Poor eye contact skills as a child leads to mental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. It works like this:
- Child doesn’t look at people when communicating, so he misses out on social cues and people think he’s weird
- Child feels excluded and ostracized and has no idea why
- Child fears he’s simply repulsive in some way
- Child unconsciously stigmatizes himself with various dysfunctional behaviors as a more tolerable explanation for why he’s being ostracized
- Adult with these entrenched bad habits is diagnosed with mental illness/disorder
Examples of symptoms:
- talking to himself
- fixating on internal sensations
- various annoying habits
- shooting up a school
Thus the solution to preventing mental illness is simply to encourage children to look at people when talking to them. (If you think eye contact isn’t a big deal, try not looking at the cashier next time you go shopping.)