Meanwhile, on campus, an 2000 American College Health Association survey reported that 76 percent of students felt "overwhelmed" while 22 percent were sometimes so depressed they could not function.
We have less time to call our own, with more things to worry about. Meanwhile, our sense of community is vanishing. In "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Harvard Professor Robert Putnam cites precipitous declines in memberships in traditional civic and social organizations as evidence of a society becoming unglued.
Are we becoming our strangers in our own land? Certainly, the stress of modern life has forced many of us to rethink how we conduct our lives, from scaling back our careers to being highly-selective about the company we keep.
But way too many of us are denied the opportunity to make these compromises, in the first place. According to a 2000 Stanley Bipolar Network Foundation study, despite the fact that approximately 90 percent the bipolar patients in the sample surveyed had high school diplomas and a third had completed college, almost 65 percent were unemployed and 40 percent were on welfare or disability. Only one-third of the patients in the study were married.
Lives wasted. Hopes dashed. Even in all but the most brutal of agrarian societies the statistics have to be much better than that. Even in all but the most impoverished of communities, those who share our genes must feel a greater sense of belonging. Medications can only modify a few chemical actions in the brain. They can't change the society we are forced to live in.
So is mental illness an industrial disease? There is no definitive answer, but you already know where I stand.
