Young people of the 21st century, a turning point in mental health: “They say they are very alone”

Society keeps telling them how bad the job is, how little they will earn. He blames them for lack of effort and leading a good life compared to that of previous generations. To have it all. But almost half of young Spaniards live a life situation of anxiety, discouragement and pessimism because they do not see a future. Only 30.8% believe they have good mental health, according to a survey by the Spanish Mental Health Confederation last year. They also think that no one is doing anything to change this situation, experts warn.

It is a social change that is causing an increase in mental health problems among adolescents and young people, increasingly from an earlier age, starting at 12 or 13 years old. This is reflected by the data, the specialists and those who treat the problems of this population from health centers. But who do these figures refer to, people with current anxiety attacks or psychiatric problems? Is the message conveyed about gravity exaggerated?

Today's young people like "luxury, they have bad manners, they despise authority and they have no respect for elders." This phrase and similar ones are often repeated and reflect that each generational group criticizes the next because it believes itself to be a model or because it does not understand that society has changed. The author of this statement, specifically, although you can guess it among a good handful of current, and not so current, politicians or ideologues, who do not stop complaining about the lack of effort established among young people, you will find out later.

And it is precisely on the social message that the focus of the situation must be placed, according to mental health experts. If we add to this the brutal changes that the latest technological revolution has unleashed, another ingredient appears on the table, the incomprehension felt by youth and the reproaches they receive for using screens too much. But the reality is that their world is already different, so is their way of communicating and living, which will continue to change with artificial intelligence.

Uncertain future and vital anguish

“Social pressure, the image given of young people, of what some call the crystal generation, because they say that they do not have a culture of effort, that they have everything, is devastating for them. "It is the first generation in Spain, which, in principle, is going to live worse than its parents," says sociologist Marta Delgado, one of the authors of the latest study

The situation of mental health in Spain

, from the Confederation of Mental Health and the Mutua Madrileña Foundation, published in 2023. Each previous generation aspired to improve the level of their parents and that is what they wanted for themselves. The path seemed clear, but now it has become muddied.

“Young people see an uncertain world, they live the distressing future. They do not see the job opportunities that can lead them to have the life they want. They do a degree, a master's degree and they don't see the exit they expected either. They think that nothing guarantees them having working conditions that allow them to have the life they would like,” summarizes Delgado.

There are many who claim that they are wrong. “Only 30.8% of minors between 15 and 24 years old consider that they have good mental health. Using the term glass generation to describe young people is pejorative and based on false assumptions. It is not a generation of butter,” warns the sociologist. “This stigma should be broken. They simply have a different profile, with many good things, with solid values, greater empathy and sensitivity towards diversity, equality or the environment.”

When it comes to job prospects, “this generation mirrors their predecessors, the

millennials

, who suffered fully from the great recession (2008-2014) and have been in a precarious situation. And this affects how they feel and causes them to have complex mental health. “They live in a more complicated world, with many contradictions and new uncertainties,” he explains.

The president of the Spanish Mental Health Confederation, Nel González, highlights that “although it is true that adolescence is a fairly complex period of life, a source of changes and great challenges, in some of its federations, in recent years it has “The demand for young people who come to ask for help has increased by up to 70%.” “This is something symptomatic, we see that the increase in the problem has a real scope,” he adds.

From discomfort to pathology

The most vulnerable groups and likely to experience mental health problems are those between 18 and 34 years old, with a special impact on women and the LGBT community. The idea of ​​suicide (which affects 14.5% in the general population with these disorders) or self-harm (9%) among people with mental health problems occurs to a greater degree among young people between 18 and 24 years old. , concludes the same survey. “We must establish two dimensions of the problem. On the one hand, that of emotional discomfort and, on the other, when what happens to them becomes a pathology,” explains the president of the confederation, which brings together 340 associations from all over Spain.

How is this step detected? “When it prevents them from having a normal life, it has become a pathology. That is, when they have difficult behavior and, in addition, sleep poorly, have unusual eating behavior, they lock themselves at home and do not socialize,” González responds. He insists that the problems must be placed in their context: “The key to the change that has occurred is that right now people talk about things more than before, it is not that it is much more serious, it is that these are times of more transparency and We must insist that it increase more,” he says.

One of the big problems is that many still do not know how to ask for help, the message is to insist on this path, to get society, in general, to talk normally about it, he points out. “Going to a psychologist is appropriate in many cases, but as a solution, when you do not have a pathology, it can be a perverse process. In those cases where it is not a pathology, they have to know that there are situations that they have to live through, that are part of their maturation and that they should not exaggerate the problem,” explains González. And he adds that the difficulties that young people perceive are related to the economy: unemployment, rising cost of living, lack of decent employment. This has led to a landscape in which not only psychotic outbreaks have increased, as reflected by data and experts, but also widespread emotional distress.

