Althouse: "Women in every age group in the United States were more likely than men to have serious mental health problems..."

May 29, 2015

"Women in every age group in the United States were more likely than men to have serious mental health problems..."

"... according to federal health statistics released Thursday."

94 comments:

Meade said...: "Trans" is now "Total"?; 5/29/15, 8:48 AM
Hagar said...: What was the sex composition of the group making up these statistics?; 5/29/15, 8:51 AM
Darcy said...: HUH!; 5/29/15, 8:55 AM
MadisonMan said...: Data comes from face-to-face interviews.

I am suspicious of the claims, absent a good causal explanation.; 5/29/15, 8:57 AM
rhhardin said...: Some movie

Guy: What do women want?

Gal: I'll let you in on a secret. We don't know either.; 5/29/15, 8:58 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: "Pratt said she could not explain why women have higher rates of serious psychological distress."

Maybe because throughout our evolutionary history serious mental health problems in females have never been much of an impediment to getting laid.

That's my wildly speculative guess and I'm sticking to it!; 5/29/15, 8:59 AM
tim in vermont said...: I am suspicious of the claims, absent a good causal explanation.

Yeah, Kepler could never come up with one of those either, so everybody ignored him.; 5/29/15, 8:59 AM
tim in vermont said...: In fact, nobody is really sure what "causes" gravity.; 5/29/15, 8:59 AM
Scott said...: Back in college, when I thought I had a shot at being straight, I was dating a young woman (well, not so young) who had mental health issues. My Dad the psychiatrist advised me, "Son, always be a representative of reality!"

Representative of Reality. I want that on ball caps, tee shirts, and coffee mugs. Along with, "I'm codependent. May I help you?"; 5/29/15, 9:00 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men, which alone would account for the discrepancy. Add to that the fact that the ideas of what counts as mental illness have also been structured by men, and we might need to flip the discrepancy. Thesis: The data show that more men are mentally ill.; 5/29/15, 9:04 AM
Peter said...: I'd be suspicious of these statistics, as it seems probable that men would be less likely to admit to mental problems (just as they are less likely to seek professional help for mental problems) and thus would be less likely to be counted.

Just as one can't conclude that women are more inclined to suicide than men because, even though they are more likely to make some sort of attempt, men are far more likely to actually kill themselves.

Human behavior is complex; thus, quantitative measures of it can't be both simple and accurate.; 5/29/15, 9:07 AM
chickelit said...: Yeah, Kepler could never come up with one of those either, so everybody ignored him.

Wasn't Tycho Brahe the one ignored, with Kepler getting all the credit? At least Brahe had a "nose" for science.

PS, there's an analogous story in the Titius-Bode Law: I Must Be Bored; 5/29/15, 9:07 AM
rhhardin said...: Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men

The men are the sane ones.; 5/29/15, 9:08 AM
chickelit said...: Althouse hypothesized: Thesis: The data show that more men are mentally ill.

You could use that theory to support laws forcing men to pay more for healthcare while using less of it than women do.; 5/29/15, 9:10 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: " Thesis: The data show that more men are mentally ill."

That is because men have to deal with women all the time.

The snake eats its tail.

I am Laslo.; 5/29/15, 9:13 AM
Scott M said...: SJW's explained?; 5/29/15, 9:14 AM
Anonymous said...: "At least Brahe had a "nose" for science."

ISWYDT; 5/29/15, 9:17 AM
Anonymous said...: " Thesis: The data show that more men are mentally ill."

Old joke:

Why do most men die before their wives do?

Because they can.; 5/29/15, 9:18 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: The adult world is chock-full of high-functioning crazy people. I've dated and worked with many of them. There's nothing surprising about this study.; 5/29/15, 9:19 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "The men are the sane ones."

The insane are a subgroup within the set of persons who believe they are sane.; 5/29/15, 9:21 AM
Jim said...: "Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men" With all due respect, oh really?

Donner party. Fifteen members of the snowshoe party 10 men and 5 women. All 5 women survive. Eight men die.

Titanic. Of the crew 87% of the women survive; 22% of the men.

Nationally, men were 54% of the workforce in 2005. But, they represented 94% of all workplace fatalities.

