As a society, we must decide how to balance power and profits with the well-being of our people and communities.
In my previous column, “The health care crisis and the ‘ghost quartet'”, I explored the lucrative model of using the chemical/agricultural complex and the ultra-processed food industry to make us sick and then paying pharmaceutical and health care businesses to make us well.
In Part 2, I will explore a similar business model but from a mental health perspective. And this time, the enablers are cellphones, social media and, prospectively, artificial intelligence.
“More than 1 in 5 US adults live with a mental illness,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Over 1 in 5 youth (ages 13-18) either currently or at some point during their life, have had a seriously debilitating mental illness.”
According to an article from the Children’s Hospital Association, “Approximately 2 million adolescents attempt suicide each year. Among U.S. pediatric deaths, more than a quarter are by suicide. It’s the second leading cause of death in children and young adults ages 10-14, causing more death than any single illness and second only to unintentional injuries.”
We adults are not well and neither are our young people. Why?
Survey data tells us that 42% of U.S. children have a smartphone by age 10, while 91% own one by 14. Research studies indicate that young girls ages 16-24 spend seven and a half hours a day on internet-connected devices, while boys the same age spend seven hours on such devices.
By comparison, when television first came into our house in 1955, we were strictly limited as to what we could watch. As children, we could watch “the Mickey Mouse Club” daily at 5 p.m. As we entered our teens, we were allowed to watch “GE Theater with Ronald Reagan” and then “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”
The TV was otherwise off unless my parents were watching a news and weather show, although we usually got our practical information from WDEV Radio AM in Waterbury or the local News & Citizen. The only other communication technology at the time, landline phones, was used for necessary calls as well as staying in touch with friends and family — which did include some gossip — and, by us kids, for entertainment as we were on a five-party line.
But the past is history and, as I noted in a prior column, the issue of cellphones being brought into our schools is coming rapidly to the fore. Approaches to limiting children’s time spent in front of a glowing screen vary widely. Most agree that they’ve become a serious distraction from classroom learning. While some schools adopt a laissez-faire attitude, others believe prohibition is the best cure — zero, or strictly supervised, access. Most are somewhere in between.
To further complicate things, parents and teachers may disagree. Teachers and school boards debate the issue, but most psychologists agree that unmanaged time online in front of a screen is injurious to young people’s well-being.
Human engagement with others is the natural order of things, especially when it comes to child development. The importance of unsupervised play among children has long been understood to be a positive factor in developing a healthy adult. Play allows children to use their creative instincts while developing their imagination; dexterity; and physical, cognitive and emotional strengths. It’s vital to healthy brain development. Through play children engage and interact in the world around them.
Not only are cellphones isolating, they are the portal to a world of damage for children. In February, the Vermont Women’s Caucus hosted Laura Marquez-Garrett with Jonathan Haidt’s research assistant Zach Rausch. Their presentation laid out chapter and verse of all the dangers to young people of unrestricted online access.
Among the most horrific is the online availability of a guide showing how to make money using sextortion and blackmail, according to the BBC. Sextortion and its outcomes are explained in a recent article in the Guardian.
A recent issue of Rolling Stone published a deep-dive piece by Paul Solotaroff on Snapchat alleging that the app is fueling a teen drug-overdose epidemic across the country.
Meanwhile, many schools in Vermont are grappling with cellphone and social media issues and the damage they cause to their pupils and classroom culture. S.284 would have banned cellphones and accessing social media on school property. Inexplicably, Health Commissioner Mark Levine opposed the bill.
Levine’s national counterpart, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, announced on June 17 that his office would call for a warning label for all social media platforms, similar to warnings on cigarette packaging.
Next in the “ghost quartet,” we have questions emerging around artificial intelligence. The jury is out on whether generative artificial intelligence will do more harm than good to our families, economies and societies. It’s an open and haunting question.
Based on some 200 interviews over the past 12 months with top executives at leading AI companies, cybersecurity researchers, weapons of mass destruction experts and national security officials, a report commissioned by the State Department calls the risks to U.S. national security “catastrophic” and warns that “time is running out for the federal government to avert disaster.”
It concludes that, at its worst, “AI could pose an extinction-level threat to the human species.”
At the human level, AI is creating digital companions for the lonely. A recent piece in The Guardian explored the full extent of how deeply AI can replace human interaction. The stories are terrifying to this writer, who believes in the positive power of human engagement.
From that piece: “Along with the high cost of use, the issues with generative AI have been well documented. Cybercrime experts warn that AI’s intersection with dating apps could lead to increased catfishing, usually for a sense of connection or financial gain. There is also the risk that over-using these systems could damage our capabilities for human-to-human interactions, or create a space for people to develop toxic or abusive behaviours. One 2019 study found that female-voiced AI assistants such as Siri and Alexa can perpetuate gender stereotypes and encourage sexist behaviour. Reports have documented cases where AI companion technology has exacerbated existing mental health issues. In 2023, for instance, a Belgian man killed himself after Chai Research’s Eliza chatbot encouraged him to do so. In an investigation, Business Insider generated suicide-encouraging responses from the chatbot.”
Cheery stuff!
On to pharma. The National Institute of Health published an analysis of the influence of pharmaceutical companies in promoting their products for the treatment of mental health issues, noting that research data indicates that person-to-person psychotherapy is significantly more effective at treating anxiety and depression than are antidepressant medications.
Research from Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital’s Dr. Christopher Palmer calls into question the definition of “mental illness” as currently used but fully acknowledges the “symptoms” of mental illness, by differentiating between symptoms and diagnoses.
The research focuses on metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunctions that eventuate in symptoms of mental disorders. This calls into question pharma’s dictionary definition of mental health disorders that potentiates lucrative markets for new — and often questionable drugs — in lieu of interpersonal counseling.
Meanwhile patients with symptoms such as anxiety disorder, depression and even bipolar disorder have seen recovery when their diets are changed, hinting at a relationship between what is still conventionally called “mental illness” and the wide use of chemical soil amendments that underlie an industrial ultra-processed food system. This research has given rise to the science of psycho-nutrition.
The fourth element in our “ghost quartet: part 2” remains the health care industry, which will try and make you well again if you can access it or afford it. Prices range from $10,000 to $60,000 a month for most psychiatric care facilities, Medicare and Medicaid do not cover the cost for most residential treatment facilities. The average cost to visit with a psychotherapist is $100 -$200 an hour.
Safe to say that the lucrative recovery business done right is beyond the financial capacity of the average American who earned just shy of $60,000 annually in 2023.
So, here we have the “ghost quartet” again — charge them to get sick and then charge them again to get well.
I apologize for the dark, apocalyptic vision laid out here and in Part 1, but as a society, we must decide how to balance power and profits with the well-being of our people and communities. We can have both, but it will require us to initiate regulatory policies that balance and enable both.
