The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releases a report stating that about 20 percent of children between the ages of 3 and 17 are living with mental health disorders.
CDC finds mental health woes in one in five U.S. kids, on CBSNews.com.
Mental health surveillance among children United States, 2005 – 2011, on CDC.gov.
I hate to say this but I absolutely buy the notion that the stats are that high regarding our youth’s mental and emotional health!!!
I keep saying to whoever wants to listen….the very fabric of American social and familial life has been tattered due to the utter breakdown of the concept of extended family. Heck even the nuclear family is endangered!!!!
The divorce rate is about 50% on a pretty consistant basis… that leaves about 50% of the married population in the “walking wounded” category!!!! How do we as a culture expect our kids to be emotionally healthy while we continue to destroy the best mechanism known to humanity ( the family nest)to raise the next generation??
I think the American tendency to “pathologize” everything is what’s broken, not our kids.
Oh I would have to disagree LP…Our nation’s kids are hurting!!! Look at all the kids growing up in single parent households. Look at the statistics of kids growing up without a same sex parent, look at where our kids rate in science and math as compared to let alone the so called developed first world countries but even countries in the developing world like China and India and Brazil… There is much to be said ofcourse about the role of Big Pharma and the pathologizing of “normal” kid behaviours ,but even so I believe that as a society we seem to be dealing our kids and grandkids a raw deal!!! I worry about the boys especially… today according to the College board the ratio of girls to boys in college addmissions is 70to 30 Out of that 60 percent more girls than boys go on to graduate. Last year my daughter got her PhD in physics from Stanford. There were only 13 PhDs handed out in the sciences in the whole country!!!! These are alarming numbers if we want to stay competitive in the global economy. Student loans are in the news this week… how many kids I wonder would have been able to get family support and not have to worry about loans if they came from intact families? The rates of kids abusing alcohol and other substances are alarming!!! Oh yes I do think that our societal fabric is torn and our kids are paying the price.
I agree wholeheartedly we need more/better science-education encouragement in this country, though thank goodness the numbers aren’t quite that dire. From the American Institute of Physics, “The 1,688 PhDs in the class of 2011 is up 55% from a recent low 7 years earlier.”
Most are males, so giant kudos to your daughter and her success at Stanford! 🙂
I believe the CDC goes with how many children are being given medication. If they include ADD and ADHD, this is probably an accurate assessment. The schools now demand that parents of creative children medicate them so they will be zombies. My mom knew a man twenty years ago who had a young son who had ADHD. He told my mom that he was going to have to go with a private school because the public school was demanding that his son take medication because when the teacher asked him to draw a tree, he drew a tree that wasn’t the ordinary green and he put birds in the sky and it didn’t look like every other tree in the class. I have known some teachers as friends and they just want every child to be the same. They don’t really want to be asked hard questions by a smart child. They ignore bullying which is another reason for childhood anxiety and depression. Just a few days ago, a mother got arrested for finally having had enough of a girl abusing her daughter and telling the little bully off herself. Someone should start a business where kids bigger than the bully are hired to make these bullies stop. Then, no adults who can be arrested are involved.
As far as this single parent stuff that has been going around for years. If one of the parents is a sociopath, it would be much better for the other parent to get them out of the child’s life. There is only courage in that. There was just as much emotional, verbal, and physical abuse of mostly women since the beginning of time. Women weren’t even allowed to vote until 1920 and we still haven’t had a female President in the U.S. In many cases, the children would have been better off with only one parent. The abuse just had to be accepted because there was no other choice. Now there is, and people escape it, and then there is only one parent. I wish all of the time that my mother would have had the courage to leave my narcissistic father who verbally abused his wife and his girls leaving us open to predators (including his brother and their friends, and moving us across the country to keep us from becoming independent in healthy ways. My mother was smart, but was brainwashed into thinking she must stay with her husband forever no matter what he did. She did and it ruined the lives of all three of her daughters. My dad did nothing but corrode our self esteem and force us to move away during our most formative years. And since he moved to a cheap part of the country from an expensive part of the country, we had to be around his abuse even more because he only had to work one job. I was always very content to have him working two jobs and seeing him about an hour a day. After we moved, all of us got abused much more every day. My youngest sister ended up marrying a complete psychopath and thinking he was normal because my Dad had plenty of time to abuse her from the age of 11. I was 16, so my time away from my father had been beneficial to me. I knew a lot of what he said and did was unacceptable. My youngest sister took all in and didn’t know he was wrong.
