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More Americans are distressed than ever

Tyler Cowen points us to this chart:

"Psychological distress," according to the author, is defined as scoring ≥ 5 on the Kessler-6 Distress Scale, which is administered as part of the National Health Interview Study.

As you can see, distress has been rising steadily for the past two decades. It has risen for all age groups, genders, races, and educational levels. Distress is higher among women than men, and also higher among those without a college degree compared to college grads. But the rise in distress rates has been the same for everyone.

Why? The author reports the results but doesn't attempt to explain them. Personally, I would like to know if distress levels were flat until 2000 and then started increasing. But the data doesn't go back far enough to tell us.

Beyond that it's guesswork. Since most objective measures of well-being have been either flat or improving over the past 20 years (yes, really), my guess is that rising distress is related to political polarization and Fox News. But you knew I was going to say that, didn't you?

39 thoughts on “More Americans are distressed than ever

  1. MattBallAZ

    Fox News is a terrorist organization.

    I doubt this opinion will be unpopular with you, and I’m certainly not the first person to say this. Just Google, with the quotes, “Fox News is a terrorist organization”.

    In short, they exist to spread terror (“The caravan is coming for your lake house! Democrats are replacing white people! Parents who have their kids wear masks are child abusers!”) simply to further their political and financial aims.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      This is an odd taek, for revanchist, anti-#idpol Lester Maddox Democrats like you & Kevin Drum, even if there's (quite) a bit less socialism in your (white) nationalism than one sees in the typical Bernie Sanders-cum-Josh Hawley stan like Tulsi Gabbard & David Sirota.

    1. Ken Rhodes

      I am astonished anew every time I see this non sequitur.

      Fox News Radio is an American radio network owned by Fox News. It is syndicated to over 500 AM and FM radio stations across the United States. It also supplies programming for three channels on Sirius XM Satellite Radio.

      Do you presume to know how many listeners they have?

      1. wvmcl2

        Plus all Republican politicians get their cues from Fox News and I'm sure it also influences many local TV news people, newspaper editors, priests and preachers, etc. And there are all the Fox clips and soundbites on social media. The Fox News poison seeps way way beyond just the people who actually watch the shows regularly.

    2. dausuul

      That page says Fox News averages 1.55 million daily viewers. It also says Fox News averages 2.46 million viewers in primetime. And it says Tucker Carlson has 3.47 million viewers.

      These metrics are obviously calculated in some very weird way that tells us jack squat about actual audience size.

      Pew Research finds that 18% of Americans watch Fox News (search the page for "cable news channels" if you don't want to read the whole thing):

      https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2013/10/11/how-americans-get-tv-news-at-home/

      18% of Americans is just shy of 60 million people.

      1. dausuul

        I found out what those Nielsen numbers mean. 1.55 million viewers is the average number *at any given moment*. That's why the numbers go up as you zero in on the popular shows. At any given moment in primetime, 2.46 million viewers are watching. At any given moment in Carlson's show, 3.47 million are watching.

        This makes perfect sense given that Nielsen is in the business of telling advertisers how much they should pay for commercials. If you're running a commercial on Carlson's show, you don't care about the total number of people who watch Carlson ever, you want to know how many will see your commercial.

        But it tells us nothing about the total reach of the show. For that, again, refer to Pew: 60 million people, 18% of the country.

    3. Jasper_in_Boston

      Fox News daily viewership is about 1.5 people

      The Fox News network most certainly is not viewed by only 1.5 million people (I assume you left out the "million") per day. Go back and actually look at the details of the article you cite (the headline number is an "any given moment" number). Carlson's program alone gets more than 3 million viewers each night at any given moment. But many more people than that will watch his and other Fox News broadcasts in part. Moreover, over the course of a week the total number of Americans who will watch at least some Fox News content is in the tens of millions (most plausible estimates are in the 40-50 million range).

      For the record I'd guess social media plays a stronger role than Drum usually attributes to it when it comes to "distress." I think he's on pretty firm ground in mostly blaming Murdoch for intensified partisan rancor. And, while I'd bet the Fox News likewise plays a role in increased "distress," it seems to me social media might well play an important role, too. Facebook launched in 2004.

  2. cephalopod

    The partisanship aspect is really huge. You can see it in what problems people get worked up about. If the problem has a partisan take (especially one harped on by right-wing media), people are livid. If not, it results in a shrug.

