This article appeared in "The Atlantic"
We Expect Too Much From Our Romantic Partners How marriage has changed in recent years, and why staying married has gotten harder. by Olga Khazan Tall, dark, handsome, funny, kind, great with kids, six-figure salary, a harsh but fair critic of my creative output ... the list of things people want from their spouses and partners has grown substantially in recent decades. So argues Eli Finkel, a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University in his book, The All-or-Nothing Marriage. As Finkel explains, it’s no longer enough for a modern marriage to simply provide a second pair of strong hands to help tend the homestead, or even just a nice-enough person who happens to be from the same neighborhood. Instead, people are increasingly seeking self-actualization within their marriages, expecting their partner to be all things to them. Unfortunately, that only seems to work if you’re an Olympic swimmer whose own husband is her brusque coach. Other couples might find that career-oriented criticism isn’t the best thing to hear from the father of your 4-year-old. Or, conversely, a violinist might simply have a hard time finding a skilled conductor—who also loves dogs and long walks on the beach—on Tinder. I spoke with Finkel about how to balance this blend of expectations and challenges in a modern relationship. A lightly edited and condensed version of our conversation follows. Olga Khazan: How has what we expect from our marriages changed since, say, 100 years ago? Eli Finkel: The main change has been that we’ve added, on top of the expectation that we’re going to love and cherish our spouse, the expectation that our spouse will help us grow, help us become a better version of ourselves, a more authentic version of ourselves. Khazan: As in our spouse should, just to give a random example, provide interesting feedback on our articles that we’re writing? Finkel: That’s obviously a white-collar variation on the theme, but I think up and down the socioeconomic hierarchy, it isn’t totally crazy these days to hear somebody say something like, “He’s a wonderful man and a loving father and I like and respect him, but I feel really stagnant in the relationship. I feel like I’m not growing and I’m not willing to stay in a marriage where I feel stagnant for the next 30 years.” Khazan: Why has that become something that we are just now concerned with? Why weren’t our great-grandparents concerned with that? Finkel: The primary reason for this is cultural. In the 1960s, starting around that time, we rebelled as a society against the strict social rules of the 1950s. The idea that women were supposed to be nurturing but not particularly assertive. Men were supposed to be assertive but not particularly nurturing. There were relatively well-defined expectations for how people should behave, and in the 1960s, our society said, “To hell with that.” Humanistic psychology got big. So these were ideas about human potential and the idea that we might strive to live a more authentic, true-to-the-self sort of life. Those ideas really emerged in the 1930s and 1940s, but they got big in the 1960s. Khazan: You write about how this has actually been harder on lower-income Americans. Can you talk a little bit about why that is? Finkel: People with college degrees are marrying more, their marriages are more satisfying, and they’re less likely to divorce. The debate surrounds [the question]: Why is it that people who have relatively little education and don’t earn very much money have marriages that, on average, are struggling more than those of us who have more education and more money? There basically is no meaningful difference between the poorest members of our society and the wealthier members of our society in the instincts for what makes for a good marriage. [However, lower-income people] have more stress in their lives, and so the things that they likely have to deal with, when they’re together, are stressful things and the extent to which the time they get together is free to focus on the relationship, to focus on interesting conversation, to focus on high-level goals is limited. It’s tainted by a sense of fatigue, by a sense of limited bandwidth because of dealing with everyday life. Khazan: What is Mount Maslow? And can you try to reach the top of Mount Maslow and maintain a successful marriage? Finkel: Most people depict Maslow’s hierarchy as a triangle, with physiological and safety needs at the bottom, love and belonging needs in the middle, and esteem and self-actualization needs at the top. It’s useful to reconceptualize Maslow’s hierarchy as a mountain. So imagine that you’re trying to scale this major mountain, and you’re trying to meet your physiological and safety needs, and then when you have some success with that you move on to your love and belonging needs, and as you keep going up the mountain, you finally arrive at your self-actualization needs, and that’s where you’re focusing your attention. As any mountain-climber knows, as you get to the top of a mountain the air gets thin, and so many people will bring supplemental oxygen. They try to make sure that while they’re up there at the top they have enough resources, literally in terms of things like oxygen and warm clothing, to make sure that they can actually enjoy the