One of the best things that I’ve ever heard was when I was in my 20s an Oprah Winfrey stated on her show that “just because someone is family, it doesn’t mean you have to like them or even want to be around them.” I was relieved. I didn’t have to like my father, or his family, or even be around them! What freedom. Single parent households can be a lifesaver to many kids. I know it would have been for my niece and nephew whose mother married a maniacal genius who ruined their lives and hers….and they are still all together as a family unit which a psycho in charge. When he left for a few months one time when my sister confronted him with his psycho behavior, his son quit wetting the bed and his daughter did not miss him, or his abuse, one bit. But, my sister was so addicted to him, she called him begging him to come back…and my nephew began wetting the bed again and my niece began acting crazy. And, yes, these children and my sister were medicated to the hilt so they could live with a psycho and keep from going crazy themselves. There is nothing wrong with single parent households compared to psycho ruled households. I wish I’d had one.
I do not know about the statistics, but more children are beyond the “normal”.
Some of it is having a more specific way of reporting things that would not have been done in previous generations.
Some of it is the divorce rate and the breakdown of extended families. Now that we are two generations into the skyhigh divorce rate, I think part of the problem is we now have a whole generation of parents that do not know how to be parents, because it was not modeled for them by their own parents. (As a minister I see many, many grandparents actually being the ones raising their grandkids).
Some of it is much more permissive and distracted parenting. And I am to blame too. While I do not condone going back to the “whooping behind the woodshed” mentality we as a society let our kids get by with rude and obnoxious behavior. Instead of interacting with our kids we buy them ipods, gameboys, and big screen tv’s.
Some of it I believe has to do with all the chemicals that are going into our bodies: medications, immunizations, chemicals in our food, water and air. (And sadly I don’t have the money not to feed my kids lots of processed foods, or organic foods. And my kids are caught up on all their immunizations except the latest one that is still optional for my eldest daughter.
Does rev mean reverend?
Some people must get divorced to escape sociopaths and there are a lot of sociopaths and they tend to marry repeatedly
I support people divorcing abusive sociopaths and getting away. If they choose to stay, I support that also. No one should feel they are harming their child by divorcing a sociopath.
yes. I am clergy and I met and married my ex in seminary. We were married for more than 18 years, before I was brave enough to leave even though he was abusive even before our vows. By leaving I knew we both might be done as ministers. In the end he had his standing pulled and I was asked take 6 months of healing without trying to serve in a ministry position.
I believe marriage is sacred, but abuse is a breaking of the vows to love, honor and cherish. I just wish I had been brave enough to have left sooner.
I hope my post did not come across that no one should get divorced. Although at the same time, I think our society has started viewing marriage as disposable like everything else in our lives.
Like virtually everything we need to strike a balance between allowing people out of toxic marriages and educating people that having a spat over the toothpaste does not mean the marriage is over.
Well…there are many single parent families after someone with children leaves a sociopath. I am not one of those people. But, I don’t feel that their decision to lead a single parent family causes any problem if they have a safe home. Two sociopaths raising children in an unsafe home would be much worse. I disagree with putting down single parents as the reason recent research is revealing children have problems. I’m not certain there is any higher percentage per capita of sociopaths than 50 years ago. We just have instant news and a 24 hour news cycle that tells us about it.
In most other countries that do not have a welfare state families tend to live in non nuclear units. Then when an abusive member of the family chooses to leave or is thrown out by other members the children still have a network of extended multi generational family to help with care taking. Largely, bad behaviour on the part of individuals is also checked because abuse mostly happens under the cover of isolation. I do not endorse anyone staying in disfunctional marriages where there is abuse.
That said we do need to look at societal trends that have not worked in the larger good!!!!
We live at a time when our kids go to classes that are too large in terms of class size, and then come home to an empty house where both parents have to work to make a living. Or to the home of a single parent who themselves are exhausted and need and want nurturing. I believe single parenting is the hardest job on GOd’s green earth!!!! However we need macro level policy changes as well as a real appraisal of what we as a society value in order to correct course. And course correction we need!!!
