Editor’s Note: While nothing posted below is untrue, I believe there’s a missing component. The rises in depression, anxiety, loneliness, mental illness, and pretty much everything else ailing our nation psychologically can be correlated to a drop in Biblical understanding and adherence. I would argue that it goes beyond correlation; when a population is less inclined to believe in and more importantly fear God, then they lose the hope that should be in them. They turn to other forces for guidance, and those forces are all-too-often demonic. That’s not to say that God’s goal is to make us happy, but His presence and promises alone should bring us joy that is unavoidable when everlasting life is the undeserved promise. With that said, here’s Michael Snyder’s take…
(The Economic Collapse Blog)—We possess technology that would have been unimaginable to people living 100 years ago, we have access to more entertainment than any other generation in human history, and we have been enjoying an artificially-inflated standard of living that has been fueled by an unprecedented debt binge for decades. So why are so many of us so miserable?
One out of every eight Americans is taking an antidepressant, more than 48 million Americans have a substance use disorder, the suicide rate has been trending in the wrong direction for years, and according to Gallup the percentage of U.S. adults that are currently dealing with depression has nearly doubled since 2015…
The percentage of U.S. adults who report currently having or being treated for depression has exceeded 18% in both 2024 and 2025, up about eight percentage points since the initial measurement in 2015. The current rate of 18.3% measured so far in 2025 projects to an estimated 47.8 million Americans suffering from depression.
We like to think that we are smarter than all of the generations that have come before us.
If that is true, then why can’t we figure out how to be happy?
What we are doing now is clearly not working, and this is particularly true for our young people.
One study found that approximately 42 percent of Americans that belong to Generation Z have been diagnosed with “anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD” or some other mental health condition…
In fact, an estimated 42% of Gen Zers have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD or other mental health condition, with a staggering 60% reportedly taking medication to manage their mental health, according to a study on the respected Psychiatrist.com website.
Nobody can deny that we have failed our young people, and now we have a colossal mess on our hands.
We have never seen a group of young adults that is as unhappy as Generation Z is, and without a doubt they are feeling an enormous amount of pressure from many different directions…
Analysts point to a host of difficult, anxiety-producing issues facing Gen Z, including widespread financial worries – with college costs in the stratosphere, food more expensive than ever, home ownership out of reach for most, and two jobs often needed just to pay the rent.
Then there’s the disconcerting reality that many Gen Zers are not dating or getting married and having families – partly due to economic pressures, high anxiety and insecurity about the future, disillusionment with marriage due to the high level of divorce in their parents’ generation, and widespread reliance on dating apps. But also because they are spending so much time living in a virtual world where they can plug into and commune with every imaginable – and unimaginable – type of individual, cause, “influencer” and community on earth, all recruiting 24/7.
I think that all of the reasons mentioned in the quote above are valid.
But I think that there is another that is more important than any of them.
Over the years, Gallup has found that there is a very close link between loneliness and depression…
Gallup research has shown a strong link between depression and loneliness, as one-third of those who had experienced loneliness the day before were also currently suffering from depression, compared with 13% among those who had not.
After declining from pandemic-era highs of 25% to a range of 17% to 18% through much of 2022 and 2023, reports of individuals experiencing significant loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday” have inched upward again since the latter half of 2024 to 21%.
Even though we are more “connected” to one another through the Internet in this day and age, the truth is that we are more isolated than ever.
As a result, much of the population is desperately lonely.
We were designed to love others and to be loved by others, and if we want to turn our mental health crisis around we need to rediscover the importance of making real human connections.
But instead, many Americans are turning to drugs and alcohol to ease the emotional pain that they are feeling.
A report that was put out two years ago by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that 48.5 million Americans have a substance abuse disorder…
According to a 2023 report by the federal agency Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 48.5 million Americans aged 12 and above have a substance use disorder.
This is a national epidemic that is getting worse every single year.
It has been estimated that substance use disorders are now costing the U.S. economy more than 90 billion dollars annually…
A new study has found that substance use disorders (SUD) cost the U.S. economy just under $93 billion in 2023 from a combination of missed work, reduced work productivity and lost household productivity.
The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on December 8, was conducted by a team at the Division of Injury Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Needless to say, drugs and alcohol are not the answer.
So a lot of people that go down that road end up giving up completely.
For decades, the suicide rate in this country has been steadily moving higher…
Since the 1950s, the suicide rate in the United States has been significantly higher among men than women. In 2022, the suicide rate among men was almost four times higher than that of women. However, the rate of suicide for both men and women has increased gradually over the past couple of decades.
This breaks my heart.
So many people are needlessly ending their own lives.
According to the CDC, an American now dies by suicide every 11 minutes…
The level of suicides among our young adults is particularly alarming.
It is being reported that the suicide rate for young adults in the 18 to 27-year-old age bracket jumped by almost 20 percent from 2014 to 2024…
The suicide rate for U.S. adults aged 18-27 increased nearly 20% between 2014 and 2024, rising from 13.8 per 100,000 people to 16.4, per a new analysis of CDC data from Stateline, a nonprofit newsroom.
We have failed our young people.
Here we are at what many believe to be “the happiest time of the year”, and yet much of the population is soul-crushingly miserable.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Previous generations of Americans were much happier, and today there are lots of people that are living lives that are absolutely teeming with joy.
So if you are feeling depressed right now, I want you to know that there is hope.
You may not realize it yet, but you are greatly loved.
Once you learn how to respond to God’s love and the love that others have for you, everything will start to change.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
Dump social media, get into the Bible, and get outside.