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Ah the age old, “I was successful despite setbacks, so literally everyone is capable of the same, just work harder like I did”. I grew up in a very wealthy town and many of my friends shared this opinion - until they volunteered or worked with actually disadvantaged kids. Young Jimmy can’t pull himself up by his bootstraps when dad is in jail and mom works 12 hour shifts at McDonald’s. School feeds him breakfast and lunch.

“Just work a little harder young jimmy, you can be successful despite not eating enough and having little parental guidance for the first 15 years of your life!” I did it just fine!

You see it as a race because you won. Many people are just trying to stay alive, they can’t even conceptualize competing.

>> My parents immigrated to a country with basically nothing and barely spoke English. I can't imagine what their lives were like, how hard it must have been. I was raised below the poverty line and had free lunch well into high school.

> Young Jimmy can’t pull himself up by his bootstraps when dad is in jail and mom works 12 hour shifts at McDonald’s. School feeds him breakfast and lunch.

I don't see the difference. It sounds like Jimmy is starting at the point the OP's parents did, not OP.

Isn't there a big difference between a child that still has to learn basic skills such as cooking and an adult that was taught this. One person compared to a couple?

> Ah the age old, “I was successful despite setbacks, so literally everyone is capable of the same, just work harder like I did”

This is totally not what davidn20 wrote.

Thank you

> Is it unfair? Fuck yea it is, but what are you going to do? Stay there and complain? Or are you gonna get busy running.

This is literally “pick yourself up by your bootstraps”. Get busy running is not a thing underprivileged kids can do.

Perhaps it even is "pick yourself up by your bootstraps and your kids' life might be better". Do you not see how that's different from "I was successful despite setbacks, so literally everyone is capable of the same, just work harder like I did"?

Undeprivileged kids can try harder or less hard, same as privileged kids can try harder or less hard. The starting position makes a huge difference. Whether one tries or not also makes a huge difference.

Yeah the point I make in my other reply is that hard work from a privileged kid results in success, but hard work from an underprivileged kid does not result in success, and likely will not result in their children’s success.

At its core it’s the difference between believing anyone can succeed and believing outside factors are much more impactful than working hard. In America it is often times a conservative b liberal mindset.

> Get busy running is not a thing underprivileged kids can do.

It's a thing privileged kids can afford not to do. Underprivileged kids absolutely have to get busy running to get anywhere.

You’re still missing the point. If I work $12/hr and that pays my rent, food, and not much more.. I literally can’t quit my job. I can’t go get an education because I can’t afford it. I can’t find a better job because everyone I’m surrounded by works near the minimum wage and I’m literally not aware of alternative options. Technically I could get a student loan from the gov, but I 100% do not know that option exists.

“Get Busy” sounds good when there is opportunity to improve. My point is that many people who are in a situation where working harder does not result in success. They do not have the tools, knowledge, access, etc to turn hard work into success.

As a result of his difficult home life "young jimmy" acts out at school. Whereas in the past he got sent to the principal's office, today he is sent to the community support officer. Young jimmy has a criminal record. Higher education is now off the table.

The OP had three advantages that many kids today dont: he had at least two parents. Those parents had no contact with the criminal justice system and were themselves in good health (evidenced by the fact they were allowed to immigrate). And his parents were probably allowed to work. Many young kids today dont have two parents. Many young kids have one or more parents who are not properly citizens, who dont enjoy the priviledge of being allowed to work legally.

Today is not yesturday. Poor kids today face much greater challenges than those of the past. Direct comparisons of situations are almost always apples and oranges.

> Poor kids today face much greater challenges than those of the past.

To believe this requires a baffling degree of historical ignorance.

Depends actually, it's pretty easy to see that boomer kids had way more opportunities than those of today. Depression era kids had it way worse of course.

The landed class loves watching poor folks compete.

It makes the poor more productive.

You just have to adjust monetary policy to maintain that status quo.

Of course, the opposite of that is true as well.

Ultimately the race isn't all about merit but also politics.

I think that’s what the top comment is saying. Every one starts the race with different set of disadvantages. In the end its up to you what are you going do about it.

Also OP never says that he won the race. He is hoping his children will do better than him. I don’t think anybody ever “wins”. You only trade something for something else.

So we just give up on the concept of equal opportunity since everyone starts out differently?