You know there may be victims here on welfare right? Empathy for others without knowing their story is an important component to a caring and compassionate human being. The taxes for public schools is the second largest tax burden in the United States. $10,000 per kid average. I don’t have kids, however I believe we should have educated children and have not begrudged that tax money to go to their free schooling. I am also proud to pay taxes for families to eat and free school lunches to children in poverty. I don’t consider it a “welfare state” on “God’s green earth” as you call it. If it is God’s green earth, wouldn’t a god want for all to eat and have a roof over their head? Maybe I have too much empathy for all victims and survivors of all types to fit in with preachers and teachers….wow.
fight,
I believe Imara was just referring to the fact that in those countries that DON’T have a welfare system,the extended family is often their coping system.They work together to feed the family,to take care of the family’s emotional,other physical needs and spiritual needs.
As far as what revjanice was saying;I believe I understood her correctly to not take the marriage vows lightly and yet where abuse enters the picture,leaving – and possibly even divorce may be necessary.I feel the same way.
As far as welfare is concerned,that is a battle on Capitol Hill.They are presently fighting about food stamps and free school lunches.
Imara also mentioned the change in society’s values as being a cause for children being so problemetic.Values have changed dramatically.So that is a valid concern.
I was walking through the centre of (my large UK ) town today past a flight of steps that leadsto a subway. Four very young teenager boys were standing around the smartphone of one of them. I was close enough for a few seconds and the screen was large enough for me to make out that it was porn. This was broad daylight in a public place, with children and elderly people walking by who may have caught a glimpse. Technology is changing the face of what it means for young people to grow from babies to children to teens. Access by kids to pornography makes me fearful for kids future capacity to maintain intimate healthy relationships. I fear many women and girls are suffering sexual coercion and harassment and abuse due to the tidal wave of porn the digital age has brought with it.
Tea Light;
The amount of “sexting” that goes on among teens would shock you. In addition, online video conferencing is used by many, many for sexual show and tell games.
And boys are not the only perpetrators — girls lead the boys on into showing the goods. As a gay man, an interesting part of this is that boys now seem perfectly comfortable exposing themselves in the company of their friends, even engage in group online masturbation sessions, something that no gay male my age would ever consider doing when a teen.
BBE how very nice to see you and thanks for this, my post did not acknowledge girls active use of porn or the use or tech for sexual activit̩s amongst the LGBT communities. I worry about isolated gay youth Рand adults-being drawn into sexually exploitative online relationships. BBE I hope all is going great with you and life is entirely scousepath free.
Thanks. I am actually worried about the scousepath coming back into my life later this year, as he turns 40. This is based upon stories here that sociopaths use life events to re-enter the lives of past victims and that the scousepath is simply not mentally capable of being middle-aged, since he still dressed and acts like a teen-ager.
But I am at least prepared.
PS The internet has pluses for isolated individuals. I have a cousin born with Spina Bifida whose life was very much positively enabled by the Internet. In addition, you mention remote young gay person.
But if I was a parent today, I would be very scared of the Internet.
Thank You blossom for clarifying my stance. I do not endorse staying in abusive relationships. I myself am divorced for exactly that reason. However, I do wish to re state that it is a sorry state of affairs when half of those who get married divorce. Fight, just for your information I am ever grateful that we in this wonderful nation do and have a social safety net. Our children are our legacy and it is scary to me as a mom that we do not seem to be dealing with very real issues of child rearing at a policy level. Tealight’s example of Pornography and the inappropriate use of the internet cannot be dealt with by parents alone. We need public awareness and policy changes from the legislature. And we need families that are able and willing to provide support and supervision to the kids. It does take a village to raise a child.
I am glad for your clarification Imara. I have dealt with a lot of people who use the term “welfare state” for different reasons. Thank you.
