Research shows...

I like research. I like getting information in a kind of rational way: not through wee stories but through asking questions to determine hard facts, producing data and publishing the results. But I'm annoyed at how the research into how we live is now being reported.

Last week, research in the UK was looking at men, in particular the suicide rate among men. The rate among men aged 30 and under is apparently very worrying. When I was working, I heard several times about people walking their dogs in leafy Kilmarnock parks of a morning finding the bodies of young men hanging from trees. The things I never knew were: is the suicide rate among young men worse than it was? And what causes it to be so high?

This week, it's the rate of depression and anxiety among young women that's causing concern. It seems 25% of young women in the UK (or was it England or England and Wales?) between 18 and 24 (or maybe 19 and 25?) suffer from anxiety and/or depression. That's quite a high proportion but is it more or less than in previous years? And, of course, what causes these conditions?

Research will tell us but only if we ask the right questions and can interpret the data correctly.

The only way you can find any reliable facts is by going back to the original research documents, assuming you know how to read the conclusions. Most of us don't have the time or the 'nous' to do that so we rely on press reports on research. According to these, young men commit suicide because men have lost their 'traditional role' in society. Young women suffer from anxiety and depression because they are sold the social media idea of perfection: if you don't look like a Kardashian, you're nothing.  

I don't know if any of these conclusions are valid. My family history tells me the role of working men in our society has been constantly changing for a long time: my relatives in Fife left the mines in the 1880s to go and work in the St Rollox railway works in Glasgow. (I used to get really pissed off with people like Norman Tebbit, with his 'get on your bike' philosophy - what the hell had my family been doing for 150 years, if not that?) The women in my family always worked, in 'service' or later in factories, care homes and offices. They adapted, just like the men.

To me, it all looks like a stitch-up: the message from capitalism is if the working people of this country can't find a job, give their lives some meaning, get themselves a place in society, it's because they are lacking something. In other words, it's their own fault. I'm not buying it. People's lives are worth more than this.

I'm still waiting for a political party - apart from the Greens - to reject this neo-liberal idea. But I'm not holding my breath.