Useless Eaters? Study Says Neurotic People Cost Society $22K Per Year

A study looks into how expensive it is for society to take care of a certain type of person.

And, Reuters publishes the results.

And Yahoo deems the article as being worthy to post on it's front page.

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Neurotic people aren't only making their own lives harder but they also cost society billions of dollars in health care spending and lost productivity every year, according to Dutch research.

Researchers from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam analyzed the cost of being neurotic and found while the least neurotic individuals cost society less than $3,000 per year, the most neurotic people cost more than $22,000 a year.

Neuroticism -- a proclivity toward worry, anxiety and emotional ups and downs -- is considered to be a personality trait with genetic roots, and is strongly associated with several types of mental illness, including depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.

"We thought that economic costs would be a good way to assess the overall impact of neuroticism," researcher Dr. Pim Cuijpers told Reuters Health. "We were surprised that the impact was this large."

The Nazis used to call this type of person a "Useless Eater". They are born, contribute nothing to society, and then die. The quintessential "Useless Eater" in the Nazi pantheon was the mentally retarded person. Nazis rounded up all the mentally retarded people, taking them from their families and their homes, and put them in special hospitals, "for their own good."

Eventually the Nazis killed all the mentally retarded people, reasoning they were a drag on the herd of mankind. People society would have to feed, who contribute nothing, and were, therefore, not worthy of being fed.

So, what are we supposed to do, kill neurotic people?

Or, are we supposed to just give them a pill to shut them up, so we can prop them up in a corner until they die and save the rest of us the trouble of having them around?

Sheesh.

The negative traits in the human personality are usually the flip side of very positive traits which benefit society. Let's take neurotic people, for instance. If a person is more likely to be anxious and sensitive, the person is also likely to recognize danger, pain, and anguish in other people and situations. Anxious people just may serve as the guard dogs of civilization.

Or, they may also be more likely to be able to express for us how pain and anguish, the human condition, integrates with joy and beauty, and comes together to make life more abundant, triumphant, and more worth living.

Many writers and artists are considered neurotic.

But, this study does not look into the benefits of neurotic people. It simply looks at the negative attributes, giving the impression that neurotic people are a burden on society, when they may, in fact, be some of the most important people in the grand scheme of things.

But, the larger question is, how are we to determine who is, and is not, a useful eater? Who is a benefit to society? Who is worth having around? And, where would that question lead us as a society, were it to be taken seriously?