  3. golack

    I wouldn't let the "Moral Majority" off the hooks.

    For republicans to get people to vote against their economic interests, they have to push a lot of propaganda and amp up the culture wars. To keep the base engaged, they have to keep pushing the envelope.

    Now we have "How dare those baby killers call me a racist--that's an ad hominem attack"

    1. kennethalmquist

      Yes, FOX News is part of a larger effort to get people to vote against their economic interests. Kevin's view, which matches my own observations, is that FOX News has much more impact that anything else.

  4. cld

    I don't think it's exclusively politics, over the same period there has been a phenomenal rise in anxiety-provoking tv shows and video games.

    I caught some episodes of Jack Benny and the George Reeves Superman show a few weeks ago. They are simply astonishing because there is not a trace of anxiety at all in them. Jack in particular will take the plot to some point that seems to be something any other sitcom would have milked every last drop of anxiety out of, and then it is just not there, they completely avoid it.

    It's actually astonishing to watch when you realize what's happening. I think anyone who has issues with anxiety could benefit from Jack Benny and that Superman show, they're like a warm bath.

    1. wvmcl2

      Well, don't forget the time Jack got held up outside his house by a man with a gun. The man said "Your money or your life" and Jack replied "Wait - I'm thinking."

      1. iamr4man

        My favorite was an episode where Mel Blanc and Benny Rubin play burglars trying to burglarize Benny’s house. They come in the window and see a silver ash tray. They try to pick it up, but it’s welded to the table. They open his drawers and are hit with spring loaded boxing gloves and seltzer bottles. They find the safe and open it but there’s a tiger inside. When they try to leave the find out the window is coin operated. One goes through and the window slams shut after him so the second guy has to pay too.

  5. S1AMER

    Uh, let's include the Trump-McConnell Supreme Court among the causes of increased stress.

    (For sure, rises in my hypertension in recent weeks can be directly correlated with actions of SCOTUS.)

  6. name99

    Is it possible that this is a "definition" effect, as appears to be the case with the rising maternal mortality?

    I don't mean that the definition per se has changed, but that people's *response* to the questions has changed.
    How *abstract* are the questions? My suspicion is that for anything but very abstract emotional questions, the responses of most people will be conditioned by the cultural environment ala Rene Girard. You might think this is absurd, but to me it feels like much of the public behavior at funerals and after various traumatic events is people acting out a script they have learned from movies. And of course people from different cultures act out a very different script.

    So, point is, the "culture" can become more distressed because people are told they are supposed to feel more distressed, without that actually being true. (Somewhat like how "Congress" is populated by idiots and crooks, but our Congressperson, s/he's just great.)
    This then turns into the question of why has "the culture" become more distressed, which is also an interesting and valid question, but a very different *type* of question.

  7. peterh32

    When I have trouble getting back to sleep at night I often read random Wikipedia pages (which works pretty well; I recommend it). Last night I was reading about Bob Newhart and discovered that at some point in 1961, his record "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" was #1 on the US Billboard charts.

    I found myself trying to imagine the serenity of a time where a Bob Newhart album could possibly be the #1 record in the country. Better? Worse? I don't know, but either way it's an amazing thing to imagine.

  8. Special Newb

    Well the century began with a stolen election, rolled into mass terrorism followed by stupid wars followed by economic collapse followed by a glacial recovery, followed by plague and now European war. Then there's the rise of authoritarianism and the climate apocalypse.

    Also are these objective improvements in American living because everyone feels on more precarious ground than ever financially.

  9. cmayo

    The Occam's Razor answer is:

    Money.

    It eliminates stress and unhappiness.

    What's been happening for decades? Ah yes - the "great divergence" and the slow extermination of middle class incomes. There are far more "have nots" now than "haves", by design, and they're all living more distressed lives now than the population was 30 years ago.

  10. Perry

    Notice that the actual levels of distress (even the highest ones for women) are not very high, at most 20% of the population. That may correspond to those in poverty or those with other major life problems (divorce, unemployment, health problems). Stressors are neither measured nor controlled. That makes this study meaningless except to hypothesize that society is doing something to produce more distress that is consistent across age groups but somewhat worse for women. What does that? I would guess social media before Fox News.

  11. tango

    C'Mon, people, the obvious answer is the Internet, especially Social Media. It is painfully obvious. At least, I think its a really good bet that it is one of the lead causes...

