Poverty and mental health present a classic “chicken and the egg” conundrum. Does mental illness hamper economic success? Or do financial failures threaten one’s mental well-being?
Those are the questions a multinational group of researchers sought to answer with a groundbreaking study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. And the short answer is, yes. The two aren’t just linked; they’re part of a causal relationship.
“This study indicates that certain mental health problems can make a person’s financial situation uncertain,” Amsterdam UMC psychiatrist Marco Boks said. “But conversely, we also see that poverty can lead to mental health problems.”
I literally have PTSD from a decade of struggling in extreme poverty and can’t sleep most nights, I can’t look forward to anything and can’t enjoy anything because everything feels like it can be lost or taken away at any moment, and instead of enjoying good moments, I can only fixate on things that can go wrong and things that could help me if I lose everything. Again.
I’ve been in and out of therapy for this and for other issues, and have gotten a lot better but this is permanent scarring, if you’ve been harmed by society, that harm lasts as strong and as real as actual physical wounds.
Can we count wealth hoarding as a mental illness though?
Mendelian randomization does not a causal claim justify. It’s almost certainly the case that poverty causes mental illness, but this study’s design does not permit causal inference.
thank you bayes 😘
Somehow, living a stressful life of uncertainty causes mental strain 🤔 good to have actual evidence to back it up though.
So my I’ve been watching this Tidy Your Life show on CBC
Probably 80% of the people who are hoarder types come from poverty and they grew up with very little, so they can’t stand to throw things away and the clutter overwhelms their life and things get worse.
But it’s all very logical — you don’t know what you’re going to need but don’t have, so you need to hold on to all these random things, or you see a deal and you might need it later.
That’s just one vignette into people’s lives, but yeah, poverty is mentally awful.
I never lived in poverty but my mom and grandmother did, and I feel huge shame when food expires and I have to throw it out.
I for one am SHOCKED
And, is the therapy working?
Therapy costs money
And just because you get a therapist doesn’t mean that you got the right therapist, or a good therapist, or a therapist that is capable of helping you deal with the issues that you’re going to therapy for.
Therapists are human beings and therefore fallible, and the systems that enable access to therapy are designed by human beings and therefore fallible, and many, many people fall through the cracks.
Saving you a click: mutually causative, but there are so many forms of mental illness so it’s complicated. The full article and study are worth the read if you’re interested.
Its actually fascinating that theres a causative link. This article doesn’t even come close to diving into the other ways in which capitalism makes us mentally unwell eg: consumerism, attention economy, isolation, etc. I think we will look back on these years of capitalism just as we now look back on feudalism.
Important to note there’s a false positive and false negative rate.
It’s entirely possible it does and the study simply never picked it up. Or it’s possible wealth drives this higher and so the power needed to pick it up for poverty reasons is higher.
Or it’s possible wealth drives this higher and so the power needed to pick it up for poverty reasons is higher.
Wdym by this part?
In a statistical test the power is the ability of a test to detect a true effect.
If you have a sample of N and a type of test, you can say “if there’s a real effect, it has to be this big to for this test to find it 80% of the time”.
Studies use power to plan their sample sizes, but power is also influenced by the variables you’re measuring. If two groups are very similar, you need more people to find a difference, so the same test is said to have lower power.
So what I mean here is that if both wealth and poverty increase anorexia, then it’s more difficult to demonstrate that poverty causes it, because more people have it overall.
It just means it’s harder to show a statistical relationship.
That makes sense. Thank you for the thorough explanation. Did you review the data and notice that anomaly, or are you just saying its possible, in general?
I did not, no, just speculation
What about the epstein class cannibal psychopaths? What’s wrong with them?
They grew up with a low protein diet.
I read this thread title 4 times before I finally saw it said poverty and not poultry. The chicken and egg line made some sense with my misreading…
If you’re rich, it’s called “eccentric”
But poverty lowers the risk of anorexia nervosa.
That’s interesting.
Hymn of Breaking Strain, Kipling
1 The careful text-books measure (Let all who build beware!) The load, the shock, the pressure Material can bear. So, when the buckled girder Lets down the grinding span, The blame of loss, or murder, Is laid upon the man. Not on the Stuff—the Man! 2 But in our daily dealing With stone and steel, we find The Gods have no such feeling Of justice toward mankind. To no set gauge they make us— For no laid course prepare— And presently o’ertake us With loads we cannot bear: Too merciless to bear.
3 The prudent text-books give it In tables at the end– The stress that shears a rivet Or makes a tie-bar bend— What traffic wrecks macadam— What concrete should endure— But we, poor Sons of Adam Have no such literature, To warn us or make sure! 4 We hold all Earth to plunder— All Time and Space as well— Too wonder-stale to wonder At each new miracle; Till, in the mid-illusion Of Godhead 'neath our hand, Falls multiple confusion On all we did or planned— The mighty works we planned. 5 We only of Creation (Oh, luckier bridge and rail!) Abide the twin damnation—
To fail and know we fail. Yet we–by which sure token We know we once were Gods— Take shame in being broken However great the odds— The Burden or the Odds. 6 Oh, veiled and secret Power Whose paths we seek in vain, Be with us in our hour Of overthrow and pain; That we–by which sure token We know Thy ways are true— In spite of being broken, Because of being broken, May rise and build anew. Stand up and build anew!Can totally see this. The worse someones financial situation the more they resort to magical thinking type things.
People believe in magical thinking at all income levels.
yes. all of human behavior exists at all levels within all people to some degree or another but some situations will exacerbate a particular thing.
Damn, looking down on people trying to cling to whatever out they can find isn’t a good look
You’re really reaching for the worst interpretation of this guy, I don’t see where he was passing judgement. Who buys lottery tickets or donates to televangelists? It’s an observation about how those without hope are vulnerable to exploitation, and vaguely shitting on it with unparseable grammar isn’t a great look for you
Whelp didn’t notice the typo, so I guess thanks for pointing that out. I feel like they are blaming the victim a bit still though.
whatever. I have experienced it. Once you have no practical way of effecting something you have no choice but to rely on hope, luck, faith, whatever. None of it is going to change anything. Heck had these poor folks handing out prosperity doctrine pamphlets because they get hooked to think if they are just sincere enough in this faith they will get prosperity. Its some scary trump.
So you still look down on them for “magical thinking” even though you’ve experienced it? Isn’t that kinda blaming the victim?
well look. first off you are the one with the looking down on them thing. Im talking about a somewhat inescapable psychological issue with no win scenarios.
