mmmmmmyeahno. 1) his python script mixes up a bunch of social conditions, medical conditions, financial conditions and other things that are "bad" but having known several people on welfare, for example, actually being on welfare kicks the shit out of needing welfare and not getting it. Cognitive disability sucks, as does dementia, but not only are a lot of people who suffer from these maladies leading full and happy lives, they'd probably resent being lumped in with chronic drug users. Besides which, "am currently on probation" sucks a lot less than "am currently in prison" and "have ever been physically abused" says fuckall about where you are now. 2) 300m people in the United States, 29 million psychiatric visits in 2012 (pp 3). That's one visit per ten people. One can safely assume that patients under psychiatric care have more than one visit; assume they're having a visit a month (kind of a minimum) and you're under one patient in psychiatric care per 100 people, about the same percentage (according to him) as the number of people in prison, in nursing homes or schizophrenic. 3) So the people he's seeing are that sliver faction that are not only suffering maladies and can afford psychiatric care, they can afford psychiatric care and can't handle their lives. As one clinician in an office of 20, guaranteed he's seeing exactly the sort of people who reinforce his view of the world. I used to hang with psychiatrists. They specialize like anybody else. One I knew dealt primarily with the worried well. Another dealt almost entirely with recent divorcees. The third dealt with prisoners and the homeless. Guess which one had the best stories? If you guessed the one with the bleakest outlook on humanity, give yourself a gold star. According to his list, I'm two out of his 17 categories and right now? Right now I'm on top of the fuckin' world and it was a rugged goddamn year. How bad are things? Well, for a lot of people they sure ain't good. But for a lot of people, their presence in one or more malady boxes doesn't dictate their existence the way it does for too many acolytes of the DSM.
You got everything exactly right, and I also find it strange that a psychiatrist can't identify variables that are causally related. For instance, a schizophrenic who has it so bad that he drowns his pain in alcohol, becomes depressed as a result, loses his job and becomes unemployed, gets later arrested and becomes imprisoned (or later in life on probation).... etc. Not to mention that basically every schizophrenic I've ever met that wasn't homeless was on disability, and within those who are on disability you have a few cases of people trying to work or volunteer 2-5 hours a week to try to maintain a connection to the world and the overwhelming majority who are unemployed. Most of these indicators aren't something you can separate out statistically, the same people who have one of the things he listed have multiple. Granted four are considered mutually exclusive in his script, but that's still only taking into account four mutually exclusive variables and not including the causal relationship between the many many others. Also, you're exactly right about psychiatrists seeing the worst and specializing. I see a psychiatrist that specializes in psychotic illnesses, mood disorders, and related mental distress cases. Every time I meet with him (there are only two doctors in the whole office), it's a constant flow of patients in and out to see him. He consistently repeats to me every time I see him that I'm the only patient of his that is doing well in life overall and can't really understand how I am able to move past and ignore symptoms that would otherwise cripple his other patients. That seems like a very very low percentage of patients that he sees that are doing well and has to distort his views on how things are going as you said.
Guilty. I am undoubtedly well-insulated from misery. I sometimes take stock and find myself seated, in a climate-controlled room, with no physical discomfort, and emergency medical treatment a phone call away. For a mammal, this is unthinkable luxury. Among all human beings ever born, I have hit the jackpot. Among humans living today, I am in the Lucky 1%. I hope that “most people have it pretty good” will become more true over time. The Giving What We Can site mentioned seems to target British donors. I found a page on GiveWell that would take a PayPal contribution.This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old days.
That precise statement seems to in fact be true. But people have a bad tendency to follow it up with “And so now most people have it pretty good”.