    1. Jerry O'Brien

      That was my guess, too. Also, I think it's clear that there was almost no movement between 2001/2002 and 2007/2008. Then we had a financial crash, followed by a reversion to the previous level for 2011/2012. From then to 2017/2018 looks like the only sustained rise on the chart. Social media and its ripple effects could be causes.

  12. rick_jones

    my guess is that rising distress is related to political polarization and Fox News. But you knew I was going to say that, didn't you?

    Never pass-up an opportunity for confirmation bias.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      They are banning fugazi shows, when Fugazi has been "on hiatus" since 2002.

      All I know is Ian has confirmed every reason I had to view him askance now that he's the suxtysomething dad of a ten year old at the local (DC) AYSO games.

  13. akapneogy

    The Great Recession, 9/11 and the long drawn wars, once-in-a-century floods and wild fires every year or so, a so-called president actively dividing the country and leading a coup against democracy, loss of individual rights that have been taken for granted over decades ..... I would have been astonished if psychological distress did not rise. Fox News is a parasite feeding off people's anxiety, not a primary driver of anxieties.

  14. stilesroasters

    I don’t have any of the details in front of me, but there are so many trends start taking off somewhere between 1995 and 2000 that I can only conclude that directly or indirectly the answer is “the Internet“.

  15. Traveller

    Sex, Sexual anxiety permeates all of American culture...who's getting some and who is not...and why am I not enjoying it more? Not to go all Freudian, but this is what haunts and fills and flames American Anxiety.

    This is particularly on my mind this evening because, while wrapping a present from the Getty for a woman, I happened to turn on Hulu, hoping to see Only Murders in the Building, Steve Martin's latest fine adult comedy and....Kulbiick's Lolita came up...so I took a look.

    And my goodness, isn't my view different than everyone's else's on IMDB...of course all these reviews are written 45 years, at best, after the movie came out...and so they have a year2000+ sensibility while mine is 1962, also when I saw the movie.

    Simply put, everyone was was doing Lolita, the poor simp Humbert was simply last in line. Quitly did Lolita the summer before, mom was always showing Lolita off as part of her "Garden," Ken her boyfriend had her as did the "broad minded," married couple who took Lolita home from the dance....and actively refusing to have any other adults come, though they wanted to, but the couple wanted to be with Lolita and the kids alone.

    Well!

    Smirk, smirk, there was the Dentist looking forward to..."filling her cavity next week." Wink, wink.

    Gosh, I was almost blushing throughout the movie.

    So, in the end, while Kubrick's take was vastly different than the book, (however the screenplay was written by Nabokov himself! and nominated for an Academy Award for writing), Humbert Humbert becomes less the victimizer....more the victim, though of course, also a victim of himself.

    Maybe a Shakespearean tragedy...

    I am afraid to write my strong views on this movie over at IMDB...but, here, here is safer....lol

    Best Wishes, Traveller

  16. Traveller

    Let me add a brief colda:

    Charlotte Haze, Dolores's mother dies in an auto accident

    Dolores, (Lolita), dies in child birth

    Quilty is shot to death by Humbert

    Humbert Humbert dies in prison from a heart attack before he can be executed for the murder of Quilty...(though I suppose it could be argued that he was guilty also for the death of Dolores (Lolita) also, but maybe not,

    So, a Shakespearean Tragedy.indeed.

    Best Wishes, Traveller

  17. Solar

    As a few others have mentioned, it's the internet.

    Back when the "news" were only in traditional media (tv, newspapers, radio) news events had to be really major, have some large significance, or involve some well known celebrity/public figure to actually make the news and people become aware of them. That all changed with the internet and even more so with social media, where now absolutely everything no matter how small, or insignificant for society at large gets reported somewhere or by someone.

    Nowadays people are bombarded nonstop 24/7 with "news" about this or that bad thing happening somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and it is that constant barrage of bad stuff happening all the time. Where in the past the orbit of a person's awareness (and thus concern) was largely just their own town or city, with some national or global news sprinkled here or there, now that orbit is the entire world.

    On the same vein, "back in the day", if a person missed the news when they happened, chances are they'd complete miss something happened. Now, "news" linger in perpetuity, and if you missed things when they first happens, odds are good you'll still find out every single detail about it sooner or later because there is a whole industry of news about reporting news, plus now anyone can easily report and pass on the news to everyone they know.

    That over saturation of stuff happening (mostly bad things) can easily drive people into anxiety and distress if they don't know how to manage it.

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