Yes, it's a man's world.; 5/29/15, 9:21 AM
Kyzer SoSay said...: Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men

Of course we did. We fucking built it. Enjoy the fruits of our labor.; 5/29/15, 9:21 AM
Anonymous said...: "Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men"

Women have been voting for a century.

you sound just like the blacks blaming the plight of Detroit on white racism.

Just unbelievable stupidity on display.; 5/29/15, 9:28 AM
Gusty Winds said...: The data could be skewed depending on what week of the month they interviewed the women.; 5/29/15, 9:30 AM
Sebastian said...: "Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men"

Right. This must be why men have all the dangerous jobs, do most of the dying in wars, have lower life expectancy, are overrepresented on nearly all measures of serious dysfunction, freely share their inventions with women, fix everything that needs to be fixed so women can be comfortable, and pay more for women's disproportionate care, while saying the equivalent of "yes, dear" to women's interminable public whining.; 5/29/15, 9:33 AM
Anonymous said...: Oh, and that's not even mentioning the metric whereby almost every measurable statistic women were happier 40 to 50 years ago than now. Is that the fault of men too, Althouse?

how about you trying some facts some time, professor? Might be a good idea, regardless of how psychic you think your feelings are.; 5/29/15, 9:34 AM
Darcy said...: And women who (I believe) have benefitted from that structure have both decried it and taken advantage of it at the same time to serve their own interests. Wily.; 5/29/15, 9:35 AM
traditionalguy said...: Freud and friends noticed that rich men would pay a "Doctor" to take their crazy wives off their hands by using a Unconscious mental diagnosis saying they could help her defects if the rich family would pay the Doctor's bribes so he would would get her put away. Poor Hillary has spent her life with Bill getting rid of her by a Baby Boomer fantasy that she will change society. Bill laughs.; 5/29/15, 9:37 AM
Rocketeer said...: Thesis: The data show that more men are mentally ill.

See, what you just said right there is cray cray; 5/29/15, 9:39 AM
Anonymous said...: What's the gender breakdown for mental asylum commitment?; 5/29/15, 9:40 AM
George Grady said...: True story:

Tycho Brahe died of a burst bladder caused because he refused to breach etiquette during a formal banquet in Prague by leaving the table to relieve himself. He wrote his own epitaph: "He lived like a sage and died like a fool."; 5/29/15, 9:46 AM
Gusty Winds said...: Blogger Ann Althouse said...

Thesis: The data show that more men are mentally ill.

And then said...

The insane are a subgroup within the set of persons who believe they are sane.

As a woman setting forth the thesis that men are more mentally ill, assuming the thesis is based on a belief that women are more sane...

The thesis is immediately contradicted and disproven.; 5/29/15, 9:50 AM
Bob Ellison said...: That's a conjecture, not a thesis. It's probably true. Male humans tend to have a wider bell curve than female humans.; 5/29/15, 9:52 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: I doubt this 'statistic'. First, the difference is not that large but more importantly women are more likely to seek mental health services than men. Men self-treat their problems with alcohol/drugs and/or reckless behavior. It is my experience that women generally have better social networks than men, which helps them deal better with crises like divorce/death etc.; 5/29/15, 9:53 AM
Anonymous said...: Is that why they keep voting for Democrats?

Is that why they support Grifter Hillary?; 5/29/15, 9:54 AM
William said...: Whatever the level of virulence, mental illness is far more contagious when hosted by a female rather than a male.; 5/29/15, 9:54 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: I'm suspicious of the findings. In my experience, the percentage of women is much higher.; 5/29/15, 9:57 AM
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...: All I know is that out of all the dysfunctional couples I've seen on "Naked and Afraid", it's almost always the woman who turns out to be crazy. But that's a rather small sample.; 5/29/15, 9:58 AM
Bob Ellison said...: AReasonableMan, good points.; 5/29/15, 9:58 AM
Rick said...: It would be an interesting experiment to post some bit of social science generally interpreted negatively to men and then determine if there's a difference in the posters who challenge the results.; 5/29/15, 10:03 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Ann Althouse said...Thesis: The data show that more men are mentally ill.

