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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: stormi on Saturday 02 July 22 13:41 BST (UK)
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Hi all,
I know it is fairly common knowledge that 100 years ago (give or take) kids often were at work by the age of 14. My Grandad has a saying that "kids these days have too much free time on their hands". In my experience with mental health, I know that if I'm not busy my brain will become over-active and 'the devil makes work for idle hands/heads' I will get depressed.
I know it is perhaps short-sighted to say that mental health illness is only caused by having 'nothing better to do', but I do know that a large part of a healthy mind is knowing that you have something to do tomorrow, the next day and the future.
Today many new mums get depressed, 'back in the day' being a mother wasn't the 'be all and end all' of their existance, they still worked to survive even while raising the children - far too busy to even contemplate their situation existentially. Even today in 3rd world countries, you see women with babies strapped to their backs pulling rice in the fields, are those mothers depressed?
Of course - there was no such thing as 'mental health care' back in those days, and if people had any issues they'd rather keep them private rather than risk being condemned. But still, I am wondering whether mental health issues could have been much less common back then, mainly due to the fact that people were too busy working and trying to survive, rather than worry about 'other' things that weren't directly related to surviving/living.
Just as a disclaimer I am a person with a lot of care/respect for people with mental health issues, it runs in my family and I also suffer myself, so I am not writing this to 'discount' mental health at all, it is just a curious thought.
TLDR; I guess I wonder if we're just too easy on ourselves these days, our minds aren't supposed to have so much idle time.
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Having looked at my own family tree, and as a result, through lots of historic newspapers, I think mental health issues were just as common back then as they are today. If not worse, for those living in extreme poverty - which will always make these things more likely to develop.
Suicide was pretty common and it's not rare to find people being admitted to mental asylums.
Even back in medieval times, I think you can find traces of it. I've read accounts of people becoming convinced they were damned, which sounds a lot like a form of obsessive OCD.
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Having looked at my own family tree, and as a result, through lots of historic newspapers, I think mental health issues were just as common back then as they are today. If not worse, for those living in extreme poverty - which will always make these things more likely to develop.
Suicide was pretty common and it's not rare to find people being admitted to mental asylums.
Even back in medieval times, I think you can find traces of it. I've read accounts of people becoming convinced they were damned, which sounds a lot like a form of obsessive OCD.
Interesting, but just to play devils advocate on your mention of medieval accounts of people thinking they were damned - back then surely any of those accounts would be of people in upper society, whos accounts would be recorded, and perhaps they themselves were a lot more 'idle' than your average peasant on the streets, which supports my original thoughts.
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I just found an interesting article on suicide rates since 1861-2007:
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/39/6/1464/736597
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The women I was reading about were mentioned in a book called 'Maids, Wives and Widows' by Sara Read. I misspoke a bit when I said medieval, as the book begins in 1540, but still pretty far back. The women concerned were mostly middle class women, running large households. So I wouldn't say they were ideal as even middle class women would have had to work a great deal back then.
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I suppose the downside potentially of the study you linked to, is where suicide deaths always recorded as such? Especially back in the day when it was such a stigma?
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I suppose the downside potentially of the study you linked to, is where suicide deaths always recorded as such? Especially back in the day when it was such a stigma?
Well to be honest, the study supports your view that suicide rates have dropped dramatically over the last 100 years. But it is true that there would have been unreported rates too, which supports your view even stronger.
So yeah, seems my original hypothesis was completely wrong 8)
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Alongside what others have said about the suicide rate I don't think instances of PND are greater today. Although the diagnoses might be. Culturally talking about it was taboo so people would hide how they felt more. Whilst today new mums are routinely screened for symptoms by health visitors. One of my 3x grt grandmothers died "in a well whilst in a state of weakness" not long after my 3x grt Aunt was born. Due to stigma euphemisms were often used when suicide occured for the sake of surviving family members.
Only just surviving is often a trigger rather than a preventer of depression as it leads to burn out. Although only just surviving would make it harder for people to recognise symptoms in others.
I can't really agree with the idea that young people today are underoccupied. I have a 16yo and 10yo. They may only be at school from 9 until 3/4 but they have hours of homework in term time and other activities. For example my 16 year old regularly has over 20 hrs homework a week. She has a part time job, trains and competes in athletics and does charity work through a school group (the work is done outside school hours). The majority of her friends have part time jobs, compete in sport or play in orchestras, do charity work. Actually to the point I worry they're doing too much. I think big damaging factor is that they are constantly being told that they're not doing enough.
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I can't really agree with the idea that young people today are underoccupied. I have a 16yo and 10yo. They may only be at school from 9 until 3/4 but they have hours of homework in term time and other activities. For example my 16 year old regularly has over 20 hrs homework a week. She has a part time job, trains and competes in athletics and does charity work through a school group (the work is done outside school hours). The majority of her friends have part time jobs, compete in sport or play in orchestras, do charity work. Actually to the point I worry they're doing too much. I think big damaging factor is that they are constantly being told that they're not doing enough.
