<p>You are right. All teenagers are whiny, lazy, drug addicts who want nothing more than for other people to coddle them for life. </p>
<p>I would respect your view point so much more if you just spoke a little less, erm, degradingly.</p>
<p>I saw a psychologist and psychiatrist for a while for panic attacks. Panic attacks, as I’m sure you know, are glaringly evident and actually diagnosable. As far as I know you cannot fake one. </p>
<p>I had six appointments with a psychologist and one appointment with a psychiatrist. Both of them dismissed me and did not try to “string me along.” They gave me very practical advice and when I was stable, they told me I didn’t need to come back.</p>
<p>There was no psychoanalysis where they looked back at my childhood and tried to find something my mother did that made me the way I am. There was none of that. All they did was give me practical strategies for what to do when a panic attack came on.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I think a lot of people have a skewed perception of how therapy works. I know I did before I saw a shrink.</p>
<p>I can say this about what I observed during my time as an engineering student. ALL engineering students have a tiny bit of insanity. I know I do too, so this topic comes as no surprise to me.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that you have no reading comprehension. Where did I say “all”? I even specifically said that the above mentioned are a minority. </p>
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<p>Hey, Mr. I just registered to CC for the sole purpose of posting in this thread,</p>
<p>It is already evident that most of the people on CC don’t understand what the word “Generalization” means. Not that I even used the word, but people on CC think everyone believes the same things and everyone works the same way, but most importantly, everyone is also special and important and we can’t be too critical about any of them. If we are critical, even of a small amount of our “peers”, we are bad and making “generalizations”, even when we specifically single out a minority of people with the specified behavior.</p>
<p>^It says he joined in June, not today with “the sole purpose of posting in this thread”… and honestly, I think you’re the one who has some growing up to do.</p>
<p>I was pointing more to your need to publicly express your outrage at a nebulous and almost comically irrelevant “problem”. I don’t doubt that there are some people who feel a little bit too sorry for themselves. Perhaps you think that upon reading your posts, they will finally see the error in their ways and turn their lives around? </p>
<p>As for generalization:
“kids these days are overly dramatic and more childish, so they are more apt to make themselves believe that they have mental illness. Maybe as a way to get attention because they’re so self-absorbed”
“Most psychiatrists would rather string the patient along for money or even fall into their own psychological trap and make themselves believe that there is something wrong so they don’t even feel bad about milking them for cash and giving them drugs.”</p>
<p>This thread is about actual findings, and until you provide data to support yourself I’m going to assume you are basing your opinions off of your own impressions of people you know, or have heard of.</p>
<p>Phew. Now, hopefully, I will return to not posting my useless opinions on the internet.</p>
<p>I have to agree with lowstandards. The dismissive attitudes of many of the posts completely shroud what the point of this thread is.</p>
<p>I personally think that such indifference is not only counterproductive, it can be dangerous. Every year thousands of young people are too afraid to seek help because they are afraid of the very attitudes that have reared their ugly heads on this thread. My brother did not seek help for severe depression for 3 years because my parents told him that it was all in his head. The needless guilt this created only drove him deeper into a hole, one that prevented him from forging new relationships and damaged the ones he already had. To this day he is still climbing out of that hole. It was only in college when he was given access to free resources and counseling that he was finally able to get the help that he needed. To generalize “a few whiny kids” to “the entire generation” is to presume a lack of mettle on our part that only widens the divide between the kids who need help and the adults who are able to provide it: mental health professionals, educators, and in an ideal world, our parents.</p>
<p>Your comments in general about homosexuality and mental illness demonstrate that you don’t know much about either, nor do you care to learn. Instead, you’re taking your preconceived notions about the two and making completely unsubstantiated and unfalsifiable statements (“many people chose to be gay…”). </p>
<p>"they could fit in with the gay community, because the gay community takes in everyone who is gay. "</p>
<p>This statement in particular epitomizes what I just described. According to you, “many people chose to be gay” because they wanted to fit in. If you were gay you would know that gay people are incredibly diverse and there is not a single, unified “community” that everyone is included in. Indeed, many gay people (especially teens) feel isolated because we are neither understood by heterosexuals nor part of a group that does accept us. </p>
<p>What appalls me and some other posters is your blatant disregard for the experiences of other people who have personal experiences with mental illness, are gay, or possibly both.</p>
Agree 100%. I was going to go into this, but I decided it’d be futile since he’s so ignorant to the idea. I go to a school with a lot of gay people, and there’s a noticeable divide between their ideas of homosexuality and how others should conduct themselves. I admit to making judgments on other gay people, sure.</p>
<p>Of course, the same thing is said about every single generation. Being a kid yourself, you obviously can’t speak from personal knowledge about what life was like for kids 20 years ago.</p>