> In the end its up to you what are you going do about it.

This is the ideology I was arguing against since it comes purely from a view of someone successful. It assumes everyone is equally capable of “doing something”. But if you struggle to find your next meal, you can’t do anything besides.. Try to find food. There is no “doing something about it” because you are so disadvantaged that regardless of your action it’s impossible to escape.

In some cases you didn’t eat enough as a child and your brain is literally incapable of escaping. And you’ve never seen someone escape, so it’s not a known possibility.

From my perspective op won the race because he/she makes 100k so objectively isn’t poor and doesn’t have comparable hurdles.

There's also the causality direction in question. Are they parents richer in part because they are less likely to have psychological disorders? Hence the offspring is also more likely to have fewer psychological disorders?

In that scenario money is a correlated variable, and the root cause is somewhere else.

They adjusted “for the potential confounding effects of parental history of mental disorders...”

To quote:

"Adjustment for parental mental illness also likely represented an under-adjustment as most parental psychiatric disorders that were treated in outpatient clinics (without inpatient admission) were not recorded, and all of those that were treated in primary care (without inpatient or outpatient treatment) were unregistered. Furthermore, although register-based mental disorder diagnoses have been shown to have good validity [33, 34], not all mental disorders have been validated."

So if they exclude parental outpatient treated disorders, and exclude parental primary care treated disorders, all that seems to be left over is the rounding errors of self diagnosis and stays in mental hospitals, which would seem to be a huge issue for the conclusion.

The conclusion section doesn't seem to relate to the results section and discussion section, so that's weird.

I agree. I would expect genetics to be a fairly significant confounding variable.

Telling people with mental disorders to pick themselves up by the bootstraps because life is unfair is a bit ridiculous.

Let's define mental illness better. We don't lump all bumps, bruises, and broken bones into physical illness.

Yea, it's out of touch to tell someone with broken legs to walk it off. But, if someone got the wind knock out of them. That's perfectly fine advice.

In fact, I hope and believe the majority of mental illness cases are not serious. Like, most physical cases. It's just harder to see, so people have a harder time properly categorizing it. Which is damaging to a person psyche. If someone has a sprain ankle, but thinks they have cancer. Imagine the unnecessary trauma and hopelessness the person is experiencing.

>In fact, I hope and believe the majority of mental illness cases are not serious.

Who are you to decide the seriousness of a mental illness?

The study talks about mental illnesses that require "secondary care", i.e. the general practitioner is out of options and needs to refer the patient to a specialist. So not just "bumps and bruises".

Roughly 25% of these disorders are "broadly defined schizophrenia." Should we change that diagnosis so we can blame those suffering for their own failures?

Personally, I'd rather hope and strive to reduce the amount of people suffering from mental disorders rather then redefine them so they aren't "serious." Everyone should be entitled to the "resources and advantages" that prevent illness, not just the rich.

So, hospital for bumps and bruises, because they're just as serious as broken bones?

No, provide all the children with the safety equipment that limits both bruises and broken bones rather than only give it to the wealthy children.

I don't understand why people think I'm against helping people. I'm not. I'm not trying to shame anyone.

I'm simply saying, no matter your situation, do the best you can because that's what you have control over. Also, it's easier to change yourself, than to change the world. I mean if you're fighting to change the world, more power to you. I hope you succeed and make the world a fairer place.

>I'm simply saying, no matter your situation, do the best you can because that's what you have control over. Also, it's easier to change yourself, than to change the world

Again, you're telling this to people with mental disorders like schizophrenia. They don't necessarily have control over their disorder, and are unable to change themselves alone.

This is why it seems like you're shaming people. You both belittled their issues and are telling them to just get over them, like they haven't been trying all along.

> They don't necessarily have control over their disorder, and are unable to change themselves alone.

As someone who has dealt with serious, chronic health issues for a decade, I truly hate this attitude.

I don't necessarily have full control over my health issues, but I'll be damned if you tell me I am unable to take actions to change myself and my situation.

Yes, I much prefer messages that emphasize my personal agency, which your well-intentioned message actively denies.

This is a tight-rope to walk: sick people have limitations and one should acknowledge them, but repeatedly asserting their utter helplessness is also a form of shaming and encourages them to stop trying.

No one is encouraging sick people to stop trying.