view from up there. The analogy to marriage is for those of us who are trying to reach the peak, the summit of Mount Maslow where we can enjoy this extraordinary view. We can have this wonderful set of experiences with our spouse, a particularly satisfying marriage, but we can’t do it if we’re not spending the time and the emotional energy to understand each other and help promote each other’s personal growth. The idea of the book is that the changing nature of our expectations of marriage have made more marriages fall short of expectations, and therefore disappoint us. But they have put within reach the fulfillment of a new set of goals that people weren’t even trying to achieve before. It’s the fulfillment of those goals that makes marriage particularly satisfying. Khazan: Is it risky to have your closest partner also be your harshest critic, so that you can grow? Finkel: My New York Times op-ed piece focused on the challenges of having a partner who’s simultaneously responsible for making us feel loved, and sexy, and competent, but also ambitious, and hungry, and aspirational. How do you make somebody feel safe, and loved, and beautiful without making him or her feel complacent? How do you make somebody feel energetic, and hungry, and eager to work hard without making them feel like you disapprove of the person they currently are? The answer to that question is, it depends. You can do it within a given marriage, but they should be aware that that is what they’re asking the partner to do. They should be aware that in some sense, the pursuit of those goals are incompatible and they need to be developing a way of connecting together that can make it possible. For example, you might try to provide support that sounds more like this: “I’m just so proud of everything you’ve achieved, and I’m so proud that you’re never fully satisfied with it, and you’re just so impressive in how you constantly and relentlessly work toward improving yourself.” That can convey a sense that I approve of you, but I recognize what your aspirations are. Right? [What’s more], there’s no reason why it has to be the same person who plays both of those roles. I would just urge everybody, think about what you’re looking for from this one relationship and decide, are these expectations realistic in light of who I am, who my partner is, what the dynamics that we have together are? If so, how are we going to achieve all of these things together? Or alternatively, how can we relinquish some of these roles that we play in each others’ lives, and outsource them to, say, another member of your social network? Khazan: That’s the idea of having a diversified social portfolio, right? Can you explain how that would work? Finkel: There’s a cool study by Elaine Cheung at Northwestern University, where she looked at the extent to which people look to a very small number of people to help them manage their emotions versus an array of different people, to manage different sorts of emotions. So, one person for cheering up sadness, another person for celebrating happiness, and so forth. It turns out that people who have more diversified social portfolios, that is, a larger number of people that they go to for different sorts of emotions, those people tend to have overall higher-quality life. This is one of the arguments in favor of thinking seriously about looking to other people to help us, or asking less of this one partner. I think most of us will be kind of shocked by how many expectations and needs we’ve piled on top of this one relationship. I’m not saying that people need to lower their expectations, but it is probably a bad plan to throw all of these expectations on the one relationship and then try to do it on the cheap. That is, to treat time with your spouse as something you try to fit in after you’ve attended to the kids, and after you’ve just finished this one last thing for work. Real, attentive time for our spouse is something that we often don’t schedule, or we schedule insufficient time for it. Khazan: What is climbing down from the mountain? Should we try to do that? Finkel: There’s the recalibration strategy, which is fixing an imbalance, not by increasing the investment in the marriage, but by decreasing the amount that we’re asking or demanding of the marriage. There’s no shame at all in thinking of ways that you can ask less. That’s not settling, and that’s not making the marriage worse. It’s saying, look, “These are things I’ve been asking of the marriage that have been a little bit disappointing to me. These are things that I’m going to be able to get from the marriage but frankly, given what I understand about my partner, myself, and the way the two of us relate, it’s just going to be a lot of work to be able to achieve those things through the marriage.” Khazan: So what is “going all-in,” and what are the risks and rewards of that? Finkel: The question isn’t, “Are you asking too much?” The question is, “Are you asking the appropriate amount, in light of the nature of the relationship right now?” The idea of “going all-in” is, “Hell yes. I want to ask my spouse to help make me feel loved and give me an opportunity to love somebody else and also [be] somebody who’s going to help me grow into an ideal, authentic version of myself. And I’m going do the same for him or her. I recognize that that is a massive ask, and because I recognize that that’s a massive ask I’m going to make sure that we have sufficient time together. That when we’re together we’re paying sufficient attention to each other, that the time that we’re investing in the relationship is well-spent.” Olga Khazan is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
