The whole point of the article is that, although in general economic conditions can negatively impact mental health, in this case the increase in mental health problems does not coincide with a deterioration in overall economic conditions.
>Thus it is possible that the social pathologies cited by Lorenz are preconditions for today’s mental-health crisis.
and
>It’s possible that Lorenz’s general intuitions may someday be validated.
and
>What we can say with confidence is that we do not know and that we owe it to those suffering in our mental-health crisis to be honest about that fact.
It’s clickbait meant to congratulate people that disagreed with Lorenz before they clicked on the article. Its substance is considerably less strong or confident than the headline assigned by the editor.
And the evidence for that case seems to grow stronger by the day.
Beyond that, it’s simply good writing style to address the strong points of the argument you want to rebut, before rebutting it. You seem to be set on finding on something more nefarious than that going on here.
If I were to write an article about how I think [person a] could possibly be right or wrong about [topic x] for understandably valid reasons in either direction, I wouldn’t title it “No, [opinion of person a on topic x] is wrong” because that would be stupid.