They're trying to explain to relatively healthy and privileged people that blaming sick people for trying and failing is extremely unlikely to help them.

>As someone who has dealt with serious, chronic health issues for a decade, I truly hate this attitude

Do your chronic health issues alter the way your mind operates? If you believe that some external agent is inserting thoughts into your mind, how do you take control of such a situation?

That's an extreme example, but such issues are common with mental disorders. When your mind itself is ill, willpower alone doesn't necessarily cut it.

My health issues came along with significant cognitive effects, ones that significantly affected my career.

I can't speak towards schizophrenia specifically, but you work through mental health like any other obstacle: if it turns out to be an impassable mountain, then go around it.

This is what I hear in GGP's message, and it strongly resonates with my own experience.

One problem is some mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, can cause the victim to believe they are not ill under any circumstance, and because of that they will refuse treatment.

What can be done to work around self-deception?

First, GGP?

Can you imagine your situation being a little worse, so that no matter how hard you tried you couldn't find a path around it? Some people will end up in untenable situations, if you want a clearcut example consider a coma patient.

Great-grand-parent, to whom you were responding.

A couple of thoughts: of course some people will be in a hole so deep they cannot dig themselves out. But I suspect that is rarer than you expect (look at how we went from mental illness in general, to schizophrenia, now to coma patients).

Unless you’re intimately familiar with someone’s situation, how can you judge?

I’ve found it more helpful to focus on how one can succeed, whether for myself or loved ones.

>But I suspect that is rarer than you expect (look at how we went from mental illness in general, to schizophrenia, now to coma patients).

I think it's relatively common for people with mental illness to end up in a situation they themselves can't recover from, and my examples were hyperbolic as you seemed to deny the very existence of such people. They generally recover with help from those close to them, medical experts, and government support.

>Unless you’re intimately familiar with someone’s situation, how can you judge?

I don't need intimacy with anyone's situation, all I said was that some portion of the 30,000 incidents of mental illness could not control their disorders and would need help.

>I’ve found it more helpful to focus on how one can succeed, whether for myself or loved ones

I'm guessing my post was misunderstood, as here you seem to be trying to help others rather than forcing them to accomplish it by willpower alone.

The first post was using an article about mental illness to brag about their rags to riches story incidentally implying that mental disorders were a result of not trying hard enough.

This one is offering the much more woke opinion that life is like a patronizing disability porn hollywood movie that disordered people just can't change themselves alone. They need the help of the audience self-insert to unlock their special disabled potential.

You and the original article seem to be making two arguments that sound good in isolation but are incompatible.

You are saying that it's no good to advice people with severe mental health issues to do better if they are poor (fair), whereas the article says early poverty increases the chances of having these disorders (also fair). The causation in two arguments is reversed, however (poor -> mental disorder, mental disorder -> poor), and this is where the OP's argument fits, I think... you become more likely to develop mental disorders because of certain aspects of poverty (malnutrition? bad habits/lifestyle? etc.), however for someone who believes in personal responsibility, that may be to a significant degree because you "didn't do better".

Yeah, I hear and sympathize with you, but it's a bit of a truism and misses the point. If this was about lead poisoning, and not parental income, that leads to mental illness, wouldn't you want to fix the problem, rather than just say buck up?

> I'm not trying to shame anyone.

Yes, you are. “Most mental disorders are not that serious” is passive-aggressively stating that those suffering from something you consider to “not be serious” just aren’t working hard enough; that they’re lazy, not disabled.

The truth is, you can work as hard as you want, but if you’re not lucky as well, that work won’t propel you forward.

https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I <- Veritasium on luck vs hard work

>I hope and believe

Why write all this when you clearly don't know much about psychiatry and mental illness? This is some high lvl Dunning–Kruger posting.

> "In fact, I hope and believe the majority of mental illness cases are not serious."

Then your understanding of mental illness is very poor. For example, from Wikipedia, "In 2015, ... [suicide] was the second leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 34 and the third leading cause of death for those between the ages of 10 and 14." And, in comparison to treatments for common cancers, the successful treatment rate for many common mental illnesses is often quite low.

This is classic survival bias. You worked hard and succeeded, congrats. People work hard and don't succeed all the time. Their children don't deserve mental illness because of it.

>Their children don't deserve mental illness because of it.

an outcome doesn't have to be deserved in order to be obvious.