Well we can all agree that mentally ill men aren't the backbone of society, so I understand why you wouldn't be impressed with their whinings, either way.; 5/29/15, 10:03 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Bushman of the Kohlrabi, it's always the woman who turns out to be crazy. That's why we love them.; 5/29/15, 10:05 AM
clint said...: I may have spent way too much time reading things like Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (essentially how to avoid the worst pitfalls in creating charts and graphs -- with lots of "don't do this" examples) back in grad school.

My first impression was: Why the heck do they display the "total" in that plot -- it's obviously going to be halfway between the other two every single time. The information on the plot is in the other two bars.

All of my non-snarky thoughts agree 100% with:
" Peter said...
I'd be suspicious of these statistics, as it seems probable that men would be less likely to admit to mental problems (just as they are less likely to seek professional help for mental problems) and thus would be less likely to be counted.

Just as one can't conclude that women are more inclined to suicide than men because, even though they are more likely to make some sort of attempt, men are far more likely to actually kill themselves.

Human behavior is complex; thus, quantitative measures of it can't be both simple and accurate."; 5/29/15, 10:05 AM
James Pawlak said...: Hormones; 5/29/15, 10:07 AM
Anonymous said...: Have you tried walking around campus carrying a psychiatrist's couch on your back?; 5/29/15, 10:08 AM
Gahrie said...: Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men

Oh please!

This is such bullshit.

But of course..

women = good

men = bad (unless you're gay); 5/29/15, 10:09 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: ARM said... First, the difference is not that large but more importantly women are more likely to seek mental health services than men. Men self-treat their problems with alcohol/drugs and/or reckless behavior. It is my experience that women generally have better social networks than men, which helps them deal better with crises like divorce/death etc.

Yes, those are both excellent points, ARM, but remember men have structured the world to serve the interests of men, so those points have to be considered with the understanding that men WANT it that way. Sure men successfully commit suicide at a rate several times women's, but women self report serious mental health problems at a somewhat higher rate than men. Remember: if things are bad for men, it's probably because of the bad structure men created (to serve the interests of men). If things are bad for women, it's probably because of the bad structure men created (to serve the interests of men) plus the direct bad acts of men.

Men: you're more mentally ill than you let on, and both the fact and the misunderstanding are your fault.; 5/29/15, 10:11 AM
bridgecross said...: Needy feminazi bullhockey. Snap out of it.; 5/29/15, 10:38 AM
Ann Althouse said...: A thesis is (OED): "A proposition laid down or stated, esp. as a theme to be discussed and proved, or to be maintained against attack (in Logic sometimes as distinct from hypothesis n. 2, in Rhetoric from antithesis n. 3a); a statement, assertion, tenet."

I don't have to discuss and prove it for it to be a thesis. I'm just laying it down. You can discuss it if you want.; 5/29/15, 10:39 AM
Kyzer SoSay said...: We discussed it, Ann. It's incorrect. Try again. Extra credit if you can find the flaw in your own thinking.; 5/29/15, 10:51 AM
Laura said...: "Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men."

My mother worked in a climate-controlled hospital. My father worked in a machine shop, which had periodic layoffs.

They both came home from work tired, but his overalls would bear salt trails from the migration of his sweat. He was greeted with a nightly "evaluation" of his body odor and instructions to bathe immediately.

Her latest mantra is that she worked more years than he did. The eyewitness to the abuse he took from younger coworkers before his medical retirement will soon die from mesothelioma. I bite my tongue, wishing that my father and her peers who would challenge this pettiness were still alive. If I chose to unleash it with mental health professionals in the vicinity, she might finally be diagnosed.

But you're probably right. The machine shed did have a fan. And those men repairing the highway get cheerfully colored vests and steel-toed shoes.; 5/29/15, 10:58 AM
David said...: Large portions (perhaps most) of our beliefs are delusions. We delude ourselves constantly, and only occasionally acknowledge how delusive we have been. We call these events "mistakes" or see them as wrongs inflicted by others. When so many people are deluded by so much so often, just who has standing to decide when and if others are crazy?; 5/29/15, 11:07 AM
~ Gordon Pasha said...: Anatomy is destiny?; 5/29/15, 11:09 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Laura said...
My mother worked in a climate-controlled hospital. My father worked in a machine shop.

