Turn on, tune in, drop out - lose your mind later on?

Hmmm. I was unaware of this phenomenon. From A New Look at Cohort Trend and Underlying Mechanisms in Cognitive Functioning by Hui Zheng. From the Findings:

CF [cognitive functioning] has been improving from the Greatest Generation to Late Children of Depression and War Babies, but then significantly declines since the Early-Baby Boomers and continues into Mid-Baby Boomers. This pattern is observed universally across genders, race/ethnicities, education groups, occupations, income and wealth quartiles. The worsening CF among Baby Boomers does not originate from childhood conditions, adult education, or occupation. It can be attributed to lower household wealth, lower likelihood of marriage, higher levels of loneliness, depression and psychiatric problems, and more cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., obesity, physical inactivity, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and heart disease).

As I scanned this initially, of course I leapt to the supposition "Is this a consequence of 1960s and 1970s experimentation with hard and soft drugs?" but that is nowhere mentioned as a likely cause.

The causes identified are:

It can be attributed to lower household wealth, lower likelihood of marriage, higher levels of loneliness, depression and psychiatric problems, and more cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., obesity, physical inactivity, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and heart disease).

Lower household wealth simply does not makes sense to me. Greatest Generation to Late Children of Depression and War Babies would have all had lower household wealth at every comparable stage of their lives and yet their CF functioning demonstrated CF improvement.

It seems like the drivers of reduced CF might be 1) isolation (single status, loneliness, depression, etc.) and 2) poorer base health condition compared to earlier generations. Perhaps. Doesn't sound especially convincing. Likely to be contributory, but is it the whole story? Perhaps.

I wonder whether past history of drug experimentation might be related to later life depression and psychiatric problems? No idea.

I also wonder, is this simply a function of an age cohort's departure from traditional middle class values? That would cover increased singlehood and everything that follows from that. An unmooring from traditional mores might also be associated with elevated depression and psychiatric problems. A relaxation of conscientiousness and older habits such a regulars meals would likely be associated with obesity, physical inactivity leading to hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and heart disease.

I am predisposed to believe that declining CF among Early-Baby Boomers and Mid-Baby Boomers might be associated with 1) an association with past drug experimentation or habitual usage at some point, and/or 2) departure from traditional behavioral norms which might have had significant prophylactic attributes which we failed to fully appreciate. Would be interesting to test by comparing quintile populations - is the decline in declining CF as prevalent among top quintile people who have held fast to traditional norms versus the other quintiles. Only time will tell.

Still, an interesting and disturbing discovery of declining CF among Early-Baby Boomers and Mid-Baby Boomers