I guess I was talking more your average kid who barely has any homework, plays xbox soon as they get home and spend the evening scrolling facebook and snapchat or instagram (yes, that is most kids today, might come as a shock?)
Your kids are obviously very well brought-up and are shining examples of what youngsters are capable of when given the proper support and guidance. Well done :) But you seem to think that is normal, or average, it certainly isn't, they are exceptional.
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Its the young Gaming Generation that I fear for with all the hours in the fantasy world of the roll play games that have been very popular for the last 20 years.
Especially where there is just the one person at their home or where they are roll playing whilst walking down the street.
IMO a lot of the stress has been placed upon society in the last twenty five years with the advent of the smart mobile phone and the must respond immediately attitude to messages and texts.
Society is being dumbed down and that does not bode well for the planet.
I spent 12 years working in mental health and the NHS system is a joke, badly management and inappropriate treatment regimes abound. Our Direct of Finance was very critical of the Government a few years ago when they announced extra Billions for Mental Health, what the media did not report was that 3x the increase had been cut in the prior five years and the extra would not even cover the cost of inflation.
Its not just the Tories, the Blairites did exactly the same when they were in Government. In the 25 years in total that I worked in the NHS I saw a deterioration in standards and excessive cost cutting and staff reductions.
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I can't really agree with the idea that young people today are underoccupied. I have a 16yo and 10yo. They may only be at school from 9 until 3/4 but they have hours of homework in term time and other activities. For example my 16 year old regularly has over 20 hrs homework a week. She has a part time job, trains and competes in athletics and does charity work through a school group (the work is done outside school hours). The majority of her friends have part time jobs, compete in sport or play in orchestras, do charity work. Actually to the point I worry they're doing too much. I think big damaging factor is that they are constantly being told that they're not doing enough.
I guess I was talking more your average kid who barely has any homework, plays xbox soon as they get home and spend the evening scrolling facebook and snapchat or instagram (yes, that is most kids today, might come as a shock?)
Your kids are obviously very well brought-up and are shining examples of what youngsters are capable of when given the proper support and guidance. Well done :) But you seem to think that is normal, or average, it certainly isn't, they are exceptional.
Yes, I do think it's normal. Yes some kids are as you describe but not as many as you may think. I'm just a scummy single mum on a council estate.
My kids don't get more homework than their classmates. This is a state school that serves a catchment area with statistically a high level of poverty.
The majority of kids get a part time job as soon as they can. I know kids who compete internationally in snow boarding and athletics. That bit is exceptional but I know many more who train and compete in karate, Tae kwon do, athletics, rugby, football, and dance. I see the older teens act as assistants to the coaches to help with the younger ones. I've listened to many of the kids sing and play music in concerts. The school has a large charity group, many more than just my kids participate.
People do tend to assume that they're just lazing about irresponsible. For example: one evening my daughter was coming back in from work as I got a late supermarket delivery the driver told my daughter she needed to learn some responsibility and stamina to work longer. He still didn't get it when I pointed out she may have only worked 4 hrs but that was after doing 6 hrs at school that day and as an under 18 there were legal restrictions on how many hours she could work.
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To shove my 2p worth in, folk used to say the same about my generation... then it was TV i think to blame lol. I've always said that by and large young people are brilliant ..they are, like it or not the future!
Im not saying they dont want a foot behind them sometimes but so did we!
When Im coming home from a concert about 10.30, in January, me :-hat, gloves, thick coat, scarf....them :- girls practically naked, lads in short sleeves... I have to stop myself asking if they have a vest on, or does their mother know theyre out like that.
Then I smile behind my hand and think get home you silly old fool, get your milky drink and bed LO
Like it or not.... they are the future!
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Grandson gets home.
Spends 1/2 an hour doing the Grammar School Homework.
Grandaughter gets home, goes on mobile and chats whilst dancing in her room, homework is consigned to last gasp Sunday.
Grandson goes on his Xbox until their now single Mum comes home, she is a Nurse so arrives home shattered.
Is anything ready, no.
Asked why when they visit, they answer that they have had a hard day at school or dunno.
Weekend and football, Grandson practices for an hour, Sunday has a game. After showering they come to visit where he promptly falls asleep on the sofa because he is shattered.
So not all kids fill their time usefully.
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Didn't say all do, I said that young people do more than people give them credit for. More young people are hard working than people seem to think they are.
One thing I will say is we do need to stop seeing having some down time as a waste. Having rest time helps consolidate learning, actually promotes good mental health and helps keep us physically healthy
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One thing I will say is we do need to stop seeing having some down time as a waste. Having rest time helps consolidate learning, actually promotes good mental health and helps keep us physically healthy
Also helps creativity.
"Leisure" by W. H. Davies
"What is this life, if full of care
We have no time to stand and stare"
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Today many new mums get depressed, 'back in the day' being a mother wasn't the 'be all and end all' of their existance, they still worked to survive even while raising the children - far too busy to even contemplate their situation existentially. Even today in 3rd world countries, you see women with babies strapped to their backs pulling rice in the fields, are those mothers depressed?