Having worked summers in machine shops I have up close and personal experience with how tough this work can be. You now find men working in hospitals/clinics that you would not have once found there. Tattooed, large manly men working traditional female jobs in air conditioned comfort. In a sense these men have wised up to the prevailing situation, nonetheless my sexist brain doesn't feel that this is the ideal way to deal with these disparities in working conditions.; 5/29/15, 11:10 AM
chickelit said...: Jim wrote:

Donner party. Fifteen members of the snowshoe party 10 men and 5 women. All 5 women survive. Eight men die.

Titanic. Of the crew 87% of the women survive; 22% of the men.

Nationally, men were 54% of the workforce in 2005. But, they represented 94% of all workplace fatalities.

Yes, it's a man's world.

5/29/15, 9:21 AM
____________________

"Males are the disposable sex" from "The Myth Of Male Power"; 5/29/15, 11:10 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Ann Althouse said...I don't have to discuss and prove it for it to be a thesis

Do debate teams have cheerleaders?

Your theses/ are feces / your arguments are shit
Your comment/ makes us vomit / you really should just quit

I'm not Laslo, but who is?; 5/29/15, 11:17 AM
exhelodrvr1 said...: And there is no reason to doubt the data in this type of report.; 5/29/15, 11:19 AM
President-Mom-Jeans said...: But women never lie about rape. Except for Paul Jones, who Bitchtits Mahal has explained to us was a whore at a keg party and was asking for it.; 5/29/15, 11:22 AM
Skyler said...: Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"The men are the sane ones."

"The insane are a subgroup within the set of persons who believe they are sane."

Says the woman. Maybe she's crazy too? :); 5/29/15, 11:29 AM
Skipper said...: Considering just about everything is a mental illness now, where's the surprise?; 5/29/15, 11:30 AM
jr565 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/29/15, 11:30 AM
jr565 said...: Does this data include women who aren't born with vaginas? Or would it include biological women who go on to have their vaginas fashioned into penises?; 5/29/15, 11:32 AM
jr565 said...: Yes, feminism is a mental disorder. So, I guess that skews the statistics.; 5/29/15, 11:34 AM
Anonymous said...: Women have the joys of menopause and pregnancy with their attendant hormonal changes.
That's why seemingly intelligent older women can, for example, vote for someone without experience or even a clear personal history, for POTUS.; 5/29/15, 11:42 AM
Kyzer SoSay said...: jr565 @ 11:34

Now THERE'S a thesis I can get behind. In fact, I think you proposed and proved it in the same 2 sentences.; 5/29/15, 11:51 AM
chickelit said...: AReasonableMan
In a sense these men have wised up to the prevailing situation, nonetheless my sexist brain doesn't feel that this is the ideal way to deal with these disparities in working conditions.

Nonsense. You just bought into the notion that immigrant men should do these jobs. You enable it by your political choices. Plenty of Republican voters do the same thing except they prefer to erode the higher tech sector with their political choices.; 5/29/15, 11:52 AM
n.n said...: Pro-choice. The cognitive dissonance must be deafening. The collateral damage caused by the use of selective principles during the gender/sexual equivalence revolution can be measured in an unprecedented loss of life, relationships, and mental health.; 5/29/15, 11:59 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: chickelit said...
You just bought into the notion that immigrant men should do these jobs. You enable it by your political choices.

Wrong on both counts.; 5/29/15, 12:00 PM
Darcy said...: @n.n. Oh my gosh, yes. Great point.; 5/29/15, 12:01 PM
Sam L. said...: Given what women are told by other women, I would think so.; 5/29/15, 12:08 PM
chickelit said...: A commenter in a previous thread noted the uptick in banker suicides. Just wanted to note that these all seem to be men (based on their names).; 5/29/15, 12:28 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: I personally don't think that the statistics mirror reality, and will postulate that the big difference between the sexes here is that males are not allowed by society or hormones to show weakness, while females are expected to be self-indulgent and even narcissistic.

I just got off the phone with a guy whom I have nkown for more than 50 years. He mentioned suicide more than once. But I seriously doubt that he would admit to being crazy, Or having mental health issues. And he is not the only guy I know who does have problems, but won't admit them to anyone. That is just how most men are. I think that there are two parts to this. One is that admission of problems is a weakness, that we mostly won't admit to. And esp around other males. And, secondly, we are taught/wired to always be the strong one, not admitting weakness.; 5/29/15, 12:46 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/29/15, 12:46 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: "Women have the joys of menopause and pregnancy with their attendant hormonal changes"

And for many of them, eventually they have the horror of realizing what they did when they had an abortion.; 5/29/15, 12:58 PM
Anonymous said...: The prof is just projecting. Women tend to brazenly promote their own interests, so they just assume men are just as selfish.