The latest FAD Juventud and Mutua Madrileña Barometer on Health and Wellbeing, carried out a year ago among young people aged 15 to 29, corroborates this diagnosis. “Most stress levels are always related to work, studies and the general crisis situation. More than 50% of young people feel stress and in the concern about studies there is an important difference between women (78%) and men (53%)”, highlights the sociologist and social researcher at the Reina Sofía Center of FAD Juventud Stribor. Kuric.

“There is a gender bias at a transversal level that is maintained throughout the entire report. For example, concern about the economy is seen in 56% of women and 44% of men. “The main reason has to do with gender stereotypes, which are still there, women experience a structural situation of inequality, this has not changed. They perceive that they are going to have greater difficulties and this generates more stress for them,” explains Kuric.

The general conclusion is that around 40% of young people are already experiencing very frequent negative symptoms, such as lack of energy (46.2%), sadness (44.2%), problems concentrating (44.9%). , fear of the future (42.7%), lack of interest in doing things (40.7%) and problems sleeping (39.2%). Furthermore, although the situation regarding serious mental health disorders has improved somewhat since the end of the pandemic, anxiety has not, which continues to increase, also according to data from FAD Youth. The underlying problem is still there: in 2023, almost 40% (37.8%) of young people say they have suffered from it, compared to 31.4% two years earlier.

Of the total number of young people who declare having suffered these problems, 37.5% acknowledge that they have not asked for help. Of them, half have commented on the problems with their environment (54.9%), but 44.1% have not even mentioned it. The main reason why they say they do not ask for professional help is lack of money (37.8%), especially women (43.7% of girls compared to 29% of boys). Kuric also sees as worrying “the lack of trust they have in society, which was influenced by “the criminalization of youth that occurred during the pandemic because it was said that they were the most contagious.”

“They say they are very alone”

Childhood and addiction specialist Teresa Cubillo works on the ground. She is one of the people who answers calls from young people in the Guidance and Training Service that FAD Juventud has. “Young people between 15 and 29 years old mainly call because they feel emotional discomfort, anxiety and stress, and when you start scratching you see that they are suffering a lot. “They say that they are very alone, that they have no support from anyone and that they are disillusioned.”

There are very different degrees, Cubillo emphasizes, because “in some cases they have fallen into drugs, but in others they have social problems, in their environment or family, and some try to harm themselves.” The expert explains that the first thing is to guide them and tell them if they have told anyone. “In many cases, no one has ever told them, and in others, they have told peers who don't know how to help them.” Regarding the problems they report, Cubillo says that they often have to do with bad family relationships or a divorce, moments that they do not know how to manage and are overwhelmed. “Then there are also many cases of young people who have been seeing since childhood how their parents are going through many difficulties, who get ahead as best they can, they have not known how to manage their own suffering, and they see themselves the same or worse,” she adds.

“We should not transmit so much fear to them, a strange story is being generated about the future, which confuses and disconcerts them. Even about what is coming with artificial intelligence and job reductions, for example, which causes many young people to be even more afraid of the future. When the message should be the opposite, educate them positively, in the idea that the world is very big and there are many opportunities,” Cubillo insists. Another professional who knows these problems firsthand is the psychiatrist Eugenia Caretti. She has been practicing for 17 years in the child-youth program at the Villa de Vallecas Mental Health Center, in Madrid, and is a member of the Board of the Madrid Mental Health Association.

"A third of adolescents, especially between 12 and 15 years old, who come to consultation have serious and complex problems that are mainly expressed as intense and non-specific suffering that they define as anxiety and depression, which often leads them to self-harming behaviors and that appears disjointed from their subjective experiences,” he says. “They can't explain it or relate it to anything. What is repeated in them is a hopelessness that has its roots in the impossibility of imagining a possible future.”

Caretti warns that society is not acting in the right direction to correct this situation: “Reduce this youth suffering to psychiatric diagnoses, to treatment with medications and care protocols; Increasing the number of beds in hospitals and health professionals poorly distributed among the different devices does nothing other than worsen the situation, pathologizing the discomfort.” What is urgently needed, she proposes, "is a change in social discourse, a profound modification of the educational system and the implementation of non-health resources in the community that help kids live together and project."

The statements about how well today's young people live, mentioned at the beginning of this text, are from 25 centuries ago and are attributed to Socrates. Although, if you browse the Internet or ChatGPT, you will find many of this type, from all time.