Marxism and its derivatives is enough to cause anyone to suffer cognitive distortions and internalizing disorders.

From Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades by Johan Bollen, et al.  

Significance

Can entire societies become more or less depressed over time? Here, we look for the historical traces of cognitive distortions, thinking patterns that are strongly associated with internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety, in millions of books published over the course of the last two centuries in English, Spanish, and German. We find a pronounced “hockey stick” pattern: Over the past two decades the textual analogs of cognitive distortions surged well above historical levels, including those of World War I and II, after declining or stabilizing for most of the 20th century. Our results point to the possibility that recent socioeconomic changes, new technology, and social media are associated with a surge of cognitive distortions.

Abstract

Individuals with depression are prone to maladaptive patterns of thinking, known as cognitive distortions, whereby they think about themselves, the world, and the future in overly negative and inaccurate ways. These distortions are associated with marked changes in an individual’s mood, behavior, and language. We hypothesize that societies can undergo similar changes in their collective psychology that are reflected in historical records of language use. Here, we investigate the prevalence of textual markers of cognitive distortions in over 14 million books for the past 125 y and observe a surge of their prevalence since the 1980s, to levels exceeding those of the Great Depression and both World Wars. This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample. Our results suggest a recent societal shift toward language associated with cognitive distortions and internalizing disorders.

I am always somewhat cautious about this type of linguistic research, though I do also find it intriguing.  

This has the redeeming aspects that it covers three languages and 14 million texts.

I especially liked these two figures.

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And:

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I have long considered that I was extraordinarily fortunate to complete my formal education in 1985, perhaps close towards the end of the era when universities were centers for pursuit of knowledge and truth.  Already there were a surprising number of varieties of Marxist scholarship circulating, such as deconstructionism.  Social Justice and Critical Theory came later but the seeds were already widely sown.  

The first major alarm was sounded in 1987 with The Closing of the American Mind by Alan Bloom.  It received wide attention and applause but was never translated into actions to protect universities from a Gramscian spiral into neo-Marxism and irrelevance, the end stages of which we are currently witnessing.

The authors ascribe the possible sources of changed patterns:

Our results point to the possibility that recent socioeconomic changes, new technology, and social media are associated with a surge of cognitive distortions.

Since the inflection point is circa 1985-1990, long before smart phones, the internet and social media, I have a fair degree of skepticism of those as causal agents (though they may certainly be exacerbators.)  Even socioeconomic changes don't seem to be especially strong or discontinuous.  

Bloom's explanation of universities as institutions suddenly becoming more receptive to Marxist criticism, more prone to moral relativism, and more focused on deconstructionism all seem more relevant.  

Cognitive distortions and internalizing disorders arising from Marxist grounded philosophies seems far more likely causal agents simply because they were prevalent at the time of the inflection points.  Socioeconomic changes, new technology, and social media all came much later and likely exacerbated the underlying abandonment of factual knowledge, logical arguments and critical reasoning by universities and the replacement of Age of Enlightenment thinking by antithetical religio-philosophical ideological doctrines.

Americans are richer today across the board than in 1985.  We live longer.  There is dramatically less overt racism.  Crime and murder have collapsed from the peak in 1992.  We are far more peacefully diverse.  Socioeconomic changes just don't hold much water.  

Universities succumbed to repressive ideologies and we are now suffering the consequences of miseducating a couple of generations.  And people are beginning to catch on.  

Marxism and its derivatives is enough to cause anyone to suffer cognitive distortions and internalizing disorders.