The chattering class are comfortable with a plague of deaths by despair

From The Age of Distractipression.  The subheading is The pandemic’s true toll on mental health won’t be known for a long time, but data from the past two years indicates a rise — some of it sharp — in prescription drugs for conditions like A.D.H.D. and depression. by Casey Schwartz.

I have for several years been concerned about our deaths from despair, Suicides and Drug Overdoses.  The numbers have been increasing at an accelerating rate and are at distressing levels.  46,000 suicides in 2021 and drug overdoses were 100,000.  Roughly 150,000 people dead a year from despair.  

Why are people so anxious and despairing when we are so wealthy, rich, healthy, productive, safe, etc.?  Why does no one in government seem to care?  It is a real mystery.  There are obviously several ideologies (Critical Race Theory, Social Justice Theory, Post Modernist Theory, etc.) which emphasize existential doom to the exclusion of all good news.  We have an extraordinarily large advocacy sector all of who claim that inadequate attention and funding of their particular anxieties will lead to doom.

The increasing gap between the small chattering class (academia, mainstream media, deep state bureaucracy, entertainment) and the average American on all sorts of things is a contributor as is the resulting decline in trust by citizens of major institutions.  

23% of the adult population are on medications for depression, anxiety, and ADHD.  29% of women are on those medications.

Is so many people being depressed, anxious or ADHD part of the collapse in the fertility rate?  Or is it perhaps the medications for those conditions which are causing the collapse.

When I think about the Overton Window which was opened after the 1960s for so many past societal taboos, I wonder if this might be largely a societal change rather than a medical one.  

Gambling

Divorce

Alcohol

Drugs

Pornography

Secularism

Casual Sex

Every one of those categories is bedeviled by definitional issues but I think broadly, we can agree that the social proscriptions against all of them were more prevalent and effective in 1960 than they are in 2020.  We opened the Overton Window of what was acceptable.  

Sometimes to an astonishing degree.  Church membership fell from 73% to 50% between 1960 and 2020.  Married households fell from 67% in 1960 to 49% in 2020.  Out-of-wedlock births went from 5% in 1960 to 40% in 2020.  The drug overdose death rate per 100,000 was 2.5 in 1968 and 28.3 in 2020.  

Between 1960 and 2020 we became more accepting of all seven conditions by factors and sometimes orders of magnitude.  It is not just that we increasingly refused to condemn them, we made it much easier to indulge them - gambling and drinking in particular.

I am not arguing for a puritanical reversion to some theoretically golden moral earlier time.  From a libertarian perspective, I think the State should not be dictating individual's choices.  But as all the Founding Fathers seem to have concurred, a nation built on a constitutional republic needed a religious or moral people in order to work.

We have been conducting a sixty year experiment to test just how true that might be.  So far, it appears to have been pretty true.  By opening the Overton Window on all these earlier proscribed activities, I suspect we have driven up all those deaths by despair.  People are weak and need cathedrals with buttresses to both shore up and affirm the types of moral behaviors that help individuals to succeed without having to figure it all out from scratch.

Each of these seven factors are essentially leading indicators of childhood disruption and chaos.  And we now know that childhood disruption is one of the best predictors of negative life outcomes at adulthood.

And the thing is, this opening of the moral Overton Window had very substantial differences in impact based on class.  From memory, the marriage rate in the top quintile went from 95% to 85%.  Worrying drop but not a catastrophe.

But the marriage rate in the bottom quintile?  What, 90% then and 25% now?

Across all these factors, the bottom three quintiles have  been far more adoptive of these Overton window openings.  To their great detriment.  More Gambling, Divorce, Alcohol, Drugs, Pornography, Secularism, and Casual Sex are individually and cumulatively highly destructive to the bottom three quintiles.  

The top two quintiles?  They stuck with the traditional value schemes more or less.  By sticking to those traditional values, they and their values benefited.  Everyone else suffered increasing misery.

If we want to make everyone better off, perhaps tighten the Overton windows or perhaps educate everyone on the secret knowledge known to the upper two quintiles.  In order to succeed in life, get educated, get employed, stay employed, get married, stay married, stay away from alcohol, drugs, gambling, go to church (or have a deep rooted belief system), live right.  

But apparently, the chattering class are comfortable with a plague of deaths by despair.