LBJ, MLK, Gorbachev, Depression, and Regret. Also a Li'l Goat Wearing People Clothes.
And we have some news on dating apps and mental health. And it ain't good!
Couple of announcements:
1. If people don’t donate to Depresh Mode (the podcast and the newsletter!), I will stop doing it because I’ll have to. You can be a member starting at five bucks a month. Or more. Please join. Come on.
Topline write-up on this week’s extraordinary podcast episode
is 84 years old
was born in poverty, sold watermelons with his dad out of a truck
wrote well enough for a newspaper editor to put him through college and grad school
worked for LBJ in the White House starting in his early 20s
broke the news to LBJ that MLK was shot
became publisher of the LA Times and president of CNN
loaned Gorbachev a pen he used to sign the paperwork dissolving the Soviet Union
dealt with severe depression at a time when he was raised to see it as a weakness, treated it anyway
is full of regrets about all the time spent on his career at the expense of his family
is my guest on the podcast this week
Let’s dig in a little deeper on this Tom Johnson story
Let’s start by going behind the scenes on this special episode. Our producer, the brilliant Raghu Manavalan, ran across some publicity for Driven: A Life in Public Service from LBJ to CNN by Tom Johnson. What we knew was that he had a long career in journalism and had dealt with depression. We figured we hadn’t talked to many journalists about depression so let’s invite him on.
We got more than I expected.
Tom Johnson has lived a life. Yes, all those amazing career accomplishments listed above but also the presence of depression that at times was suicidal. He says it all started after his first major career setback, getting pushed out of his role as publisher of the Los Angeles Times when all he’d ever wanted to be since he was a kid was to be publisher of a major newspaper. But Tom allows that his wife, Edwina, thinks it started years before that..
I think so too. I agree with Edwina. Tom was determined from an early age to make something more of himself than his father had. Tom tells me about how his dad was never steadily employed, getting by selling watermelons out of the back of a pickup. And Tom saw his mom work at a grocery store for not much money. Tom wanted to work hard and have it be rewarding. So he did. Wrote for the Macon, Georgia paper at age 14, went to college and then Harvard Business School, worked for and with LBJ and Bill Moyers right after. I think Tom was addicted to accomplishment, in the same way I hear from pro athletes and businesspeople. People in that position can never actually enjoy achievements because their sights are set on something else, something higher.
When that faltered with his removal at the LA Times, this achievement string he had counted on was broken and he was devastated. And that’s because he had put his mental health in the hands of other people. Importantly, Tom also talks in the interview about his regret about not being a better father and husband, being a workaholic. His urgent message was: treat your depression and don’t be a workaholic.
I also found it tremendously moving that Tom said that he had been brought up to believe that people with depression were just weak. But when it happened to him, he got help. And that came down to Edwina, who told him to get help or she would leave him. Edwina is the real hero of this story.
Mental health hospitals turning into de facto prisons
Sobering new report from NPR on what’s happening with the prison system, the mental health care system, and the rapidly collapsing difference between them:
Across the nation, psychiatric hospitals are short-staffed and consistently turn away patients or leave them waiting with few or no treatment options. Those who do receive beds are often sent there by court order after serious criminal offenses.
In Ohio, the share of state hospital patients with criminal charges jumped from about half in 2002 to around 90% today.
The surge has coincided with a steep decline in total state psychiatric hospital patients served, down 50% in Ohio in the past decade, from 6,809 to 3,421, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. During that time, total patients served nationwide dropped about 17%, from 139,434 to 116,320, with state approaches varying widely, from adding community services and building more beds to closing hospitals.
When I can’t find a sufficiently whimsical photo to put with a story, I just post a picture of animals wearing people clothes.
Are dating apps good for your mental health? The answer might not surprise you.
It’s no.
A new meta-analysis of a bunch of studies says yeah, no, watch out. People who used the apps had consistently higher instances of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and psychological distress. And that makes sense! It is the branding and commodification of self, it’s objectifying, it’s dehumanizing.
The results were so consistent that the analysts did some deep dives into contributing factors.
These factors included whether volunteers used a dating app or a dating website, whether they were single or not, in a relationship or not, heterosexual or homosexual, and their cultural background. For platform type, users of dating apps had significantly worse mental health than non-users. Such an effect was not found for dating website users. For relationship status, dating app users who were single showed significantly worse mental health than non-users. Such an effect was not found for dating app users who were in relationships. For both heterosexual and homosexual volunteers, dating app users showed worse mental health than non-users, with no differences between the groups. Cultural background also showed an effect. Dating app users showed worse mental health than non-users, particularly for so-called “WEIRD” nations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) and not other nations.
And okay, I get it, and I admit I don’t really understand this world because I’ve been married since the first Clinton administration. BUT! How the fuck else are you supposed to meet people? Bars? Chance? What good is technology if it can’t solve human problems? And why can’t we do this in a way that doesn’t destroy people?
Woof. Depressing stuff in the depression podcast newsletter this week. Coals to Newcastle? DELIVERED. So here’s a Wallace & Gromit holiday compendium
Jon Lovett on Sleeping with Celebrities
You might know Jon Lovett as the host of the podcast Lovett or Leave It or as one of the hosts of the influential Pod Save America show. On those shows, Jon and others talk about big events in politics and try to make sense of it all. Which is hard. But it turns out that America itself, the very Constitution of this nation, may have a fatal flaw it in it, a loophole that could be activated and instantly make it a totalitarian country (or, depending on how you see things, even more so). It’s a loophole, Jon Lovett tells us, first brought up by Kurt Gödel, last name pronounced like the ladies’ undergarment. He was an influential mathematician and logician from Eastern Europe who found the loophole while studying for his citizenship test. He passed but, crucially, never revealed the loophole even though his pal Albert Einstein wanted him to. And then Gödel died in 1978, secret still safe. So you’ll be able to sleep safe.
