, not the solution. Now, virtually nothing is normal, and we have entered an Alice in Wonderland world where chemistry is king.

There is no single, clear marker of this burgeoning collapse. But consider these suggestive numbers:

• Worldwide, 700,000 people committed suicide in 2023. As a fraction of the world population, this is 'only' one in 10,000. But if we dig a little deeper, we get that, in the United States alone, 1.7 million individuals attempted suicide, 3.5 million made suicide plans, and 12.3 million contemplated suicide. And who knows what the real number is of people who contemplated suicide? Couldn’t it be much higher?
• If you take the position that depression is as likely a psychological matter as a biological matter, then the following numbers are likewise suggestive: according to the World Health Organization, 280 million people worldwide are currently affected by depression. With respect to anxiety, we have the following numbers: over 40 million adults, or fully 20 percent of the American population, are suffering from anxiety.
• It looks to be worse for children. It is now being reported that one in six children aged 5-16 are likely to have a mental health problem, problems which may be psychological in nature (since no tests exist to distinguish between what might be psychological and what might be something else). This figure has gone up by 50 percent in the last three years. Between 2021 and 2022 alone, the proportion of older young people aged 17-19 in England with a probable mental health disorder jumped from one in six to one in four.
• If there is a psychological component to addiction—if, that is, people fall prey to an addiction more easily if they are struggling psychologically—then we have these numbers to contend with: 46.8 million Americans (aged 12 and older) battled a substance use disorder in the past year. That’s almost 17 percent of the population. Nearly 11 percent of Americans 12 and older reported an alcohol use disorder in the past year, and about 27.2 million Americans 12 or older (9.7 percent) reported battling a drug use disorder in the past year.
• What about unhappiness at work? In the United States, 50 percent of workers reported feeling stressed at their jobs on a daily basis, 41 percent reporting being worried at work, 22 percent reported being sad, and 18 percent reported being angry. The Gallup: State of the Global Workplace 2022 report found that, along with job dissatisfaction, workers are experiencing staggering rates of both disengagement and unhappiness. As many as 60 percent of people reported being emotionally detached at work and 19 percent reported being miserable.

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These numbers are not proof of psychological collapse or catastrophe. But that one-third of Americans report symptoms of either depression or anxiety, that countless others are likely not being recorded in the statistics, and that all statistics that measure human difficulty, whether that difficulty is suicidal thinking, depression, anxiety, addiction, unhappiness at work, or something else, simply can’t be ignored.

Let us look this species-wide psychological collapse and psychological catastrophe in the eye. Let us name it—and let us go from there. Where might we go? Let me suggest one path in my next post.