Title: Are Mental Health Issues On the Rise? | Psychology Today
Headings: Are Mental Health Issues On the Rise?
Jean M Twenge Ph.D.
Are Mental Health Issues On the Rise?
Why it's important stories about generational differences look at the research

Content: Singh complains that “Journalists and commentators love ragging on us,” but seems not to understand that data is not the same as “ragging” and that pointing out mental health issues is the first step to making sure young people (and everyone else) get the help they need. Finding as much data as possible on generational trends allows us to see the scope of the problem and how to solve it. Defensiveness and ignoring the scientific literature doesn’t help – and if it spreads misinformation about the need for mental health services, it can even hurt. SHARE
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Ms. Twenge concludes that
Submitted by Chris on October 12, 2015 - 4:54pm
Ms. Twenge concludes that there exists a "raft of research studies" showing that anxiety and depression are "markedly higher" today than they were in earlier eras. She cites 7 studies to support this conclusion. However, the studies she cites do not prove her point. As one example, she cites the Cohen paper in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. That paper, however, analyzed the distribution between demographic groups of self-reported perceived stress (women v. men, employed v. unemployed, etc.) Perceived stress, however, is not necessarily the same thing as mental illness. Furthermore, the Cohen paper did not attempt to determine whether the levels of self-reported stress increased overall between the years in which surveys were taken (1983, 2006 and 2009).