A recent poll suggests 18 percent of Americans believe they can rely on none or one for personal support amid the rise in Nihilism and less frequent church membership.
The Impact Genome Project and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polls asked respondents, “If you needed personal support, how many trustworthy people outside of your household could you go to for help?”
White people had a lower rate of support than blacks, 14 percent to 30 percent, respectively. Hispanics ranked at 25 percent.
The poll comes after Gallup reported in March the majority of Americans do not have a church membership.
Another survey indicates 57 percent of Millennials consider themselves to be Christian, 43 percent “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists.”
The lack of religion, which gives many hope, meaning, and belonging, seems to correspond with the rise in mental health, substance abuse problems, and preoccupation.
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), almost one in eight of the 95 million visits to hospital emergency departments made by adults in the United States in 2007 were due to a mental health and/or substance abuse problem.
The most ordinary reason for these stays was a mood disorder (42.7 percent), followed by anxiety disorders (26.1 percent), alcohol-related problems (22.9 percent), and drug disorders (17.6 percent).
The National Institute of Mental Health estimated “17.3 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode. This number represented 7.1% of all U.S. adults.” They also record depression as the leading case of disability in the United States for ages 15 – 44.3.
Published online in the journal of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, “Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and more than half take two.” That is roughly 230,000,000 people.
The most commonly prescribed prescription drugs are antidepressants and pain-killing opioids, the journal reported. Further, the scope of prescription drug abuse in 2017, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, was an estimated 18 million people.
According to, the Drug Policy Alliance Reports about 4,981,000 people have used and abused heroin at least once in their lifetime. The NIDA says, “Of those who began abusing opioids in the 2000s, 75 percent reported that their first opioid was a prescription drug.” Examining national-level general population heroin data (including those in and not in treatment), nearly 80 percent of heroin users reported using prescription opioids prior to heroin.”
Moreover, according to the New York Daily News, United States adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day on average (35.5 h/week, slightly more than 77 days/year).
Television watching is not the only distraction, according to the Amusement Parks Industry Market Research Report by the USA by IBIS World, “Over the past five years, the Amusement Parks in the U.S. have grown by 4.8% to reach revenue of $19bn in 2018.”
In the sports world, according to Statistica.com in May 0f 2021, “professional sports leagues have gained significant popularity, offering great entertainment to fans in the stadium and back home watching on television. Specifically, “In 2019, the NFL’s broadcasting rights amounted to more than four billion U.S. dollars domestically and 120 million U.S. dollars overseas.”
And according to the National Council of Problem Gambling in 2020, “about 2 percent or 6 million Americans have a gambling addiction that is as gripping as drugs or alcohol.”
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