More American Worries

Went back to work again this week and the more I sit and listen the more I have to worry about.  My patients are the least of my worries.  They come for help.  Most of them have a good idea of what is wrong and they are trying to get their lives together, many from very chaotic situations, crazy families, and a tough economy.

But it is what my patients tell me about what is happening with their families, extended families and communities that worries me more.  There is such a growing number of people who are slipping away.  There are more and more people who can't function well in this world as it becomes faster and more complex.

Much of it is the result of all the new technology, the globalization, the recession, and the deterioration of families and the educational structure.

There are three kinds of populations that are really not doing well and they have very little hope of improvement.  They will become increasingly expensive to society and no one seems to have a real workable approach to solving these problems.

The first group has always been there but now there are more of them; the poor, minorities, unskilled, learning disabled, and left out.  These people are now unemployed all over the world.  More and more places are looking like India with some very rich people, and many more very poor.

Now there is a second group that had been a rung above the forever under-class.  Now there are more mainstream people who had been working but are no longer needed.  The older ones, who worked for twenty to forty years in jobs that have been made obsolete by technology, or out sourced, are just lost and depressed.  But there are many younger people who never really found a place, never really learned how to work hard, and have kind of faded to the side.  They are home playing video games, they are taking too many drugs, they are often angry and causing trouble, they are having children they don't know how to take care of.  These are from places and families that were doing OK before, but now many of them can't keep up, can't find a way to really be independent.

There is also a third group that is under the radar, and very difficult to talk about without sounding mean.  These people didn't exist fifty years ago, but they do now, and they are very expensive.  They are people who would not be alive except for the fantastic progress in medical care.  Some of them were pre-mature births, some were from in-vitro multiple births, some were kept alive by amazing interventions, and others have illness that were previously fatal but now medicine can keep people alive, but not really very healthy.

I don't mean to imply that these people shouldn't be alive, or that they don't appreciate all that has been done for them, but there are many more like them who are in pain, have severe learning disabilities, ADHD, and other major handicaps.  Many of these people can't work, and they begin to get disability payments and complex, expensive medical treatment at an early age, and while it is good to have them around, and their families mostly love and care for them, it is very expensive and very time consuming.

As of right now, I don't have an answer for all of this.  It will probably take more than just me working on it to solve these problems.  But they are here, and they are getting worse, and no one is really paying attention to the magnitude of the problem.

Tech 6, Past, Present and Future -- 1

 What is written below I wrote to post on a list for psychologists:  I am putting it up here too because, if I get off my ass, I expect to use this space to see if I can explain what I am talking about in a way that makes sense.  Almost everything runs differently in the world now than when I grew up. In most ways, the people in it are the same creatures they have always been, but it is still very unclear how we will all live and prosper peacefully, as the result of all these changes.



When I began to write this post I tried to explain the reasoning behind all my thinking. After about 4000 words I decided I may have to write that all for a different forum.  But here are some bullet points.

After all the screaming about debt ceilings and deficits is over in Washington, The USA will still be left with an uncertain economy, and the major difficulty that will remain is from high unemployment.

The underlying causes of the current high unemployment is not from the Democrats or Republicans, it is from  major changes in how the world works. 

The two biggest ones are globalization and, even more so from technology.  Every profession, and I use that word in its broadest sense,  in the world today is performed differently than it was even ten years ago because of technology.  Many professions have completely disappeared.  Many jobs in the professions that remain have been eliminated, and are no longer necessary.

We are living in a world that could produce all that needs to be produced by employing about half the people who are working now.  About 120 years ago 75% of American were farmers.  Today that number is 2%.  That is what is happening is many other professions.

Our job, which did not really exist during the last time of great unemployment, is probably one of the ones that is least impacted by technology.  We base our skills on dealing directly with people, not machines.

But we, in our profession, are going to have to deal with this increase in unemployment, underemployment, and with those who have jobs, but are pushed to the breaking point by their employers who know that people are desperate to keep their jobs.

Those hardest hit by this change are men, and mostly men who are not that educated.  Those are men who had jobs in manufacturing or in the trades.  The trades held up well during the housing boom, but now that too, is over.

A rise in long-term unemployment of middle and working class men will result in a domino effect of bad things:  depression leading to anger, leading to domestic violence, divorce, poverty, fatherless kids, addictions, lawlessness, and then more unemployed men.  This will be even more true for the less educated and racial minorities.  It is also effecting non-specialized recent college graduates, who have $70 or more in student loans and can only find work for $12 an hour.

We will see an increase in helplessness and hopelessness that may be labelled as psychiatric disorders but is really much more the result of social factors and global changes than it is an kind of inter-psychic or biological disorder.

There will be a much greater demand for treatment from people who will not be able to afford it.  The treatment will be much more difficult because many of the factors that underlie  the difficulties are way beyond the control of any therapist.

Perhaps I will be proven wrong, and things will improve and the advances in technology will somehow offer a way to keep everyone earning a living.
But, from what I am seeing in my own practice, what I have been reading, and even what I am hearing from my friends, the entire world economy is being restructured, and how this will effect this generation and the ones that follow is far from clear.