While physical health has improved in most parts of the world over the past century, mental health is getting worse.
The World Health Organization estimates that 500 million people around the world suffer from a psychological disorder. By 2020, depression will likely be the second leading cause of death and lost productivity, right behind cardiovascular disease.
Increasing human life spans may actually intensify the problem, because people have more years to experience the loneliness and infirmity of old age. Americans over 65 already are disproportionately likely to commit suicide. (Maybe that's why they're such bad drivers! They don't care anymore!)
Gregory Stock, a biophysicist at the University of California at Los Angeles, believes medical science will soon allow people to live to be 200 or older. If such an extended life span becomes common, it will pose unfathomable social and psychological challenges.
Perhaps 200 years of accumulated sensations will overload the human brain, leading to a new kind of insanity or fostering the spread of doomsday cults, determined to reclaim life's endpoint.
Perhaps the current trends of depression and suicide among the elderly will continue.
One possible solution—promoting a certain kind of mental well-being with psychoactive drugs such as Prozac—heads into uncharted waters. Researchers have no good data on the long-term effects of taking these medicines.
Next up-Aliens
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