I agree about the porn. I am not sure if it is a chicken or egg though. Porn has always been around. Boys have always found ways to get whatever form there was. It has always skewed the way men are sexually and it has skewed the way they think real women are satisfied. That is why porn addicts are such terrible lovers over time. They also do not know how to show love or affection. The best advice my mom ever gave me was to never fake it because then you would be faking it forever. It makes me laugh now, but it is true. My spath has always been a terrible lover. I honestly just thought he was funny and I didn’t fit in (I look very physically different than the women in the region I was moved to as a teen) and he was from someplace else and chased me and I was lonely here. We could have some semblance of a decent sex life, but when he was younger, it was completely about him unless I pushed for more satisfying treatment. Now that he is old, he got what he wanted…which is to live on my property like he used to so he won’t die alone. Then, he began to withdraw any loving and affectionate behavior almost immediately. I found out he was viewing porn and I found out he had cheated on me the first time, so one day, I told him just how bad he was. THAT kills a spath. They truly think they are great…and some of them may be for a while…until they have whatever else it is they want from you or move on to the next one. He was devastated. He used to tell me I was bad all of the time. I knew I wasn’t. I have had a husband since our last time and we had a great sex life. The spath had made me forget it was possible before that. And then I remembered my first marriage where he was on the spath scale, but not to the degree of this guy, and the sex was also great between us. I don’t want sex with this spath. He is crass and ick. When I told him how bad he is, and that all of the women he cheated with, all wanted money or help with their math homework in college, I got my point across. He couldn’t get a single one of them to pick him up if he fell right now. And he is falling.
Believe me, when they live those lives they live, they get old and they are useless in just about every way. Mine is only here for the money and to light the literal pilot light when it goes out and someone to watch TV with here and there. I’m not saying that it doesn’t hurt to know he watches the porn. I’m not saying it isn’t devastating to think of what we could have had if he had been what he pretends he is for a few days until he gets what he wants. But, all in all, most of the average ones don’t age gracefully and he will end up in a VA nursing home before it’s all over.
1 in 5 kids and 1 in 3 adults, which is even scarier.
All sociopaths are very much into porn, sexting, “camming” in a sexual nature, even phone sex. I would even suggest a pecking order: real sex, camming, porn with say sexting as a last resort. Sex and the pursuit of sex is their main activity in life.
Since I was naive to sociopaths when I met the x-spath, I did not even recognize what should have been an obvious red flag — his seeming lack of hobbies or interests. Yes, he had knowledge of current events and since he is a flight attendant could talk about travel but beyond that, there seemed to be very little. In fact, he commented to me that my life seemed very “exciting,” which I found interesting given that he travels a lot being a flight attendant.
Even when he told me that he did not have much recent contact with friends and stays home a lot, I did not think for a second that he was an internet predator, constantly online looking for sex.
One reason, again, being that at that time, the level that some get wrapped up in the Internet sex thing was unknown to me. Also, his mask was one of “British reservedness” (his very words). And I believed him.
However, when I came across an online profile of him, I quickly learned about the real person:
“My hobbies are boys, beers, travel and sleep.”
I cannot imagine a 30-something have that line on a mainstream dating website (not a gay one) and that alone says a lot about him and sociopaths in general.
My abuser’s hobbies on a website, if he was being honest, would read ”non-consentual bdsm, my mother, eating, television”.
His pecking order would be : non-consentual bdsm / rape , non bdsm sex in RL, skype/ phone sex, masturbating to bdsm porn.
Is this a new parlour game BBE?
I have a morbidly obese straight friend who has an autism spectrum disorder. I know that he is very much into writing erotic stories. Thank god he never asked me to read one. I got the impression though it tended to the rough on his side and the younger on their…
My x-spath, via his choice in “favorites” on one porn site, is bareback sex. He has one “friend” on that site whose “favorites” are bareback, plus rough and degrading sex.
There is another site with a profile that I strongly suspect is the x-spath, although I am not 100% sure as with the other. The favorites there are all bareback, rough sex, degrading sex and group sex.
No wonder he walked out of a fine French bistro on me…
I actually don’t understand the fascination for such sex.
Blimey my aspergers friend is basically asexual the idea of him writing erotic fiction…it would be mechanical. That’s for certain. He once told me with utter conviction ” sex is for reproduction”. That’s the only way it ” made sense” to him. He doesnt like to be touched really. He’ll put up with a brief hug. An obese gay friend used to frequent a “chubby chasers” fetish club in Earls’ Court in London. It had the enticing name of Piggies. Life’s rich tapestry BBE….
I freak out if I gain 5 pounds over the winter.