I recall imagining, back in 2020, that when COVID-19 was finally in the rearview mirror, we would witness a global party of epic proportions. If the “Roaring Twenties” were partly a reaction to the ebbing of the Spanish flu, perhaps the 2020s would feature a similar eruption of animal spirits and devil-may-care antics (albeit, alas, without the flapper dresses and headbands).
But as Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has observed in a series of interviews, not only are we not kicking up our heels, but we are immersed in various forms of psychological misery. Pick a survey. In 2022, Pew Research found that 41% of adults had experienced high levels of mental distress since the onset of the pandemic. The New York Times reports that suicide rates for those 10 to 19 increased 40% between 2001 and 2019, and the hospitalization rate for self-harm rose by 88%. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that nearly 3 in 5 teenage girls experienced extreme sadness in 2021, double the rate for boys, and 1 in 3 considered suicide.
