We didn’t notice this until a reader sent this in, but Elder Holland’s talk “Be Ye Therefore Perfect — Eventually” quotes Millennial Star.
The post in question is about “Toxic Perfectionism.”
Read the M* post (which is very good) and then go read Elder Holland’s talk. Â Footnote number 12 refers to M*!
Hat tip to Josh Sears for sending in an email to let us know.
In the cited OP, Lara Jackson wrote:
“We believe that this high rate of toxic perfectionism is what is driving the high depression and suicide rate in Mormon Communities.”
I’m not sure if the we refers to Dr. Jackson and JA Benson or some other we.
At any rate, I would have preferred Dr. Jackson had written:
“I assert that this high rate of toxic perfectionism is a significant contributor to the high depression and suicide rate in Mormon Communities.”
In particular, I liked Bruce Nielson’s post about the growing evidence linking Utah suicides to altitude. When lay religionists try to get their fellows to seek English-style perfection and are driven and unable to produce calming mental juices across multiple generations, it is no wonder toxic perfectionism becomes a lifestyle.
While I have my own toxic matters to work through, I was blessed to be taught the proper Greek meaning of the perfection mentioned in the New Testament (e.g., be ye therefore complete [loving all]). And I live at sea level, so I get all the calming mental juices that get suppressed at high altitudes.
At any rate, awesome that Elder Holland cited Millennial Star, when he no doubt could have found some other source to support his statement.
Congrats guys!
A couple of previous clues that the Brethren read at least some blog content:
Elder Christofferson’s smackdown on intellectuals who use the word “exegesis” appeared to be aimed at a certain faction of the bloggernacle.
Elder Holland’s fervent and evangelical-style testimony of the Book of Mormon, where he held Hyrum’s actual copy, mentioned the word “historicity” which had also been floating around the bloggernacle immediately prior.
Didn’t M* report on a department in the church that was interviewing local members to get the pulse at the grass roots level? Supposedly, to keep the Brethren informed of trends without waiting for problems to filter up through layers of leadership.
In that vein, I would suppose that the Brethren have some dept doing a “clipping service” and passing up what members are writing about online.
But, but, but, I thought they were out of touch old white men.
These are folks who have decades of acquaintances, not to mention families. Each of them has hundreds of beloved family and friends who span the gamut of ages, races, economic challenges, etc. They are probably far more “woke” than most people.
But my daughter, after explaining the term “woke,” told me I’m not allowed to use it, as apparently it is a term that is only used by twittering teens who are all proud of being more “woke” than anyone else, a superiority teens have arrogated to themselves since time immemorial.
Now if only you could get BCC to quite you appraisingly, that would be news indeed!
It does go to show the importance of making positive posts about improvement from a faithful perspective.
I was struck by Elder Cook defining the word “humblebrag” over the pulpit in his talk. These people are plenty tuned in. Unfortunately, as happens with most parents, they somehow get miraculously smarter as we get older.
I have heard various conflicting reports concerning whether Utah really does have an exceptionally high rate of suicides and/ or antidepressant prescriptions – and whether this is due to Mormons or the non-Mormon residents. The fact it has become a mass media trops leads me to suspect the data is bogus in some way.
If it is correct the likeliest causality would be that SSRI (Prozac-type) antidepressants cause a net higher suicide rate among users – the higher the antidepressant usage the more this is evident. If Utah really does have the highest per-capita rate of antidepressant prescription, this by itself would be likely to cause a much raised rate of suicides
This link between SSRIs and suicides is of course rare (probably due to the mental turmoil and impulsivity sometimes induced by the drugs) and has been known for more than two decades; but is still obfuscated by Big Pharma.
What the public fail to realise is that the problem of high suicide risk in depression only refers to the kind of very rare (about 0.1 percent prevalence), very serious, hospitalised melancholia/ endogenous depression/ psychotic depression. 99% of the people diagnosed and treated for depression or ‘bipoar’ disorder nowadays would have been called anxiety disorder in the past, and (without antidepressants) do not have raised suicide rates.
Nonetheless the problem of SSRI induced suicide is very well established, there is a black-box FDA warning about especial problems with adolescent suicide in each pack of the drugs – including being observed during the original pre-marketing trials.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/03/20/prozac-and-suicide-an-interview-with-dr-david-healy
http://www.healyprozac.com/Book/Introduction.pdf
I used the term “woke” the other day, and my college student daughter told me to never, ever say that again. No one over 25 can use it apparently! (shades of “never trust anyone over 30” from back in the day, I guess)
Last time I did online research of the Utah-depression/suicide stat, I came across articles that said that Utah was pretty much in line with the other land-locked western states, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico. And all of those have much lower percentage of LDS populations than Utah.
Very cool that Elder Holland apparently reads M*!
Bruce makes a great point in pointing out the studies out there showing that increased usage of antidepressant medications may be quite explanatory in the increased rates of suicidal ideations and attempts, especially since the altitude hasn’t change in Utah and thus that argument does little to really address the issue of rising numbers.