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From BrainWorld Magazine:
The Divided Brain: An Interview with Dr. Iain McGilchrist December 23, 2018 by Margaret Emory How many times have you been told, “Oh you’re such a left-brain person,” meaning you think logically, are good with numbers, very analytical, and so on? And upon hearing that summation, you long for the right brain’s creative, intuitive, artistic complements. Why can’t they be part of the equation, you wonder. We used to believe the two parts of the brain work in harmony, but according to London psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, there’s a definite shift in our modern culture which favors left-brain dominance — and it’s something we ought to watch out for and correct. In “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World,” McGilchrist discusses the hemispheres and their different “personalities,” and then shows a sweeping dissertation on the history of Western civilization as seen from the context of the divided brain. McGilchrist came to medicine later in life, following a distinguished career in academia. He is interested in a variety of psychiatric conditions, as well as neuropsychiatry. He also has a busy practice as a medico-legal expert and writes for numerous publications. He named “The Master and His Emissary” after a parable that Friedrich Nietzsche told about a wise spiritual master who ruled a small but prosperous domain, who grew the land and appointed emissaries, one of which began to see himself as the master and used his position to advance his own wealth and influence. The emissary saw his master’s self-control and restraint as weakness, and usurped his master, creating a tyranny, and bringing the land to ruin. McGilchrist likens the right and left hemispheres of the human brain to the master and the emissary of this story, respectively. McGilchrist weaves this cautionary tale to show that while the cerebral hemispheres should cooperate with one another, they have been in conflict for some time, with our current civilization in the hands of the emissary who, although gifted in many ways, functions as “an ambitious regional bureaucrat with his own interests at heart.” Brain World: Can you describe the process of how the different brain hemispheres interact? Iain McGilchrist: The theory that two hemispheres have differences comes from a simple Darwinian point: In order to survive, we need to be able to do two things at once. We need to be able to be busily focused on something that we’ve prioritized, like the bird needing to focus on picking up a twig to build a nest. At the same time, if it’s going to survive, the bird also needs a wide-open attention, looking out essentially for predators, not just in a threatening way, but also for its fellow creatures; indeed, for its mate. Those two ways have somehow to be combined. And yet, if you look very narrowly at something and bring it into sharp focus in the middle of your vision, it’s very different from the contextual penumbra of other experiences — intuitively based, body-based, ancient, and gathered from a synthesis of all your experience, which you also bring to bear on the whole picture. Both have to be there, too. That’s why I think the two hemispheres have evolved in this way. They need, to some extent, to be kept apart, because you can’t really do both things at once. The two hemispheres are connected by a bridge of tissue called the corpus callosum, which is commonly thought of as the thing that communicates between the hemispheres. It does. Although a lot of the communication is activating in its original sense — the nerves are stimulating something to happen — what they’re often stimulating to happen is in fact an inhibition. So their ultimate aim in a majority of cases is not to make something happen in the other hemisphere, but to stop something from happening there. And by filtering like this, things come into existence. BW: You believe the left brain has been gaining control over the course of human evolution. How did this come about? IM: I think an aspect of being a conscious being is that you are aware that you can become powerful by manipulation. Other creatures, of course, are competing and manipulating, but they’re probably not aware of the fact that this is a way of becoming powerful — that it seems to work well for a lot of the things that one does as one grows a civilization. One needs to build structures by putting brick upon brick, or stone on stone. One needs to create drainage and irrigation and so on. One creates these things that seem to make life simpler, easier, and better and make you more powerful. It’s enticing, and you can soon begin to think that everything works like this. Everything in your world seems to break down into a lot of machines that we’ve created. While this is a very interesting way of looking at things, it’s basically a practical tool for getting ahead. It’s not really a very good instrument for