Transmission of Mental Disorders in Adolescent Peer Networks

This study focuses on adolescents because they have data available for a large cohort. I’m curious what one would find with adults.<p>I’m morbidly curious what the world’s various intelligence (espionage) outfits have attempted, studied, and concluded in terms of manipulating large numbers of people via the internet.<p>Many negative tropes I see repeated ubiquitously online make me think about mass demoralization, anger, hopelessness, etc.<p>I realize this may seem off topic to some, this is just where my mind goes when I see a title like this one.<p>Edited

It’s interesting that “schizophrenia spectrum disorders” were the first to be correlated. That makes me suspect they aren’t measuring transmission at all. Given they account for the general population around the schools, it may be the classroom environment or greater awareness causing the differences. The latter was mentioned as a factor they couldn’t measure.

If you go to the same school, you are more likely to be from the same social and circumstantial strata, which may be a bigger factor in openness to diagnosis and development of mental issues.

The philosopher Charles Taylor has an idea that because modern societies aim to be open to all religious&#x2F;ethical ideas, it results in the atrophying of debating skills and the ability to intelligently critique things. This openness doesn’t result in a free exchange of complex formed opinions, resulting instead in a kind of formless relativism where people have a feeling that they disagree with something but lack the ability to do so.<p>In a very related way, I feel like the same thing has happened with regards to the focus on individualism and the individual identity, at the expense of group identity. People have become so obsessed with individualism that they forget how humans are still, additionally, a social species.<p>This results in the ignoring of how group social dynamics work, which means that it’s much easier for bad group behaviors to take root - no one thinks they’re important or even exist at all.<p>In other words, when we pretend that something doesn’t exist - but it continues to exist - we lose the ability to engage with it intelligently.

Anecdotally, I have noticed heavy TikTok usage to later on cause a person to performatively manifest behaviors related to a given disorder to fit in.

The data basically says, if you have someone diagnosed with a mental health disorder in a class, it&#x27;s more likely that other students from that class will be diagnosed with that mental health disorder later on.

Mood, anxiety or eating disorders and having 2 or more peers increases risk by 18%.<p>What about the following considerations:<p>1. Kids trying to pursue similar goals (applying to college, perusing sports or boys, playing video games late which causes sleep deprivation) are more likely to have similar side effects.<p>2. Knowing someone who has treated a mental illness successfully makes you more likely to pursue treatment - they counted diagnosis, and most had it within a year.

People that spend a lot of time together tend to transmit and share microbiome species.<p>I&#x27;m confident most illnesses, including mental, are rooted in our microbiome makeup.<p>Most with gut issues would likely agree with this because it makes it more obvious. Such as developing allergies, food sensitivities, skin diseases, mental issues, eye and hearing issues, hair loss, high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety, etc after their gut has gone haywire.

I&#x27;m not sure how they jump from correlation to causation.<p>Like maybe having classmates who have a disorder means, just for a wild example, there&#x27;s some contaminant in your local water (several have been linked to mental disorders), and that you&#x27;re also drinking that water and that you may or may not be diagnosed with that problem for decades.<p>I also think it&#x27;s possible that seeing people around you being comfortable acknowledging the ways their brain acts differently may make others more comfortable getting a diagnosis. To justify a conclusion this big I feel that you&#x27;d want clearly prove that it&#x27;s not diagnosis that&#x27;s contagious but the actual disorder.

Transmission? I mean, in the history of mental illness there have been many instances of psychiatric contagion. E.g. the laughing plague of 1962, the sleep sickness of 2010 in Kazakhstan, and I suppose you could say that &#x27;suggestibility&#x27; is a form of transmission (the most famous case for multiple personality disorder has been said to be based on the suggestions of the treating physicians.) It&#x27;s known that when there are celebrity deaths (caused by their own hands) an uptick in the average rate in the population follows media coverage.<p>The mind can make you ill. This much is uncontroversial in psychiatry. The flip-side is the mind can make you better. There is the classic concept of placebos. A story I recall comes from war times when doctors ran out of pain killers and administered saline instead. Just the presence of the doctors reassuring treatment was enough to bring about relief in the patient. This is in an instance where someone had a gun shot wound. So the placebo effect (and our belief) is strong enough that it can be on par with drugs like morphine. I&#x27;d say that this explains many cases of faith healers. They really are &#x27;healing&#x27; the patient but not via any magical means.<p>The placebo effect is pretty fascinating but it gets even more twisted. It would seem that the effect can be observed even if the doctor tells the patient they&#x27;re receiving a placebo. The doctor says &#x27;I&#x27;m giving you nothing.&#x27; And the patient hears: well, you&#x27;re the doctor, you know what&#x27;s best. They feel relived in some way from that more than nothing. Effectively, the mind makes it real. Then you have things like classical conditioning being used to reduce highly toxic drug side effects. A toxic (but beneficial drug) can be conditioned with a stimulus (like a bell.) Then the dosage of the drug is reduced while the bell is sounded. The body responds as if it were given the full dose but without all the side effects. Really neat research.<p>I do think many unexplained illnesses could be the result of negative ingrained conditioning. I think a perfect example of physical effects caused by psychiatric symptoms is anxiety. People who have anxiety usually don&#x27;t describe it all with emotional terms. They say things like &#x27;my heart is racing&#x27;, &#x27;im breathing too fast&#x27;, &#x27;my muscles are twitching.&#x27; A person could go to a doctor for a digestive issue only to find out that they&#x27;re just &#x27;anxious.&#x27; If psychiatric contagion exists and psychiatric illness can cause physical symptoms. Then (what appears to be) physical illness is transferable. That&#x27;s really intense if you think about it.

I would expect prior to any study that least some disorders have to be correlated with the signals one gets from society.<p>Eating disorders are the first thing that comes to mind.

Correlation over causation. The study actually notes,<p>“One plausible mechanism is the normalization of mental disorders through increased awareness and receptivity to diagnosis and treatment when having individuals with diagnosis in the same peer network.”<p>Thus the study uses “transmission” in a specific technical sense of greater likely of diagnosis, not literally that you can catch a mental disorder from a peer where none existed before.

We&#x27;re going to look back on therapy as a vector of mental disease rather than a cure. It&#x27;s a weaponized mental virus. Like MRSA out of hospitals, the therapist is where you&#x27;ll go get mentally ill.

Weed? Kids who smoke weed are more likely to have friends who smoke weed. Weed triggers mental disorders. Did they control for that?

Here&#x27;s a thought: kids going through similar life experiences are likely to experience similar traumas, and thus develop similar disorders.