Why do people have so many psychological issues?
In this article, I will explain why people have so many psychological issues. One in seven young people experience psychological complaints. Psychological pressure is increasing among adults, too, and psychiatric diagnoses are more and more common. In the workplace, many employees get sick from stress and anxiety-related complaints in their professional lives. Scientific researchers expect that by 2040 psychological complaints will be the largest cost item in health care.
The principal reasons for this include the rapidly changing world, digitalization, enormous social media pressure and the increased urge to perform. This can play a major role both in your private life and in your career.
In the body, it’s about what stress does to you and how it can disrupt your biochemical system and hormones. Today’s youth and adults experience the same stress, insecurity and unrest, only the causes have changed.
Rapidly changing world
Our rapidly changing world is a reason for the boom in psychological complaints, but this is only partly true, according to epigenetic specialists. Over the decades, however, there have regularly been periods in which life also changed very quickly. Yet, this was never a reason for such a large increase in psychological complaints.
Taking the 1960s as an example, sexuality was suddenly open for discussion and people could express themselves freely. Music changed, many values and/or social norms were thrown out of the window, relationships between men and women changed dramatically and cars became faster. Recreational drug use became more common, and this was especially true for alcohol among young people. Men were suddenly allowed to dress differently and wear their hair longer. Women became emancipated and men were allowed to become more sensitive. Suddenly, it was possible to dance at a festival for days on end. Did this really need to happen?
Environments and lifestyles have changed constantly through the ages, and often at a rapid pace. Problems were just as common; sometimes the environment in which children had to grow up was harsh. Parents did not take parenthood very seriously, and certainly not in the previous centuries. Abuse was more often the rule than the exception. Sexual abuse, oppression, lovelessness and hard work (even for children) were rife.
Early life stress
Many children in those times experienced a high degree of “early life stress”. Children in earlier times often had a hard home life, but there were also very happy families. Not meaning to belittle the problems of today’s youth, but it must be said that the early life stress, insecurity, poverty and unrest with which children grew up in those days was also very intense. You couldn’t talk about it openly because many had to go through it at home and secrets stayed in the family. No teacher would stand up and report it, even though children sometimes came into the classroom beaten black and blue. Was there any child protection in those days? From the 1960s until the early 1990s, this was a very regular occurrence. The same is true on a professional level, the demands of every employee were many times stricter and often a heavier burden than how an employee can carry out their responsibilities today. Yet, this never led to such an increase in psychological complaints.
The mind is very resilient and can grow in pace with the changing world. Provided, of course, that the mind can maintain that resilience, and that, in my opinion, is the bottom line!
Stress and the biochemical system
In the body, it’s about what stress does to you and how it can disrupt your biochemical system and hormones. Today’s youth and adults experience the same stress, insecurity and unrest, only the causes have changed. Yet, the body is only concerned with what stress does to you and how it can disrupt your biochemical systems and hormones. What causes the stress and other environmental factors are no real concern for the body. It is better to look at the reason why the biochemical systems and hormones are disrupted now, and not so much in the past.
In our gut microbiome article, you can read that early life stress can cause many physical problems later on. So what exactly is the link in the emergence of all these psychological complaints today? Scientific research shows that the relationship between nutrition and the functioning of the gut determines how the brain functions. Many complaints in our brains, including psychological complaints and/or serious illnesses, have their origins in the wrong diet and a gut microbiome that is not working properly.
If you want to prevent the boom in psychiatric patients by 2040, new interventions are needed according to the latest scientific research.
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