Recipes against a childhood sick with stress

Mental health is one of the great health challenges of the 21st century, but it is one that does not only affect the adult population. Children and adolescents are also being dragged by the context. The statistics speak of more consultations and more diagnoses. Even more hospitalizations, as research by experts from the International University of La Rioja (UNIR) has just shown, which confirms that they have increased among the Spanish adolescent population since 2000.

“The data are the tip of the iceberg regarding the burden of mental illness in adolescents in Spain, since, although there are many, they do not include undiagnosed psychiatric disorders or those that do not require hospital admission,” he states, in line with the results, Dr. Vicente Soriano, who leads this research.

The most common thing among the adolescent population, as confirmed by the data from consultations made to the SIOF Joven service, of Fad Juventud and Fundación Konecta, is that they present anxiety. It is the cause of half of the calls they manage.

Added to this is that youth feel very alone. “The epidemic of loneliness in young people is a complex phenomenon that deserves urgent attention,” insists Dr. Daniela Silva, specialist in Internal Medicine and E-Health Medical Manager at Cigna Healthcare Spain. A recent study by this organization points out that the younger generations are the ones who feel most excluded and without company, which harms their mental health.

But is the poor mental health of children and adolescents something that remains somewhat diffuse? “If mental health is something forgotten in our society, the issue of mental health in children is even more so,” explains psychologist Ismael Dorado, secretary of the Spanish Society for the Study of Anxiety and Stress (SEAS). .

“Unfortunately, children’s anxiety and stress problems are going to be the source of the mental problems they will have in the future,” he says. 80% of children and adolescents with anxiety problems do not receive specialized treatment, he points out, since attempts are made to treat the issue from pediatrics or family medicine.

The key is not only in how these issues are faced – and Dorado confirms that there is still a certain reluctance to take the child population to a psychologist – but also in what type of problems they are seen. “Children are developing mental health problems that, in short, were not their concern,” he says.

Adult filter for small lives

Children live in the same world that adults do and their pressures filter into their daily reality. As psychologists Isa Duque and Fran Jódar explain in ‘Accompanying the new generations in the era of screens’, which Nube de Tinta has just published, the present is marked by the obsession with happiness, with intense individualism and with a not very realistic vision—which arrives via social networks—that “success is normal.” What’s more, you must be successful.

In parallel, the tools that allow us to manage frustrations and have a critical vision are being reduced, such as the study of the humanities. The experts do not talk in their book about eliminating screens from the equation—which, they warn, would be unrealistic—but about, for example, “recovering rationalism.”

The pressure to succeed, to be prepared, begins from childhood. “One of the factors identified is the overload that children are experiencing,” says Dorado. They look for “perfect children”, which leads to their diaries being full of activities and studies. They must speak languages, play sports, and accumulate valuable knowledge for their future. “Children have less time to socialize every day, because from a very young age we overload them with activities,” explains the expert.

Activities for fun, not competition

Furthermore, it is not just about doing things, but about aspiring to be the best at all of them. The child is not targeted for tennis so that he can be with other boys and girls or move, but rather so that he can be like Rafa Nadal, the psychologist points out. “We forget that all these activities were meant to be fun, to be with other children their age and to make them more sociable,” he says.

This constant aspiration for excellence also creates frustrations, because if the middle ground exists, it is, fundamentally, because the majority of people are not excellent and nothing happens because of it. “We all have weak points,” Dorado recalls, but “by not teaching them to be imperfect” they are not allowed to learn to accept it. A feeling of failure and “new frustrations” are created.

To all this, the expert adds that current entertainment is produced mainly via screens, which also impacts their ability to socialize and their feeling of loneliness.

Have they lost the ability to get bored because of these complex agendas? “They have generally lost the ability to be children,” summarizes the expert.

Of course, all these issues are closely connected to how both motherhood and fatherhood are understood right now, which, as Duque and Jódar say, has become professionalized: everyone reads everything possible on the subject and searches for everything that exists on parenting. And this has consequences.

Professional motherhood and fatherhood

The first is for the parents themselves, exhausted by this intense work in a world that is already, in parallel, exhausting. A recent population health alert from US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy warns of the high level of stress connected to parenting. It has become too intense and is destroying the health of parents.

The second is for the boys and girls themselves. Jódar and Duque talk about “millennial overprotection”, millennial fathers and mothers who overly protect their offspring. Dorado summarizes it with a colloquial expression: “they are children who don’t have a street.” Their fathers and mothers solve everything for themselves and that means that they are not able to manage problems on their own. This creates frustrations, especially as these boys and girls get older.