87.7% of entrepreneurs struggle with at least one mental health issue | Hacker News Reader

87.7% of entrepreneurs struggle with at least one mental health issue

founderreports.com

33 pointsljahier23 comments

I question the value of pathologizing every aberration in society - Everyone's weird and a little crazy. :-)

This makes me think of Michel Foucault's perspective on mental illness. That what we pathologize in society is related to what society values negatively in someone's personality and temperament. I agree that this has been historically true but may be changing more with the modern approach to mental illness.

The way the idea of pathology was taught to me when I took my introductory Psychology classes was framed more in relationship to the idea of healthy functioning. This meant being able to fulfill obligations like being able to work and take care of yourself but also recognizing conditions whose harm is more internally felt.

This definition presented to me doesn't entirely escape Foucault's view of your environment determining what is or isn't a pathology, but when it was taught to me it felt like a reflection of a less socially determined view of mental illness. Mental illness has gained a greater emphasis on helping to improve the personal mental state of the individual irrespective of social expectations. Maybe I am being more idealistic with this thinking.

It would interesting to hear from someone with more professional experience on this since I've only dabbled with a few college classes and books on the subject so my knowledge is quite limited.

> but may be changing more with the modern approach to mental illness.

The only thing that's changed is what we consider pathological.

At some point we’re all being diagnosed with being human.

"Many entrepreneurs suffer from stress" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

If you’re an entrepreneur and don’t suffer from anxiety and/or depression I fear you might be insane.

Is 87.7% more, or less, than the baseline rate

According to the the NIMH, in the US in 2021, a bit more than 20% of the general population had at least one mental health issue.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness

Could be an apples to oranges comparison given how anxiety inducing entrepreneurship is. If you consider anxiety as a mental health issue, 87.7% is an underestimate

Anxiety is considered a mental health issue by both the featured article and by NIMH, and considering that the 87.7% figure is self-reported, it's probably overestimated.

If anxiety is a “mental health issue” then 100% of people have mental health issues. Show me a person who’s not anxious about at least something in their life. But it’s especially prominent for entrepreneurs who take on a lot more risk than a normal person

Anxiety is a somewhat overloaded word, in my opinion, because while you're right that everyone experiences "anxiety", there's a distinction between that and an anxiety disorder, which is recognized as a very real mental health issue. This is also why I suspect that letting people self-report will result in overestimating people suffering from anxiety disorders as a mental health issue, vs experiencing regular anxiety.

Self reported? I'm not anxious about anything in my life. I'm worried about some things (line illness in my family), but I'm definitely not anxious over them and they never trouble me when going to sleep, for example.

Now, I'm not an entrepreneur though.

However here are mental health struggles listed. Poor work life balance or loneliness are not mental health issues comparable to those NIMH includes.

On the other hand, NIMH says 31.1% of U.S. adults have anxiety https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disor...

That data looks to be about 20 years older than the data in the report I linked to. That's a large time differential. Directly comparing them may be misleading.

I suspect there's a lot of confusion that happens with anxiety[1] being an emotion, and anxiety disorders[2] being clinically diagnosable mental health conditions.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety_disorder

Interesting. I wonder how much of it has to do with entrepreneurs being more likely to have access to and ability to afford psychiatric care and thus diagnose the issue precisely in the first place instead of just being generally considered crazy by onlookers.

Shoot, is anxiety an issue? Unless your business is running on complete autopilot, with fat margins, wouldn’t a sane entrepreneur who has to make payroll be a little anxious?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=entrepreneur+toxoplasma

ADHD is also far over-represented, I think, which makes sense. a) novelty-seeking b) new problems to solve c) less likely to have a lot of formal education, etc etc.

Based on headline, I thought it was going to be about the varying degrees of psychopathy of founders. Or maybe the lack of empathy.

I guess the suggestion here is entrepreneurs are much more likely to develop or amplify existing mental health issues (anxiety, impostor syndrome, depression, financial stress)

Personally, I think of an entrepreneur as a strictly business decision. Set specific goals that need to be met in order to determine future sustainability. If goals are not met. Then shelf the project and cut your losses.

The added stress of wearing multiple hats is acknowledged though. I’m not much of a marketing type person and getting that right is often half the battle.

What mental health problem is "massive generalisation and simplification of reality?"

Also, you are making the banal mistake of reading "entrepreneur" as a synonym of the big evil Fortune 500 CEO. A shoemaker, for example, is an entrepreneur, a niche that does not benefit from being a sociopath. But it does massively help for being the CEO of Nestlé or any other megacorporation.

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