They don't deserve it, of course, but it's obvious that someone with less resources available to them will have worse health. They will have to work more hours to meet their basic needs, and the money left over will be used at places available to them -- far from the best the world has to offer.

It's not something anyone deserves, it's a consequence of limited care being prioritized by economy. It's a damn shame, but that's pretty largely applicable to all facets of living life.

Higher quality lifestyle/housing/food/travel, less work hours, less stress, better medical care and opportunities to seek care leads to better health versus someone with none of those advantages.

It's a well known phenomena across the health spectrum, and it's nice that it was quantified and linked in yet another way as it was in the article.

Agreed, I wasn't criticizing the study. I was criticizing OPs argument that people should simply "get busy running."

Blaming individuals for a lack of success when the deck is stacked against them is likely to lead to more mental health issues, not more success.

"A consequence of limited care being prioritized by economy" is exactly the problem.

And it is not a fact of life. It can be changed.

Ultimately this is a moral problem. You either care or you don't. If you don't - well, fine.

But don't complain when your family is being bankrupted and/or made homeless when you in turn receive "limited care being prioritized by the economy."

> Is it unfair? Fuck yea it is, but what are you going to do? Stay there and complain? Or are you gonna get busy running.

Keep in mind this study was talking about mental disorders. Many of those mental disorders will interfere will inhibit a person's ability to "get busy running."

It is also worth considering that this paper is not about a race with a meaningful measure of success, regardless of how you define success. There are measured outcomes, whether a person ends up with a mental disorder or not, based upon preconditions. It is not even clear whether training more and running faster will even help a person reach the finish line (which is presumably good mental health throughout life).

Your parents worked hard and what they did was amazing. With that said, getting free lunch at school gave you the help you needed. Plenty of research shows that free lunch at school makes a huge difference in a child's development and academic achievement.

This article is showing what other children needs. We should help them just like we helped you.

> Or are you gonna get busy running.

Can you describe what this means in the context of someone who has schizophrenia?

Sure, I feel like this is an authentic question and since people are misunderstanding me. I'll answer this, but then I'll leave this thread.

I can't speak from the context of someone who has schizophrenia because as far as I know I don't have it. So I'll speak more generally.

"Get busy running" is a mindset. It was a reference to "Get busy living" from Shawshank Redemption (Great movie). I don't know your situation, or how horrible it is to live with schizophrenia. I just hope there are still things you can control in your life. No matter how small or minuscules they seem, focus on that. Focus on the things you can do better.

There is nothing wrong with wanting help or helping other people. However, from the perspective of an individual(who is suffering/disadvantaged) it's a safer bet to focus on things you can control. So, yes, I am putting the ownership of your life, in your own hands. Isn't that empowering? I find it is. Also, it doesn't have to be alone. Maybe, the way to help yourself is you find people that can help you. Allowing people to help and accepting help is big.

No one asked for life. You're just given it. All the beauty and suffering. I said a race, but there is no finish line. You try or you don't. To everyone who is trying to make the world a better place. Thank you. I support you. I want the same thing. I'm trying to help in my own way. You might not agree, but that's okay.

lol I hate how philosophical and cheesy I sound, but that's what I feel.

Would you say the same to people with late stage cancer?

More or less. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

> I know people are going to talk about income inequality, but isn't this obvious? That it's better to be richer?

What is not obvious is that being poor in your childhood will, specifically, increase your risk of mental disorders. I would probably expect a poor kid to get less access to qualified education and, ultimately, be poorer for the rest of their life with respect to their richer peers. But not to experience mental disorders.

>I know people are going to talk about income inequality, but isn't this obvious?

No it was not because one can name disorders like autism spectrum disorder where diagnosis is more likely with high socioeconomic status. In general this conclusion isn't that obvious because one would think a richer child would have more access to the medical resources to get diagnosed.

so what are you going to do? Stay there and shame? Or are you gonna get busy helping?

I am trying to help, having the right mindset is critical.

By your definition, your mindset is within the context of a "race", but why does the race exist in the first place? Why are you participating in this race? Does the race need to exist at all? I would argue that an ideal society would abolish the so-called 'race', and directly meet the needs of every individual.

I don't want life to be nursery school throughout adulthood.

> I was raised below the poverty line and had free lunch well into high school.

The irony here is that they couldn’t even feed you and you say:

> It worked.