"...affluent youth reported significantly higher levels of anxiety across several domains, and greater depression. They also reported significantly higher substance use than inner-city students, consistently indicating more frequent use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and other illicit drugs.
Appraisal of psychopathology among youth in this sample in relation to national norms yielded more startling findings. Among suburban girls in the 10th grade, one in five reported clinically significant levels of depressive symptoms, reflecting rates 3 times as high as those among normative samples. Incidence of clinically significant anxiety among both girls and boys in the suburban high school was also higher than normative values (22% and 26% vs. 17%). Similar patterns were seen for substance use. Of suburban girls, 72% reported ever having used alcohol, for example, as compared with 61% in normative samples, and parallel values for boys' use of illicit drugs were 59% versus 38%."
This research suggests a few more diagnoses that could cause or exacerbate wealth mental illness:
Addiction is a reasonable disorder to consider. These wealthy people are addicted to money. Addicts are never satisfied. They go for more and more dosage, with smaller and lesser high. Addicts usually need to go through withdrawal. They often have to hit rock bottom to face the reality that they are addicts. Perhaps, what that means for the wealthy is to strip them of their wealth and put them in either inner cities or wilderness environments where they have to fend for themselves. Heroin addicts are sometimes put on Naloxone-- a pseudo-opiate that assuages the need without producing the high. Maybe bit coin can do that job. Or a game of monopoly.
Depression and or low self esteem: Well, the studies show that children of the wealth have higher incidences of depression. Perhaps depression becomes tied with narcissism and you end up getting angry, mean, selfish people who don't give a damn about the other 99% of people, or they rationalize that their wealth will inspire others. Wouldn't it be amazing if antidepressant medications could cure these grinches and scrooges.
Psychopath/Sociopathy/anti-social personality-- These are similar to narcissists, only with less conscience and empathy. They often base their lives on winning at the expense of others. It just makes sense that some of the smartest, most pathological would show up on lists of billionaires and those in the top fraction of one percent. There is no known treatment for these people. It's been estimated that the predations of average psychopaths hurt over 60 million Americans a year. But that leaves out the toxic behaviors of people like the billionaires who fund lies and disinformation about global warming and climate change-- the ones who fight to have safety regulations cancelled or gutted. They used to build prison islands for people like this. There are no drugs, except maybe ones that do the same thing that lobotomies do-- heavy doses of antipsychotic medications, like thorazine or haldol. Give them enough they will be sitting in a corner drooling-- a much better behavior than their current behavior.
I'm sure there are more diagnoses. Help in the comments. I would argue that this partially facetious, partially serious discussion supports the campaign I have been advocating for over two years, that is time for humanity to systematically de-billionairize the planet, which Thom Hartmann has described as the "no billionaires" campaign.
We live in times where extremes, with seven billion plus humans, are reaching new degrees of intensity/severity. It is time we begin to question the meaning of success. Humans have a history, including our predecessors, going back millions of years. Success today has morphed massively, by some people's measures, from what it was for most of those millions of years. Mental illness, insanity, craziness-- the idea of what those states mean have also changed.
I'm just sayin'. Maybe we need to take another look at how we think about the most wealthy people. It could even be that the more money the more exacerbated the symptoms are for people who do manifest mental dysfunction through their wealth behavior.
I would also argue that people who sympathize with and defend and support the interests of the wealthy against their own and their families' interests are suffering from Münchausen syndrome by proxy . In that disorder, parents subject their children to unnecessary surgery and medical treatments. Is it that big a leap to wildly speculate that people who fight for the rights of billionaires to widen the income gap even further are literally hurting their children by voting to protect the ultra wealthy?
If people suffer from mental illness, they deserve some compassion, but we also have a responsibility to protect the larger whole from their dangerous behavior. It's time we look to solutions to this devastating disease cluster.
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