The precentage of overweight people have increased in the last 50 years in America. The phenomenon is also visible across the world as people get richer and can afford more food.[/quote]
It’s a little more complex than that, but, yes, once societies get “rich” they develop pathologies. People have been getting generally sicker for 50 years. But, on the plus side, it’s generally good for the economy;)
American children is worse than it was 50 years ago: there’s an epidemic of anxiety and depression among the young; aggressive behavior and delinquency rates in young children are rising; and empathy, the backbone of compassionate, moral behavior, has been shown to be decreasing among college students.
“All of these issues are of concern to me as a researcher of moral development,” Narvaez says. “Kids who don’t get the emotional nurturing they need in early life tend to be more self-centered.
Rates of clinical depression have increased considerably since 1950. In America a survey of over 18,000 adults found that a person born between 1945 and 1955 was between three and ten times more likely to suffer a major depression before the age of 34 than a person born between 1905 and 1914. Another American study involving 19,000 people found that 20% of the total US population suffer from a mental illness (as defined by the psychiatric bible The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) during any given 12 months and that 32% will suffer at some point during their lifetime.
Rates of suicide have increased since 1950 – they have trebled in the UK since 1970. Crimes against the person have risen in the UK from 6,000 in 1950, to 239,000 in 1996. Alcohol and substance misuse have increased exponentially. Italy went from 343 registered heroin addicts in 1976 to 183,386 in 1991. The UK experience was similar: starting from a lower base the number of registered (N.B.) addicts in 1979 was 79, by 1990 this figure had reached 50,740. Add to this various other manifestations of mass neuroses; eating disorders and smoking (a particular problem in young women), road rage, air rage, the increasing incidence of violence towards shop staff, teachers, nurses and doctors and welfare officials, or indeed against anybody who gets in the way.Increasing numbers are incarcerated in prison, some 2 million in the United States alone.
