Americans Are Suffering From A Mental Health Crisis. Italians Are Not. Here's Why.
20.6% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2019. That’s 51.5 million people, or one in five adults. Johns Hopkins puts it at one in four. The United States, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine all have a higher prevalence of mental illness disorders; Italy’s is consistently low.
Anxiety is the most common disorder in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults every year. And while it’s dangerous and irresponsible to make sweeping generalizations about the cause of this anxiety, it would also be disingenuous to pretend that economic insecurity isn’t one of its primary drivers. Roughly 106 million people in the U.S., one in every three, are economically insecure, a status that’s defined accordingly: people living in a household with an income 200 percent below the federal poverty level.
As a freelance artist, I am all too familiar with the kind of poverty that leads to crippling anxiety and depression. I’m lucky, though. Alcoholism and drug abuse run rampant in my family, but not depression, which makes it easier for me to stave off its worst effects. But that doesn’t mean I’m any less afraid. Will we make it another year? What about ten years? Will I ever earn enough to save, or will we always be living hand-to-mouth?
So, why don’t Italians suffer as acutely as Americans? I’m not a doctor or a research scientist, and my observations, no matter how astute (or half-witted), are not the same as empirical evidence, but after seven years of living in this country, I’ll have a go.
Taken on the aggregate, Italians have strong family ties, know who they are and where they come from, and most live in neighborhoods of people with similar economic circumstances. Italians are apartment dwellers. Case indipendente, or single-family homes, are the exception, not the rule. In an apartment complex, from the outside at least, it appears as though everyone’s on equal financial footing. There’s no gated community of lush, landscaped houses to envy, no living rooms full of designer furniture to compare to your own hodge-podge of IKEA castoffs. Some people have nicer cars than others, but a shocking number of those high-end car owners are still living at home. As in forty years old and still living at home. 67% of Italians aged between 18-34 live with their parents, statistics from Eurostat show, with Italian men accounting for 73% of that number.
When you’re an adult living in the same house where you grew up, there’s no anxiety about making the rent. When you’re surrounded by family, there’s no time for angsty, existential questions, such as “Where do I fit into the world?” Jobs are few and far between here in Italy, and they’re not always well-compensated. According to a 2017 poll, 47% of Italians believed that a person could be considered rich with an income exceeding 50,000 euros a year. Nine percent of those interviewed stated that people who owned more than one house, regardless of income, were rich. The bar is lower here in terms of daily sustainability, and that creates a society of people who are reasonable content with just enough instead of more than that guy.
This could not be less American. Americans are lonely and stressed and constantly striving.
(During lockdown, the mayors of various Italian cities had their hands full trying to get people to stay home, and the result was pretty funny, as this video above will demonstrate.)
But I think it’s more than that. Italians have an entirely different way of dealing with each other. My very American way of coping with interpersonal stress is to put up and shut up, sweep sweep sweep it under the rug, and then blow a fuse. Most Italians are a lot healthier about venting their frustration. They yell, slam the door, tell each other to f*** off, and then, half an hour later, they’re over it. No one holds a grudge. Why bother? The weather is luscious. Everybody’s going to the beach, not unlike the Neapolitan nonno in this hysterically funny ad urging people to ride a bike instead of driving in traffic.
To me, this is the definition of mental health. Italians get it right. Too many Americans, women in particular, talk to death about their feelings without ever letting themselves feel the anger behind them. I realize there are a slew of genetic and neurological reasons for mental illness, but allowing yourself to be angry without punching another human being or shooting them in the head is a skillset available to most people. Isn’t it time for us to at least acknowledge we’re angry, and that possibly, just possibly, gross income inequalities are at the heart of some of that mental illness?
Too often, mental illness goes hand-in-hand with substance abuse, as more and more uninsured people try to self-medicate and then become addicted to the source of their relief. Fueled by the pandemic, U.S. drug overdoses soared to a record number in 2020. The Centers for Disease Control’s own data show that over 93,000 people died in 2020, which is a tragic and alarming 30% rise from the year before.
So, what’s the answer to a problem that has already spiraled out of control?
That’s a tricky, multi-dimensional question far above my pay grade, one that requires a nuanced solution. We could start by providing universal healthcare, so that people who need mental health services, including drug and alcohol rehabilitation, can get them. We could also repurpose existing structures like abandoned malls into affordable housing. As more jobs are either out-sourced or replaced by AI, some form of Universal Basic Income will likely become necessary. A hungry populace is a mutinous populace. If we don’t want to recreate the French Revolution and watch our streets run with blood, we’d better think of something fast.
But the one thing we can’t do is ignore the problem of depression and anxiety caused by economic insecurity. It’s not going away. In fact, we have every reason to believe it’s only getting worse.
What are your ideas for the future? I’d love to hear them. Please share below.
"This could not be less American. Americans are lonely and stressed and constantly striving." Sheesh...nailed it, didja?? American life is like an old Nike ad- "There is no finish line." We always want more, better, different, bigger, faster...anything but what we have. Things become obsolete merely by virtue of possessing them. It's consumer culture on steroids. I'm that way with iPhones and laptops and to a lesser degree with guitars. No matter how much I try to fight the programming, it sometimes feels as if it's hardwired, something that's so firmly enmeshed into my DNA that there's no disentangling from it.
Sometimes when I'm sitting at my desk, I look around and wonder how all this stuff got here. Somewhere along the line, I decided I wanted it, I guess. Perhaps I thought it would make me happy. Or fill a hole. Or...who knows???