I was recently asked by someone dear to me to join the fray here at mormonmatters.org, and I looked forward to the challenge. I must admit, due to my “distance” growing up from any major LDS hubs (I have mentioned elsewhere that I grew up in a small branch Western Kentucky), I have been somewhat insulated from some of the issues that effect the posters that post here, and never gave them much thought. It wasn’t that these issues didn’t exist, but, being that I was one of three Latter-day Saints in my high school, when asked about the Church’s position about, say, same-sex marriage, I just said something off the top of my head, using my intuition and what I knew from the Scriptures, and assumed that was the Church’s position. The Church was neither ubiquitous nor monolithic to me. It was a small branch comprised of about three big families. I am sometimes somewhat amused by the difference between the issues facing Latter-day Saints “Out West” and those for me. Continue reading…
Archive for the 'depression' Category
In my last post, I noted that something peculiar is going on when it comes to Utah’s depression numbers. Utah has the highest percentage of population reporting depression, and oddly, Utah’s depression numbers can’t seem to be explained by several correlations that tend to explain depression numbers in other states. That suggests to me that Utah’s higher depression numbers are caused by something peculiar to Utah. In this post, I take a look at three peculiar theories about what’s behind Utah’s depression numbers, which I like to call the “Shrunken Gene Pool Theory,” the “Lack of Alcoholic Self-Medication Theory,” and “Too Many Toddlers Syndrome.”
A recent news article cites a study that portrays Utah as the most depressed state in the U.S. The article suggests Mormon culture is at least partly to blame for Utahns’ depression, and features photos of a pill bottle and a depressed-looking woman superimposed over the Salt Lake temple.