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<p>That’s not a typical outcome for kids who go to college counseling services, since the article reports that an astonishing 96% of the ones who did last year were diagnosed with a mental illness. And maybe that’s fine; probably everyone feels anxious and/or depressed at some point during college, especially the kids who are now carrying historically-high levels of debt while trying to find jobs in a crowded market during an extremely weak economy. Maybe it helps just to have somebody talk to them and validate their feelings.</p>
<p>I wonder how many of these emo kids, if told that the only cure for having whatever bug up their bum was to beat it out with a baseball bat, would suddenly say ‘never mind, I’m fine’?</p>
<p>^It’s comments like that that are scary to the kids who actually DO suffer from a severe mental illness but are afraid to seek help because of public perception. They’ll be deemed “crazy” or people will say that they’re “faking” it because people don’t understand what it’s like to live like that. The insensitivity is mind boggling to me.</p>
<p>I think the number of “mentally ill” college students is rising because more are getting bs diagnoses. Kinda like how every other 10 year old (because a ten year old who can’t sit still for 6 to 8 hours straight is TOTALLY abnormal) has ADD or ADHD now.</p>
<p>I struggled with depression for many years because everyone told me that it was not real, that I was making it up for attention. I then went through a period of time where I could not trust any of my own feelings, was made to feel as though I was manipulating others by not feeling normal and I didn’t know if anything was real or not, because of the guilt I was made to feel about my condition. People actually told me those things.</p>
<p>A lot of these comments are very hurtful and ignorant, and they can even be deadly to those who do have a mental illness.</p>
<p>I think one of the reasons is that too many young people do not want to take responsibility for their behavior choices and that parents are letting them get away with it. I have spoken with teachers of kids who have severe behavioral issues and have been told that many of the kids, not all of them, but many are like they are because their parents do not hold them responsible for their behavior and make excuses. Consequently, the kid doesn’t learn to act in a socially appropriate manner, which leads to being ostracized by other kids, trouble with the law, trouble keeping a job, etc… All of these problems can easily create a “woe is me - (depression)” in a person who never has been taught to take responsibility for their behavior and who doesn’t learn from their mistakes.</p>
<p>I want to add that I do believe that there are some with serious mental issues and that they need to be treated. Some of these issues are life-long and others are temporary after a very traumatic experience. I also think sometimes people need to talk with an objective third party to help them work out issues that pop up in life. But, I also think there are too many people who just need to stop whining and take responsibility for their behavior. I guess what really come to mind is Oppositional Defiant Disorder. When I heard about that one I knew things had gone too far!!</p>
<p>^ I agree with the notion that some people do, for lack of better phrasing, “need to stop whining and take responsibility for their behavior.” In my enormous high school, I knew plenty of people who had the whiny, “woe is me” attitude when they were 15 or 16, and I honestly think that they had managed to convince themselves that the world was such a dark place and they were alone and probably depressed. But to be honest, no matter how “coddled” some of them may have been, many of them grew out of it. I distinctly remember one girl telling me solemly during my freshman year that there was “no reason for her to want to live past age 28, and no reason for her to be living at all.” She’s fine now; she was just creating drama in her head, and to be honest both of us laugh about it now. When you’re a teenager, everything seems like the most important issue in the world. I fully confess to this myself. </p>
<p>However, I feel like a lot of people grow out of it during high school, or at least early on in college. In my opinion, those who don’t are in the minority, not the majority. Which brings me to this study: although I think that some of them are, in fact, dramatic teenagers, I also think that the majority of students who are diagnosed today have a true mental illness. Fifty, Twenty, even ten years ago mental illnesses were often rejected in society, and those who had them were treated like outcasts, whiners, or drama queens. My mom is a counselor and I remember her telling me when I was little about an older kid, the son of a friend, who had schizophrenia. He was teased and picked on so much for being such a “weirdo” that he eventually lef this high school. This was only ten years ago. I feel like with the research that is currently being done, people are more accepting and less judgmental of those with mental disorders, making people - and teens in particular - more likely to come forward and seek treatment.</p>
<p>So I guess the entire point of my post is that yes, some people are probably creating drama. Maybe some people are diagnosed with illnesses that they don’t have. But I think that there are many more who are simply less ashamed to be diagnosed, and are under the care of more capable doctors who have more extensive knowledge on the topic. I know that’s not the only reason for the study results, but I think it’s the main one.</p>
<p>I’m not whining or crying about it. I’ve dealt with my issues and I’ve moved on. I also believe in personal responsibility and that many people can make a significant difference in their problems by deciding to make changes in their own lives. I’m just saying, what needs to be different is the attitudes surrounding mental illness, they are ignorant and do not create an atmosphere that is helpful for those who still suffer. Yes, it’s true many people whine and are overly dramatic, creating a woe-is-me attitude. I think this creates a cry-wolf situation for those with real problems.</p>