epistemology or for ontology — for finding out actually what the world is and how we know about it. It can lead us to narrow down the way we think about things to a merely rationalistic set of propositions, a series of algorithms. BW: What are the effects of the left brain taking over? IM: One of the interesting elements that comes out in research into the “personalities” or the “takes” of the two hemispheres is that the left hemisphere thinks it knows it all, and as a result is extremely optimistic. It overvalues its own ability. It takes us away from the presence of things in all their rich complexity to a useful representation — that representation is always much simpler. And an awful lot is lost in it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need to simplify. For example, if you’re designing a building, or if you’re fighting a campaign, you need a map, a scheme. You don’t really need all the richness of what would be there in the real world. But I’m afraid that that representation moves into a world where we have the ability constantly to interact with the world only as a representation, over a screen. Even Facebook and social networking may look like you suddenly have loads of friends, but what it may actually do is take you away from your real-life friends so that your life is more crowded and there’s less time, actually, to be aware peacefully of the world around you and to interact socially — a word that used to mean “with your fellow creatures.” BW: What can we do about this? IM: People often ask me this question. I think they’re rather hoping I’ll give them a list of bullet points — “The 12 Things You Need” — like a best-selling paperback. That is really a perfect example of the left hemisphere. “Okay. Fix it by having a little plan. We do this, we do that, and bingo!” But in fact, what I have tried to convey throughout the entire book is that the world, as it is, has its own shape, value, meaning and so on, and that we crowd it out with our own plans, thoughts and beliefs, which are going to be narrow. A wise thing to do would be not to do certain things. Another theme of my book is that negation is creative. That by having less of something, more comes into being. So actually what we need to do is not create a world. We need to stop doing lots of things and allow the wonderful thing that is already there to evolve, to give it room to grow. That’s also true of a single human mind. Your Mom Is Destined to Annoy You
By Jessica Grose I have a 48-hour serenity limit when I’m with my parents. After two days, it’s like an alarm sounds inside me and sends me right back to 1999. I’m a petulant teenager again with a bad attitude, and everything my mother says, no matter how innocuous, inspires the response, “Ugh, Mom, stop nagging me!” This unstoppable regression, which has been going on since I left for college, felt worse once I became a parent myself. I am an extremely grown woman now, I thought. I am beyond this. But, like clockwork, by the third day of exposure to my mom and dad, I’d be back in the ’90s, scowling and blasting the Breeders in a borrowed Honda. I am far from alone in this. Psychologists even have a term to describe the way we fall back into predictable, maddening behavior patterns when we’re with our family of origin. It’s called family systems theory — the notion that families have an equilibrium, and each person has a fixed role that “is in service of keeping the family system intact,” said Pooja Lakshmin, M.D., a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. So whatever your established role is — whether you’re the appeaser, or the family clown, or the petulant one — you’re going to be thrown right back there the second you walk through the door of your childhood home. Kira Birditt, Ph.D., a research associate professor at the University of Michigan who has studied tension between adult children and their parents, said that 94 percent of respondents in her study on the topic reported some kind of strife in their relationships. Research also shows that the connection between mothers and adult daughters is especially fraught; Dr. Birditt described it as “the closest and most irritating” of almost all relationships. (One of the most life-changing episodes of my early adulthood was noticing my own mother get sulky at something her mother said.) So, how do you get through the holidays with your folks without losing your damn mind? Here’s some sanity-preserving advice. Prepare for your inevitable regression. It’s not a question of if the regression is going to happen, it’s when. Dr. Lakshmin advised that you do some mental work before visiting your family so that you can avoid triggering your worst behaviors. Ask yourself: Are there particular topics of conversation or physical places that tend to send your family into a tizzy? And then try to avoid those topics and places. Even changing scenery can help jog you out of old patterns, so if the family dinner table always devolves into chaos, try going out to eat one night and see if it improves relations. Try to find empathy. The most typical negative mother-daughter interaction involves this dynamic: Adult daughters feel criticized by their mothers, and mothers feel their daughters are being too sensitive, said Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and the author of “You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation.” How the grandchildren are being raised is a major trigger for this dynamic, Dr. Tannen said: “Many women told me that they could take criticism about anything except their mothering skills.” Dr. Tannen’s advice for grandparents: Bite your tongue, because even the most benign (to you) suggestion may be perceived as criticism. Her advice for adult daughters is, “try to remind yourself that it feels like criticism, but it is an expression of caring.” Your mother just wants everything to go well for you, and she’s trying to help (even if it makes you want to scream into a pillow). Make space for yourself. You will need an escape hatch from time to time. “Whether this means hiding out in the bathroom for 10 minutes to cool down, structuring the length of visits or springing for a hotel rather than staying in your parents’ guest room,” make sure you’re somehow creating a space where you can get some emotional distance from your family, said Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and author of “The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships.” I always make sure I can exercise in the morning when I’m with family — it gives me a break from them and also is a good conduit for ambient rage. Don’t expect change. The last thing to remember is that there won’t be a magical solution to your family trauma over the holidays, Dr. Lakshmin said. December is a stressful time — mental health professionals say it’s particularly hard on their patients — and it’s not the time to bring up old baggage and expect to work through it. Let’s Wage a War on Loneliness
The condition isn’t just depressing. It can be deadly. By Nicholas Kristof Opinion Columnist New York Times LONDON — We humans make a lonely crowd, and it’s killing us. Social isolation is more lethal than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, or than obesity, according to research published by Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University. Since obesity is associated in the United States with 300,000 to 600,000 deaths a year, the implication is that loneliness is a huge, if silent, killer. Loneliness increases inflammation, heart disease, dementia and death rates, researchers say — but it also simply makes us heartsick and leaves us inhabiting an Edvard Munch canvas. Public health experts in many countries are debating how to address a “loneliness epidemic” that corrodes modern life, but Britain has taken the lead: Last year it appointed a minister for loneliness. “It touches almost every one of us at some point,” Baroness Barran, the current minister for loneliness, told me. “It can lead to very serious health consequences for the individual and leads to erosion of our society, where people become isolated and disconnected.” I’ve become interested in loneliness while reporting on the opioid epidemic and soaring suicide rates in the United States. These have complicated roots, partly economic, but they also result from social isolation. Extended families have dissolved, and social institutions like churches, bowling leagues and neighborhood clubs have frayed. We are no longer so deeply embedded in our communities. “I trained in internal medicine, and I expected most of my time would be spent on diabetes or heart disease or cancer,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, who was surgeon general of the United States under President Barack Obama, told me. “What I didn’t expect was that so many people I saw would be struggling with loneliness.” More than one-fifth of adults in both the United States and Britain said in a 2018 survey that they often or always feel lonely. More than half of American adults are unmarried, and researchers have found that even among those who are married, 30 percent of relationships are severely strained. A quarter of Americans now live alone, and as the song says, one is the loneliest number. One gauge of social isolation, or perhaps selfishness: Murthy says he saw families sometimes drop elderly family members off at a hospital for Thanksgiving or another long weekend in what sounds to me rather like the practice of a family leaving a dog at a kennel when they’re going away. At the hospital, doctors are sometimes the only ones to witness a patient’s death, with no loved ones around. Loneliness affects physical health in two ways. First, it produces stress hormones that can lead to inflammation and other health problems. Second, people who are alone are less likely to go to doctor appointments, to take medicine or to exercise and eat a healthy diet. We may resent nagging from loved ones, but it can keep us alive. When I met Barran I suspected that the minister of loneliness portfolio was a bit of a gimmick. In fact, I’m now persuaded that it’s a model for other countries. The ministry started a “Let’s Talk Loneliness” campaign that sparked difficult conversations across Britain, and it is handing out small grants to local gardening clubs, bird-watching groups and others so that they can spread the word and invite more people to join. One grant of $640, for example, went to a Birmingham group to buy board games and start a game club. It is supporting “friendly benches,” which are public benches where people are encouraged to go and chat with one another. It’s