Nutrition psychology. Mental disorders may spread in young people’s social networks. That claim is probably misleading (inconsistent with scientific common knowledge)

On May 23, the communications department at the University of Helsingfors published a notice about a recent study. In the study, the authors claim mental disorders among the youth in ninth grade are transmitted from peers. I applied Rational Entrepreneurial Thinking, showing that Alho et al's proposition is misleading, and that the more likely explanation is upbringing with a neurotic and/or relational aggressive mother, supported by personnel at the social service and court. 8 pages.

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On May 23, the communications department at the University of Helsingfors published a notice about a recent study. In the study, the authors claim that mental disorders among the youth in ninth grade are transmitted from peers. 47 433 out of 713 809 cohort members (6.6%) had a mental disorder diagnosis by the ninth grade. “Of the remaining 666 376 cohort members, 167 227 persons (25.1%) received a mental disorder diagnosis during follow-up”. In total, 30%.

Link to the sourceLink to the source.

Can that really be true?

As a psychological scientist, I look for patterns that resonate with research on things that can be framed within the field I know something about - social neuro-psychology. I have also developed a model called Rational Entrepreneurial Thinking (Österberg, 2021, in Swedish). It contains three established models:

• Epistemic vigilance - be suspicious about any message and the purpose of sending the message (Sperber et al. 2010).
  
  
• Numeracy - the ability to understand, reason with, and apply simple numerical concepts (Brooks and Pui, 2010). Numeracy is the foundation of rational thought - both instrumental and epistemic.
  
  
• Disjunctive reasoning - take many sources into account (Stanovich, 2009).

Humans' mental development takes a huge leap during the first four to five years of living. And there's a father effect: That included:

1. visuospatial perception, that is, the ability to combine visual perception with that of what the hand does. VSP helps us understand quantity theory (numeracy, the precursor of instrumental and epistemic rational thinking), orient ourselves as well as handle complicated situations, such as social exchanges, and later in life, driving a car (Baker et al. 2020; Farran och Formby, 2011; Olsson, 2022).
   
   
2. emotional and social adjustment, that is, self-esteem, lack of depression, and impuls control to mention a few (Vieno et al. 2009, 2014; Österberg, 2004). Note the opposite of emotional and social adjustment is antisocial development which manifests at early age (Calkins och Keane, 2009; Moffitt et al. 2001).
   
   
3. cognitive development (school performance) (Baumrind, 1966; Gopnik, 2016; Hart och Risley, 1995; Rolle et al. 2019; Sethna, 2017).

And there's a father effect; children who grow up with both parents or their father, have better mental adjustment and development compared to children who grow up with a single mother (Rolle 2019; Sethna, 2017; Vieno et al. 2009, 2014; Österberg, 2004).

Humans' early mental development is also facilitated by food, especially animal source food like meat, eggs, and whole dairy (Allen, 2003; Banjara et la. 2024; Balehegn et al. 2019; ).

Since the 1970s, common knowledge about domestic violence is that the typical perpetrator is a woman. This is how its distributed:

• Physical domestic violence - women account for slightly more than half of incidence and injuries.
  
  
• Lethal violence - equally unlikely (0.000005) to affect children, men or women.
  
  
• Psychological violence, including memory hacking children's auto-biographical memory - typically female.

(Archer,2000,2004; Bates, Graham-Kevan och Archer , 2014; Bates och Graham-Kevan, 2016; Bates, 2018; Bates, Kaye, Pennington och Hamlin, 2019; Bergkvist, 2002; Crick och Grotpeter, 1995; Thornton et al. 2012).

Listen to Elizabeth Bates: Intimate Partner Violence (34 minuter).

Women's relational aggressiveness, including benign/malicious envy, is likely explained by mental issues, e.g, Neuroticism and Borderline Personality Disorder (Jiang, Dong och Wang, 2022; Ode et al. 2009; Zalewski et al. 2014), as well as malnutrition (Dobersek et al. 2021, 2023).

See and listen to the testimony from forensic psychologist Dr Shannon Curry about Complex childhood trauma, and Borderline Personality Disorder (CourtTV, 2022).

An important premise for studies like these is 'nature-nurture', the assumption that most behavioral things are explained by biological and/or social factors. The expected prevalence for biology-based mental issues is ~1-2%, whereas most cases are explained by social aspects. That included upbringing, diet and so on.

