Is anxiety, depression...

Nonsense twice over. Incidents of mental illness are uniform across the races and across history, we notice it more today because the stigma surrounding it is much less than historically and because higher populations mean more crazy people.

I think that it possibly stems from technology filling important spaces in human life and the continual disintegration of families and social groups. People are trying to either sedate themselves with media or replacing spending time with people with social media; families are becoming weaker and less meaningful as time goes on, whether through absent parents or people just not wanting to spend time with their family which in turn causes family to become less important and so on. As relationships become less and less meaningful and common, people will replace it with distractions and replacements which further the problem.
>We don;t think of primitive people having the incidents of mental illness we have because among primitive people, the mentally ill are typically kept isolated and housebound, and not talked about because of the shame associated with it.
[Citation needed]

Thinking that mental illness is an inevitable and natural part of life is absurd and harmful. It existed in the past but it was always an aberration. Elephants only bob their heads and pace back and forth in zoos, not in the wild.
Genetics do not cause mental illness. At the most they cause certain illnesses to be more likely to develop than others.

There's always a small percentage like that in all times due to human aberrations.

Modern society simply magnifies the glass due to having better understanding of the situation some people are living under.

>Elephants only bob their heads and pace back and forth in zoos, not in the wild.

Is this true? Any source for this information? I'm interested in knowing more. I think there's a lot of truth to the idea that people's environments largely determine the types of behaviors and mental illnesses that will appear or not (whether they are born with it or not).

>Genetics do not cause mental illness
You are joking right?

psychcentral.com/news/2013/08/19/5-major-mental-illnesses-traced-to-same-genetic-variations/58642.html

Just because people have a stronger genetic predisposition to certain mental illnesses does not mean they will ever manifest themselves in a significant way during a person's lifetime, unless the right (or wrong) combination of environmental and social conditions trigger them.

For example, you probably have some form of autism but that doesn't mean you can't live a relatively normal life.

I think you two are having an argument over terminology.

Can autism be caused by environmental factors if you lack the sperg genes? If not, then yes, the genes are the cause. They may need to be triggered, but they're still the cause.

So, the question is, what mental illnesses ARE caused solely by environment with not definitive heritable cause? Ie, a human equivelant of the head bobbing elephants.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypy_(non-human)
bornfree.org.uk/campaigns/zoo-check/captive-wildlife-issues/abnormal-behaviours/
upali.ch/stereotypicbehaviour_en.html
>> At the most they cause certain illnesses to be more likely to develop than others.
Think of it like this: if my life is fucked up or I had a traumatic childhood, I'm likely to become mentally ill, it could be schizophrenia or depression or whatever, but I'm more likely to develop one over the other based upon my genetics. It's not that my genes caused my illness, it just made one specific disorder more likely than another to appear.

I think whether or not it's entirely environmental is irrelevant, only that it is entirely dependent on the proper environment. Why humans actually develop mental illness doesn't matter, only the how, and the how being environmental factors.

user schizophrenia is genetic. Also what you said is stupid its like saying a guy who can bench press a tree isnt due to his genetics but its due to his genes making it more likely to happen.

Not everyone who has a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia will manifest schizophrenia in their lifetimes. What about that is so hard for you to understand?

If it was genetic than schizophrenia would just randomly appear in a perfectly happy and content person who a good life because it just happens their grandfather had it.
>who can bench press a tree isnt due to his genetics but its due to his genes making it more likely to happen.
I don't know of any powerlifter who can benchpress hundreds of pounds the first time they get on the bench. Olympic powerlifters got to where they are by creating the proper environment for their genes to manifest as best as they can.

>due to his genes making it more likely to happen
If, because of his environment, the man never exercised, then genes predisposing him to build muscle would not matter.

Things start getting really interesting when you consider the possibility that a person with a genetic predisposition to a mental disorder has a higher than average chance of being raised by a parent with that mental disorder.

Overstimulation

Actually, there's a lot of evidence that other cultures dont have the same issue with mental illness that we do, because mental illnesses assert themselves differently in different cultures. Schizophrenics in India hear helpful voices instead of terrifying ones, for instance. Western society just gives max Stigma to people who can't specialize in the economy

that's not really true. legit hardcore schizophrenics in india and Africa are shunned and ostracized just as much as they are in the us and europe.