When entering this course I had no real expectations or ideas of what it would entail. However after our discussion about the several different ways the human race may go extinct I began to understand what this class would explore. During this discussion I began to wonder about the seemingly ever increasing mental health problems each generation has been reporting. I began to ponder the different possibilities for this and how they relate to each generation being more and more focused on the futility of different endeavors.
I considered that each new generation may be experiencing this due to a newfound emphasis that has been garnered around mental health. This seems to ring true as with more exposure and influence being put on a subject it tends to be brought further to the forefront of discussions. Are more people having trouble with mental health because we talk about it more or has talking about it more led to more people perceiving mental health issues that are not as large as they seem? While researching this further I found that American Psychiatric Association contributed this change to a reduction of stigmas and discrimination towards people with mental health issues therefore making it easier for more to admit that they have been repressing emotion. While this increase may have been pushed along by a larger discussion it also stands to reason that past generations have had more mental health issues than originally perceived.
Another question I asked myself was how the mass spread of information has affected the mental health of the newest generations and whether it has had a marked impact. In the past two decades there has been an explosion of social media and networking. During the course of our discussion during class we talked about the increase in suicides over the past twenty years and how social media has affected this by providing a major influx of information, both good and bad. While listening to Bailey Parnell’s TED Talk about social media I found one quote that resonated with me, “In social media we are the product, and we are letting others attribute value to us”. Social Media has seemed to force maturity on young people showing them things that older generations had years to learn of and become comfortable with.
Resources and Inspiration
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/stigma-and-discrimination