And despite the claim that Finland, for the seventh year in a row, has been crowned the happiest country on the planet, recurrent reports point in the opposite direction.

2010.

• According to FPA/THL, Finnish people’s physical and mental health started to deteriorate (HS, 2023).  

2019:

• the administrative manager for the faculty of agriculture and forestry, arranged a seminar where she claimed the pale middle aged men suppress young women (Österberg, 2019).

2020:

• there are ~100 000 poor children in Finland (Media report).
• child obesity is soaring (Eva Roos, former professor of nutrition after 'voluntary' reassignment from Uppsala university June 1, 2022).
• Depression and suicide increased after acting prime minister Sanna Marin's decision to lock down the county of Nyland (where the capital Helsingfors is) (Yle, 2020).

2021:

• Administrators in Helsingfors banned milk at public events, except if the guests are important.

2022:

• The Helsingfors Police department said that Finnish women's relational aggressiveness (psychological violence; Crick and Grotpeter, 1995; Hyde, 2005) is a big issue.
• During a conference in May, a director from the ministry of education and culture said that Finnish children fail reading comprehension and numeracy.
• Finland's minister of education and culture, Li Andersson, pointed out that Finnish boys don't pass school.
• Finland is topping the global Alzheimer's-ranking (type 3 diabetes; Österberg, 2022 a).
• Finland's child commissary Elina Pekkarinen pointed out that 20% of Finnish children and young people born 1997 or later have mental issues. It was most prevalent among children who do not speak Swedish (Österberg, 2022 b; in Swedish).

2023:

• Finland's institute for health and welfare (THL) as well as the National pension institute (KELA), warned that since 2010, Finnish people’s physical and mental health have deteriorated (HS, 2023).
• Finland's child commissary Elina Pekkarinen pointed out that psychological violence and lethal violence against small children i the home environment, that's domestic violence, has increased.
• The host for the conference, Maj Estlander, added: 40 % of Finnish schools are victims of psychological violence in the home environment.
• Estlander also said that Finland has the highest prevalence of depression in the EU (Österberg, 2023; in Swedish).
• Finland's biggest tabloid, Helsingin Sanomat reported another blow, the research at the University of Helsingfors had, and I quote, collapsed (see the dark blue line below):

Bäckgren (2023).

2024:

• Sweden's former Governor of the Riksbank, Stefan Ingves, said that Finland's national debt was 74% of GNP. Sweden, with similar biology and socio-culture: 17% of GNP.
• This year, the media has reported that kids in kindergarten lack visuo-spatial based abilities (VSP).

Paradoxically, social services in many countries, including Finland, focus on promoting single motherhood. Their behavior is based on misandry, a feminist idea in sociology called Men's violence against women. In the Nordic countries, this has been championed by Eva Lundgren, a sociologist, and Gun Heimer, a physician specializing in gynecology.

Together with Ann-Marie Kalliokoski and Jenny Westerstrand, a jurist working at ROKS, an organization which blames men for women's domestic violence, they conducted a pilot study where men were excluded (Lundgren et al. 2001).

In 2005, Uppsala University conducted a review of Dr. Lundgren's work and found that the conclusions did not match the raw data. This is what professor Hagekull (2005) writes, on behalf of Uppsala University:

Lundgren herself believes that she has been prevented from teaching about the connection between gender, power and violence (Holm, 2011):

It can be interpreted as Uppsala University banning Lundgren from teaching.

Bergström et al. (2022) concluded that personnel at the social service do not act in accordance with scientific findings.

It's also known that personnel in courts apply a principle called Mater Semper Certa Est (at least we know who the mother is), meaning, they discriminate children's father relation in 75% of the cases (Biringen och Harman, 2018; Elfver-Lindström, 1999; Schiratzki, 2008; Österberg, 2004).

Conclusion. Human mental issues are typically explained by complex childhood trauma as a consequence of being raised by a neurotic, and/or relational aggressive mother, the intervention by personnel at the social service and courts to discriminate against the father-relation which is crucial for children's mental adjustment and development. Therefore, Alho et al.'s attribution of children's mental health is misleading, and probably dangerous.

Read: Shared vs Common knowledge, and the call for acceptance of viewpoint diversity and reason to accelerate progress

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