pushing to keep community spaces open and to stop public transportation from being cut in ways that leave people isolated. The government is also putting social workers in doctor’s offices for “social prescribing” — connecting lonely patients with local organizations. One early lesson, Barran said: Because of stigma, don’t post a sign inviting lonely people to show up. Rather, have an upbeat sign inviting people to take part in a dog-walking club, a community garden or some other activity. “We should focus on people’s gifts rather than people’s problems, because most of us would prefer to talk about our gifts,” Barran said. I suggest that we also make it easier for people to have dogs. There is some evidence that dog owners (but not cat owners) are less lonely, although in fairness the research is mixed. Some think that the internet has aggravated the problem, because a cursory look through Facebook or Instagram suggests that everyone else in the world is having a fabulous time and enjoys perfect relationships. Meanwhile, the reasons to address the topic are compelling. “If we could tackle loneliness,” Barran said, “people would feel stronger, more resilient, more optimistic about the future.” Professor Holt-Lunstad has found that greater social connection is associated with a 50 percent reduced risk of early death. Australia, Canada, Germany and New Zealand have shown interest in adopting British approaches. Maybe the United States, too, should experiment: How about a new post in the Department of Health and Human Services — an assistant secretary for loneliness? Depression Diagnoses Up 33% (Up 47% Among Millennials): Why There Is An Upside
Bruce Y. Lee Senior Contributor Healthcare What's the bright side to the report just released by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. In the movie Life of Brian, Eric Idle once sang "always look on the bright side of life," followed by lots of whistling. But is there a silver lining to the report just released by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) entitled Major Depression: The Impact on Overall Health that showed steady increases in depression diagnoses from 2013 to 2016? At first glance, there seems nothing but bad news. An analysis of insurance claims data from over 41 million Blue Cross Blue Shield commercially insured members yielded the following curves: These look like escalators going up. As you can see at the right edge of this graph, in 2016, 6.0% of female members and 2.8% of male members (for a total of 4.4%, which is over 9 million members) had a diagnosis code for major depression. This represented a 33% increase since 2013 (hence the big red upward arrow that says 33%). Of all the age groups, the rise was highest among teens from 12 to 17 years old (increasing by 63% from 1.6 to 2.6%) followed by Millennials (ages 18 to 34), increasing by 47% from 3.0% to 4.4%. But before you blame Millennials and younger folks for the rise in depression diagnoses, because it may seem so easy to blame Millenials for everything ("oh, it's raining today, darn Millennials"), realize that other older age groups experienced substantial rises as well (increases of 26% and 23% for those 35-49 and 50-64 years in age.) This is one map that doesn't follow a clear "Blue States" and "Red States" pattern. As shown by the brown color, Rhode Island (6.4%), Maine (6.1%), and Utah (6.0%) had the highest overall rates. Hawaii (2.1%) in dark blue had the lowest. Both the highest Millennial (6.8%) and adolescent (4.6%) rates were highest in Utah while Hawaii had the lowest (1.8% and 1.1%, respectively). So far, not very good news. The findings from this report add to the growing evidence that depression has been rising in the United States since at least the early 2000's, if not before then. For example, a study published in Psychological Medicine found that the prevalence of depression increased from 6.6% to 7.3% between the years 2005 and 2015 with an even greater increase (8.7% to 12.7%) among those ages 12 to 17. As BCBSA Chief Medical Officer Trent Haywood, MD, JD, explained, "Various studies and measures all suggest that there is an underlying trend that depression has been and continues to be a growing problem." Here's more not-good-news. This isn't a simple "fix it with a song" problem. Broken and worsening systems may be contributing to this rise in depression. Haywood mentioned that "increasing social isolation, utilization of social media, competition between people, divorce rates, and other issues" may be helping fuel the upward trends. Yes, folks, it's a systems problem. A review article in the Journal of Affective Disorders also cited growing income and social inequality as contributing factors and that "modern populations are increasingly overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, and socially-isolated." In other words, people are becoming more and more like sleep-deprived potatoes that are buried in the ground and use social media to yell at each other. So where's the sunshine on these seeming cloudy days? Well, keep in mind that this study measured the number of people who received major depression diagnoses (as indicated by insurance codes used for major depression) and not the actual number of people who had major depression. This is an important distinction. If you were suffering