This is really interesting! I find the arguments pretty convincing, and unless the author is totally doctoring the plots (which I doubt they're doing) I can't think of any significant holes in the main claim.
It makes me wonder how persistent mental health problems have been through longer scales of time. I have this unquestioned assumption that our historic ancestors (eg, before ~0 AD) had shorter and harder lives physically, but might have had better mental health (less depression / anxiety, etc). However, the plots here indicate that mental health is relatively stable across the span where we do have good measurement, even despite some really big changes. Eg, the people in the 80s had similar suicide rates to people today. And even COVID "only" doubled-to-tripled self-diagnosis of poor mental health. That makes me think that mental health might have been just as bad before we developed lot of modern technology, and perhaps it was even worse due to all the unexpected and unexplained death that must have been very common. Were "cavemen" depressed?
pinkmuffinere•19m ago
It makes me wonder how persistent mental health problems have been through longer scales of time. I have this unquestioned assumption that our historic ancestors (eg, before ~0 AD) had shorter and harder lives physically, but might have had better mental health (less depression / anxiety, etc). However, the plots here indicate that mental health is relatively stable across the span where we do have good measurement, even despite some really big changes. Eg, the people in the 80s had similar suicide rates to people today. And even COVID "only" doubled-to-tripled self-diagnosis of poor mental health. That makes me think that mental health might have been just as bad before we developed lot of modern technology, and perhaps it was even worse due to all the unexpected and unexplained death that must have been very common. Were "cavemen" depressed?