Over 60 percent of Gen Z have an anxiety disorder

return2ozma@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 549 points –
Over 60 percent of Gen Z have an anxiety disorder
thehill.com
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The most common cause of their anxiety — the future.

Completely reasonable. I'm a Millenial and I also have a lot of anxiety about the future. Previous generations screwed us all really hard.

GenXer here. What drives me nuts is that climate change was taught to me as scientific fact in year 9, back in the early 80s.

The science was clear but collectively every government said "well, I'll be dead by then so why should we care now".

Millennial checking in. School system pivoted to Acid Rain and deforestation as the main environmental we would face. Oh, and El Nino, seems like that was happening every year of my life as a kid.

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Not to mention all the shit we went through already.

I can tell you (professionally) that the people who saw less anxiety during the pandemic were people with severe anxiety. Statistically.

I can tell you personally it was because we could say, "Something catastrophic finally happened and I've been preparing for this my whole life."

Anxiety about the future is not an anxiety disorder. If almost 2 out of 3 Gen z has anxious intrusive thoughts so bad that they cannot go to school, work, have any kind of healthy interpersonal relationships, etc then the article would have a point, but I don't think that's the case. I have more faith in the next generation than that.

I know things are bad and folks are rightly apprehensive about the future, but that is not an anxiety disorder. Anxious thoughts doesn't mean you have a disorder, it means you are alive and aware of your surroundings.

Some of this next generation will turn their distress about the future into eustress that motivates them to fix it (as long as they don't give in to defeatest takes like in this article).

Well this might be the content of my anxiety (what I worry about) but it sure isn't the cause (my lifestyle).

Rejoice in the fact that you're living a higher quality of life than the vast majority of people ever to walk the earth.

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