from major depression, you would not have been counted if you did not revealed your symptoms to a doctor or other relevant health care personnel and that person did not indicate in your insurance billing records that you had major depression. Studies, such as one published in JAMA Internal Medicine, have shown that a large percentage of people who have depression symptoms don't ever seek help and get proper treatment. Therefore, could the increase in depression diagnoses in part represent a greater percentage of people seeking medical attention for depression? Perhaps. Recent years have seen depression become more "mainstream." Celebrities such as Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Kristen Bell, and The Rock have openly discussed their struggles with depression. As I mentioned recently for Forbes, NBA star DeMar DeRozan even filmed a mental health public service announcement that is airing this month during the NBA playoffs. Reports like the Blue Cross Blue Shield one may be raising awareness and could be decreasing stigma connected with depression. After all, it is saying that if you have been diagnosed with depression, you are among at least 9 million other people. As Haywood emphasized, "our findings raise awareness so that there is an opportunity to intervene." It's also quite notable that a major insurer like BCBSA is recognizing depression as an important growing problem. Our current health care system doesn't always make it easy for depression to be detected and recognized. Nowadays doctors are often too busy and too overwhelmed to spend enough time with patients to find out how their lives are going. As I have detailed before for Forbes, fifteen minutes is barely enough time to take a "more involved" toilet visit and wash your hands properly (which you should always do after using the toilet). How can it be long enough to really talk to a patient? And here's a shocker, our health care system can be quite reactive rather than proactive, waiting for something to boil over or blow up before it is addressed. As Haywood explained, "there needs to be more active rather than passive management of lifestyles, social media, and social relationships. Sleep hygiene, nutrition, and fitness are often unrecognized issues." The BCBSA report also found that members who had a depression diagnosis also had over twice the average annual healthcare spending ($10,673) of those who did not ($4,283). So depression is costing everyone moolah. It's time for the health care system to extend more into the community and help address the systems that may be contributing to depression. Thus, the BCBSA report is not all "this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, and it's getting badder." It could be that more people are seeking help for their depression. The report also further raises awareness and shows that a major insurer recognizes depression as an important problem and that it's worth more than just a whistle. The following is an article from vox.com:
America has a capitalism problem Can the mindfulness movement resist becoming a tool of self-absorption? By Sean Illing Capitalism has a way of co-opting a lot of our culture’s best ideas. Great concepts in fashion, music, and wellness are constantly rebranded and used to peddle consumer products. Whether it’s punk music or yoga, industry will find a way to profit from it. Is mindfulness meditation the latest victim? This is the argument David Forbes, a professor of contemplative education at Brooklyn College, makes in his new book Mindfulness and Its Discontents. The number of Americans who’ve tried meditation has tripled since 2012. And many are doing a specific practice with Buddhist roots called mindfulness, which involves directing your attention to your experience in the present moment with kindness and without judgment. The practice is increasingly being offered in schools, health care facilities, and prisons to improve well-being. So how is this a bad thing? A lightly edited transcript of my conversation with Forbes follows. Sean Illing What does the mindfulness movement in America look like from your point of view, and how is it changing? David Forbes It’s a lot of different things. The mindfulness you see in Buddhist communities is not the same mindfulness being promoted in corporations and schools across the country. There are lots of people who join a mindfulness group or take an MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) course, and being part of a small community like that helps a lot. And plenty of people just practice mindfulness by themselves, in isolation, at home or wherever. At the same time, mindfulness is also becoming an industry, and lots of companies are cashing in on it. I live in New York, and there are money-making studios popping up all over the place. And mindfulness is being marketed [by them] as very much an individualistic practice, which is not healthy and even further contributes to stress and ill-health. Sean Illing What sort of problems is this creating within the movement? David Forbes Well, it raises a question about the intentions of those who practice mindfulness — both those who identify as Buddhists of any kind, and those who are part of a general mindfulness movement in the US and internationally. Buddhists seek to let go of attachment