Hans Rosling measured poverty and surely poverty is decreasing but depression for instance are RECORD HIGH. I mean that is a sure indicator that we are less happy as a species. Also, you always hear about older people complaining about us young people that we are too weak and get depressed too easily. But maybe it has always been like this. I don't think so though. I don't think mankind has ever been this depressed. When I see photos of people from 50-100 years ago they all look so sharp and happy in some way. Now when I take my daily walk through the city I live in, I see depressed faces everywhere. Of course I see so many happy faces ALSO, but there are depressed people on literally every street and every bus and train. I think statistics in my country showed that 50% people have had, or has, or will have a clinical depression. These are scary numbers... Mental health is declining at a rapid pace it seems. This is what I've heard from debates with doctors too.

But I agree with you on terrorism. Terrorism really is not that HUGE of a problem some people make it out to be. It's extremely exaggarated.

Edit

This post was edited by Tjo on Jun 17 2017 01:51am

Or our health care is getting better and we are helping more ppl with a depression ^^.
Old ppl didn't have stress, because our language relates it, to a psychological state since the 19th century.
Back then you just had a "stomach pain". (or any other symptom). The same goes for other mental health issues nowadays.

I have yet to see our perception and quality of life actually decreasing with any significance.

/e it probably has decreased slightly in the past 10 years.. crisis' are shit ^^ (just noticed the op is about the past 10 years)

This post was edited by Knaapie on Jun 17 2017 01:58am

Society is just as stupid. We're just more vocal.

Good that you're so optimistic but I can't help but notice that the older generation are more sturdy, mentally. There's always an excuse when it comes to statistics. Actually physical diseases such as diabetes, heart disease are skyhigh and have been rising since well over a hundred years. This is proven beyond doubt. So it gets hard to explain it away with that people in the past just attributed their mental state to their bodies. Health, and climate is our time's destiny-problems. They must be solved or mankind will have no future worth living for. That is my opinion of course.

Weaker and wiser the world is growing. Richer and fatter.

fatter + older = diabetes and heart disease. Let's hope our body can adapt to the abundance of food we've been having for the past 60 year.
cancer and dementia should be increasing with the same speed. Lmk when one of them is increasing way to fast, perhaps we should think about reducing some sugar in our diets... (or is that why this is a thing ? ^^)

But we see diabetes, cancer and even stroke in young people as well. My mother is a nurse and she always talks about how shocked they are at the hospital (she is working in the biggest hospital in scandinavia) because constantly young people are coming in with all kinds of diseases which were almost non existent in youth only thirty years ago. Our bodies cannot adapt to it, or well the body can adapt itself to unnatural and harmful influences, but only by compromising its organization. Perfection cannot be reached by "sinning" against nature. We become a better, happier, kinder and more productive species if we cultivate our health - not by destroying it and hoping nature will adapt to us.

And yes, diseases are increasing way too fast. Ive been monitoring this debate since health is my passion, and all the doctors are so worried because there is an enormous pressure on our welfare system, our hospital and health care, because diseases are just multiplying and increasing at lightning speed. When my parents were kids, they had at most one overweight kid in their class. Nowadays its way more. In the US, it literally is NORMAL to be obese. In some states, in west virginia for instance, almost everyone is overweight. As a person who have studied this matter and read so much about it, I'm almost stunned by the ignorance on this subject. We see it all around us; how people are home from work, how obese people have become, children being sick all the time, the appearances of new diseases, etc. etc. yet people are frightfully ignorant about this. We are, and this is very real, heading towards a global health crisis. In fact, we are already there. But it will get much, much worse. "Health movements" across the world have done much to mitigate it, and nowadays we see in every newspaper articles about diets, exercise, and they talk about it constantly on tv (at least in my country - and I know they do in US too), but unfortunately, the confusion is very great, and only a small percentage of the whole people are affected by the efforts made on their behalf. Ask ANY physician, who havent had his head up his butt for the last decade, about the cause and cure for the rise of chronic disease, obesity, general inefficiency, and he will say to you that it is about how we LIVE. It's lifestyle to at least 90%, doctors estimate. Our fate is in our own hands.

Yet there is reason to hope and be joyful. Humanity's existence has always been threatened, either by war, disease or natural disasters. We are slow to react as a species, we always are. But once the threat becomes sufficiently powerful, we do what we have to do and we correct it. That is what will happen with our habits as well. People will continue to smoke, drink, eat in excess, and neglect their bodies, until everything collapses and we just have to move or civilization will be destroyed. Then we will rise and the physician of the future will not cure diseases, but prevent them.

It's an actual debate if we need more lifestyle coaches as doctors todays, or if we should focus more on engineering and technology orientated doctors. It's a trend I haven't gone further than reading the headlines yet.

It really feels like first world problems. Medical advancements have come so far that our lifestyle is the main cause of our own destruction.
Adopting more healthy lifestyles seems to be a new focus to overall decrease diseases. But like I said: I can't contribute much there as I haven't done much more than reading headlines on the subject.

Imo humans are highly adaptable compared to other species we know. The world is just changing really fast atm.

We definitely need more lifestyle doctors. However we should not neglect technology either. We can afford both.

We keep getting hammered with ads and messages of early detection and screening. Prevention is the key really in all things not just cancer and other diseases we are reminded to check for.
if nothing ever escalates to danger zone than we'll have such a reductioin in our currentbiggest killers. It'll probably cost a shit ton less in taxes and to the healthcare system esp for countries with heavy socialized care. I was having a discussion with somebody not long ago on this. It costs a lot if somebody needs emergency surgery and a couple days or weeks in a hospital bed.

That and testing us young (at birth?) for our genes and knowing what we may be more at risk of and knowing this early on would probably increase life expantancy by a lot. It'd be down right now knowing what is more likely to do me harm. Alas, I'm just waiting for the symptoms.

The fact that so many people end up in emergency rooms for xyz reasons has some root cause in the above. Crisis situations that could prevented should be. Crisis sucks, we should avoid it as much as possible and we really aren't.

This post was edited by Helloween7 on Jun 17 2017 03:54am

Do you know how much proper tests cost in the usa?