Cruel neutrality, at least until it's Team Woman time!; 5/29/15, 1:02 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: It's "hysteria." It comes from the uterus somehow.; 5/29/15, 1:03 PM
chickelit said...: @Terry: "Estrogen" is rooted in passion and fury. I admit I don't get the gadfly part.; 5/29/15, 1:09 PM
jr565 said...: Women often have an excuse they use to get out of charges they are insane.its that time of the month you see. so even they are suggesting that women are prone to bouts of insanity. They excuse though falls apart when these same women are also insane when it's not that time of the month.; 5/29/15, 1:21 PM
David said...: I clicked through to see how far down I had to go to see "bitches be crazy", and discovered that I'm apparently a bad, bad person.; 5/29/15, 1:54 PM
Gahrie said...: I prefer to use the traditional and descriptive term:

hysterical.; 5/29/15, 2:26 PM
Doug said...: Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men, which alone would account for the discrepancy.
Why did women let them do a thing like that?; 5/29/15, 3:36 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I read a horror novel where the bad guy was a witch. She had gotten her powers by using her umbilical cord to strangle her twin sister in the womb. To kill people, she would create a gollum out of her menstruum and send it out to murder them.
Makes my balls shrivel up just to think of it.; 5/29/15, 3:54 PM
Bob Ellison said...: There should be distinctions among hypotheses, theses, conjectures, theories, and just-made-up crapjectures.

A thesis is something that has something behind it. I don't care what Oxford says. A thesis is an argument with weight. It's not just a load of crap.; 5/29/15, 4:24 PM
chickelit said...: A thesis is something that has something behind it. I don't care what Oxford says. A thesis is an argument with weight. It's not just a load of crap.

You are right, Bob. In the hard sciences (e.g., chemistry), a thesis is something that's already been tested and is defended. A hypothesis is something yet to be tested--it's the usual starting point.

Patent lawyers may see a similarity in the legal concepts of "conception" and "reduction to practice" with regards to "invention."; 5/29/15, 4:37 PM
tim in vermont said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/29/15, 4:39 PM
Moneyrunner said...: Someone certainly has a high opinion of their opinion; 5/29/15, 8:35 PM
Moneyrunner said...: "I took his note, read it, and to this day, I can remember just what I said to that Man: "That's not how you spell ‘fellatio.’"; 5/29/15, 8:42 PM
Moneyrunner said...: Emma Sulkowicz and Lena Dunham. Female icons. Discuss. http://www.bookwormroom.com/2015/05/21/feminist-claims-about-rape-victimize-women-just-as-surely-as-the-mcmartin-trials-victimized-children/; 5/29/15, 9:06 PM
Moneyrunner said...: More evidence evidence to ponder: Major of Baltimore Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Marilyn Mosby. Both are law school graduates. Coincidence?; 5/29/15, 9:14 PM
Moneyrunner said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/29/15, 9:17 PM
Moneyrunner said...: In 2008 law school professor Ann Althouse voted for Obama and didn't see this coming. Today she wants to discuss mental illness.; 5/29/15, 9:18 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Men have structured the world to serve the interests of men, which alone would account for the discrepancy.

What a ridiculous comment. Around which "interests" have men structured the world (or just the world of mental health care) and how would women structure either of those differently?

Add to that the fact that the ideas of what counts as mental illness have also been structured by men, and we might need to flip the discrepancy.

More crapola. Show us a single piece of evidence that presents female psychiatrists as desiring different mental illness categories than psychiatry as a whole or male psychiatrists endorse.; 5/30/15, 3:19 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Guys, she's just trolling. Let's punish her attention whoring by ignoring it. Maybe we should try that more often.; 5/30/15, 7:35 PM
chickelit said...: Guys, she's just trolling.

Perhaps Althouse is trying to get men to rethink social intercourse--to get away from penetrating insights and to move towards being more open and receptive to new ideas which aren't their own. /feminism; 5/30/15, 7:49 PM