to the myth of the private, solid, unchanging self, and to promote universal compassion and end universal suffering. But capitalist culture enforces the myth of the privatized, self-centered self. So unless mindfulness is employed in the service of making the world a better place — then practicing can and does end up serving to maintain the very self-centered, greedy, individualistic institutions and relationships that contribute to the lack of connected presence, kindness, and compassion that contribute to our unhappiness. They help people adjust to the status quo rather than helping to transform it. Sean Illing Does mindfulness, in your view, have a moral foundation? David Forbes Buddhism has ethical values and practices such as non-violence. Its deeper moral stance is that we are interconnected with all beings, to all our social relationships and institutions, and with the earth itself. People will argue that you become kinder and more compassionate just by practicing mindfulness. But I believe people need a moral framework in addition to mindfulness, some social vision to guide them. I think [in many US contexts it has] been severed from this moral tradition. Without that, meditation can become just another tool of self-absorption. Sean Illing Some people will read this and wonder why is teaching mindfulness as a coping mechanism so problematic if it does, in fact, help people? David Forbes Well, I don’t think it’s an either-or situation. I think it’s a good thing that people are getting tools to help them cope with difficult circumstances. I don’t want to dismiss that. My problem is that it ultimately doesn’t go far enough because it reinforces the sources of our unhappiness. As long as mindfulness is focused on the individual and not on our social situation, it will not help us change the conditions that are making us unhappy, namely a hyper-competitive, ultra-individualistic culture that separates and alienates us. Sean Illing Are you troubled that millions of Americans are discovering mindfulness through apps like Headspace and Calm, which recently became the first mindfulness startup to reach $1 billion valuation unicorn status? David Forbes It depends on what you value. Again, I think it’s great that people are finding ways to de-stress and focus better. But as more and more people make money off of mindfulness, I think it corrupts the spirit of the tradition and practice. I think it becomes more and more a product like any other in our society, and I think it becomes more an individualistic pursuit. But what can I say? Capitalism always finds a way to make money off of something, and mindfulness is no different. Sean Illing What are examples of mindfulness being co-opted in the way you’re describing? David Forbes A lot of corporations are adopting mindfulness as part of their corporate culture. Mindfulness without any moral roots can be used as a hack for all kinds of unsavory ends. Google, Goldman Sachs, and Aetna among others have trained many employees in mindfulness for stress reduction. These corporations have been involved in various scandals and unethical practices that are at odds with the public good. There’s no evidence that mindfulness has made them kinder, gentler, or more socially responsible. Mindfulness is used instead to enhance employee productivity and performance by getting them to focus better [or] cut down on employer healthcare costs from stressed-out workers. All of this is aimed at improving the bottom line. Sean Illing Any other examples? David Forbes There are also well-intentioned educators in schools across the country that are teaching mindfulness but lack any analysis of neoliberal reform in our education system. So they’re helping kids feel less anxiety about high-stakes tests without questioning the meaning and quality of those tests in the first place, without challenging the individualistic, competitive ethos underneath it all. Mindfulness is also being used in inner-city schools as an anger-reduction technique, which in its own way is terrific. But at the same time, maybe we should be asking if that anger is legitimate? Maybe we should be asking why kids are angry and alienated? If we’re focused on reducing the reaction to these injustices and not focused on fixing the problems at the source of it all, how much good are we really doing? Again, I want to be clear: I’m not opposed to teaching mindfulness to students or anyone else. But I just think we cannot ignore the moral and social dimensions of life, and I worry this is what’s happening. Sean Illing What does your vision of “social mindfulness” look like? Do you think we should be meditating with other people? Do you think we need to supplement mindfulness training with a concrete political agenda? David Forbes In mindfulness, you focus on your breathing and you’re noticing your thoughts as they come and go. What I’m suggesting is that we expand on this and begin to identify where those thoughts are coming from. How are we conditioned by certain troublesome patterns rooted in dominant society? What are the forces or structures perpetuating those patterns? In this way, we’re using our attention to really pay attention to the sources of our unhappiness and then the next step to work to overturn those sources. |
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