ARTICLE PROVES HOW DYSFUNCTIONAL AMERICA HAS BECOME

[steve55]

THE UNITED STATES IS NOW THE MOST ANXIOUS NATION IN THE WORLD

(Source - http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/cult ... arket.html )

"With more than 18 percent of adults suffering from an anxiety disorder in any given year, the United States is now the most anxious nation in the world, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. As psychologist Robert Leahy points out: "The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s."

This national surge in nerves is somewhat baffling because we're actually safer from true danger than we've ever been.

Even as our streets become safer, our cars more crash-proof, and our food and drugs better regulated, we still keep finding ways to become more tense. And don't assume that this is a problem that affects all nations equally: According to the 2002 World Mental Health Survey, people in developing-world countries such as Nigeria are up to five times less likely to show clinically significant anxiety levels than Americans, despite having more basic life-necessities to worry about. What's more, when these less-anxious developing-world citizens emigrate to the United States, they tend to get just as anxious as Americans. Something about our particular way of life, then, is making us less calm and composed.

We might point the finger at the sputtering economy, but we kept growing more anxious even in boom times.or the experts, one particularly egregious offender is America's increasing loss of community, what we might call the "Bowling Alone" effect. Human contact and kinship help alleviate anxiety (our evolutionary ancestors, of course, were always safer in numbers), yet as we leave family behind to migrate all over the country, often settling in insular suburbs where our closest pal is our plasma-screen TV, we miss out on this all-important element of in-person connection. As fear researcher Michael Davis of Emory University told me: "If you've lost the extended family and lost the sense of community, you're going to have fewer people you can depend on, and therefore you'll be more anxious. Other cultures have much more social support and are better off psychologically because of it." Another factor that adds to this problem—especially among young people—is our growing reliance on texting and social media for community, which many psychologists say is no substitute for real human interaction. When you're feeling most dreadful, you don't run to your Facebook profile for consolation; you run to a flesh-and-blood friend.

America a Paranoid Culture based on fear

But even worse, this avalanche of data is increasingly of the alarmist, fear-igniting variety. If a TV newscast isn't covering a grisly double homicide, the anchor is teasing a story about the hidden threat in your own home. "The media does this to us," explained Evelyn Behar, a worry expert who teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago. "It's always reporting that this thing causes cancer or that thing can kill you. We live in a culture where fear is used to motivate us."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My personal comment - Again, the evidence is overwhelming. The United States, is a INSANE breeding ground of mental illness and psychological dysfunction. Every study and stat shows that we lead the world in these categories. So much for the average American's "USA #1" chants. Go USA!!! Go USA!! Pffft!