But still, I am wondering whether mental health issues could have been much less common back then, mainly due to the fact that people were too busy working and trying to survive, rather than worry about 'other' things that weren't directly related to surviving/living.
Many mothers today need to earn. Some are as stretched, in time and money, as women in the past. This leads to stress. Advantages now are welfare state, improved health and labour-saving appliances.
Some people don't have good quality, affordable accommodation with security of tenure or are paying high rents or mortgages. These factors may cause stress.
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Having looked at my own family tree, and as a result, through lots of historic newspapers, I think mental health issues were just as common back then as they are today. If not worse, for those living in extreme poverty - which will always make these things more likely to develop.
Suicide was pretty common and it's not rare to find people being admitted to mental asylums.
Some survivors of An Gorta Mor, the Great Irish Famine of 1840s suffered poor mental health.
"Madness, Migration and the Irish in Lancashire c.1850-1921"
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/research/archive/irishmigration
and a related work "Emaciated, Exhausted and Excited: The Bodies and Minds of the Irish in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire Asylums" by Catherine Cox, Hilary Marland & Sarah York
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4326681/
I once idly searched for my name which is Irish on Lancashire Online Parish Clerks website. Top of the list of results in 19th century was a woman who died at a mental asylum.
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Its the young Gaming Generation that I fear for with all the hours in the fantasy world of the roll play games that have been very popular for the last 20 years.
oddly we had a conversation at dinner this evening about a similar scenario.
Substitute the time frame as the 1950s. I spent most of that time in hours and hours of 'fantasy worlds` still do and still love it.
Back then the fantasy was from books, I read voraciously, still do. I enjoyed the 'role play' that you seem to think is a bad thing:-) Getting me to put the book down to have meals, do whatever it was my Mam wanted me to do must have driven Mam crazy.
My grandchildren do both the traditional fantasy worlds like Granny did, and the more modern versions using technology. They have fun with both.
I'd probably have done the same had it been available but back then my only brush with technology arrived (for us) in the 1960s in the form of a very small tv screen Again my imagination was captured (though books stlll remained a favourite) , it was different to my book fantasy worlds, people moved and talked!
I'm never quite comfortable reading 'generalisations' about any easily identifiable section of society, be it young folk, old folk, any section that doesn't totally conform to whatever demographic we are trying to say is 'better'.
In any one section there will be shining examples of either what we personally perceive as a 'good scenario' or what we perceive as a 'bad scenario'.
Boo
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A new topic "Inquisitions of Lunacy" about records in National Archives.
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=863656
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When one learns what some medieval women put on their bodies to make themselves "beautiful", there's no wonder mental health suffered:
"For flawless-looking skin, Renaissance noblewomen wore makeup containing white lead ore, vinegar, arsenic, hydroxide, and carbonate, applied to the face over egg whites. It gave them a silvery gleaming complexion, along with paralysis, madness, and death."
"..In the Elizabethan era, most Englishwomen imitated their queen, and so red hair was the height of fashion. Court ladies used a powder made of sulfur and safflower petals to color their wigs. Unfortunately, the sulfur was highly toxic and caused headaches, nausea, and nosebleeds. .."
"...For covering gray hair, the 1561 Italian bestseller, The Secrets of Signora Isabella Cortese, written by a female alchemist, recommended, “Take four or five spoons of quicklime in powder, two pennyworth of lead oxide with gold and two with silver, and put everything in a mortar and grind it in ordinary water; set it to boil as long as you would cook a pennyworth of cabbage; remove it from the fire and let it cool until tepid. And then wash your hair with it.” ..."
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/history/dying-to-be-beautiful-poisonous-cosmetics-in-medieval-times
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Some mental illnesses were industrial diseases. The Mad Hatter. Searching for a death of a particular ancestor, I found a burial of a man of the same name - he died in the county asylum and his occupation was hatter.
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Some mental illnesses were industrial diseases. The Mad Hatter. Searching for a death of a particular ancestor, I found a burial of a man of the same name - he died in the county asylum and his occupation was hatter.
Over the years I have learnt bits and bobs about old fashioned methods of manufacture but after reading this article about mental illness due to chemical dangers when making felt for hats I probably wouldn't have let my young children play with fuzzy felt !
https://www.history.com/news/where-did-the-phrase-mad-as-a-hatter-come-from
"...Researchers have suggested that Boston Corbett, a hat industry worker who killed John Wilkes Booth, President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, might’ve suffered from poor mental health due to mercury poisoning. Corbett, who’d been employed as a hat maker since he was a young man, became a religious zealot and in 1858 castrated himself with a pair of scissors ..."
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Poor mental health may also have run in families. While researching a branch of my family, I gradually discovered that 3 of the sisters had suffered from various forms of mental illness in the early 20th century. (None of the brothers apparently, but who knows?) I had known about one of them for some time, and knew she spent time in mental hospitals, and wondered if it was triggered by post natal depression - 4 children in quick succession and the early death of the first one.
One of her sisters died young and I recently discovered that she drowned in mysterious circumstances and had suffered from "mental depression" (1897). Finally a third sister also spent time in mental hospitals.