The first thing you need to understand is that Americans are crazy. At least we’re crazier than people in other countries. Immigrants aren’t as crazy as the native-born; the children of immigrants are crazier than their parents.
Any number of studies, not just the ones I’ve cited, have found that. There are all sorts of possible explanations for it including the possibility that Americans just seek care and are diagnosed at higher rates than people in other countries but the studies have repeatedly found that the reported incidence of mental illness among Americans is higher than that of people in just about any other country. Higher than Mexico, New Zealand, Israel, or China.
Another possibility is encapsulated in the old proverb “money can’t buy happiness”. Depression may be a luxury and the wealth of Americans may enable them to afford mental disorders that people in other countries can only dream of.
It also might be that people from different countries react differently to mental health problems. Irishmen may go to the pub and drink; Poles may sit at home and drink; Americans may seek out care.
How do people for whom alcohol is forbidden deal with their mental health problems? Maybe they drink anyway which adds self-loathing to their other problems. Maybe they act out violently. There have been studies that have claimed that people with mental health problems in Muslim communities around the world are seriously stigmatized.
In my opinion the extreme diversity of the United States and the extreme isolation of life in the United States suggest that we may actually be crazier than people in other countries. Those two factors work synergistically to increase stress and reduce the availability of support systems.
The second thing you should understand is that personal empowerment and, particularly, the ability of individuals to inflict violence on others has reached levels unprecedented in human history. Today ordinary men and women can readily inflict a level of violence only available to a lord or a general in years gone by.
Which brings us to the news of the day. Last night there were two terrible incidents. One occurred in a shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Eight people were stabbed and the perpetrator was killed. There are reports that the perpetrator was Muslim. In the other 29 people were injured by the detonation of a pipe bomb in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. At this point although the detonation appears to have been deliberate the perpetrator is unknown and, obviously, the motives are unknown.
We are unlikely to be able to stuff the jinn of personal empowerment back into his bottle. As the number of Americans rises as well as personal empowerment and given the high prevalence of mental illness here, we’re going to see more perpetration of mass violence against strangers. Some of the perpetrators will be Muslims; maybe most of them will be. It’s certainly true that the perpetrators of the Boston marathon bombing, the Fort Hood massacre, the killings in San Bernardino, and the recent massacre in Orlando were all the children of Muslims immigrants. I don’t know the specific pathologies that led them to do what they did.
I’ve also suggested a strategy for addressing the problem in advance: early intervention. I recognize that cuts deeply against the grain for many Americans but insisting on the “drunkard’s search” rather than applying resources where they’re needed is its own form of mental disorder.
IMO the atomization of society is a huge problem, one that isn’t as bad in other countries. We have poor and declining cohesion in a number of areas, whether it is faith government & national institutions, the decline of traditional sources of authority and community, the professionalization of political action, all combined with an increase in tribalism, particularly by elites.
The result is a society where individuality is seemingly prized above all else, but the irony is that individuals became more isolated and less powerful. There are two effects:
– True grassroots collective action is dying, having succumbed the the professionalization of political action. Instead of movements which rely on the actions of collectives operating at the local level, we have national organizations that only ask for money and hire “protesters” to act as window dressing for the cause.
– With few outlets for political change from actual collective action, dispossessed individuals turn to violence. It’s not surprising we see this coming primarily from marginalized groups who come from traditional cultures which aren’t compatible with modern notions of secularized individualism.
I agree with just about everything you wrote in that comment, Andy.