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What is the cause of youth unhappiness? A study by The Lancet sheds light on this.
The mental health of young people is in decline. A British study carried out by The Lancet confirms this alarming observation, taken up by “ The Guardian“.
Mental health problems represent at least 45% of the global burden of disease among people aged 10 to 24. 2% of global health budgets are devoted to mental health care, notes the report. “There is an ambivalence that society often shows towards young people and their needs,” also indicates the doctor, who regrets this lack of consideration and blames a very specific system.
Whose fault is it?
Today’s society, increasingly based on individualism, pushes mental health issues to the back burner. “Destruction of social ties, abandonment of public services, promotion of harmful industries and companies” are all reasons that put mental well-being at the bottom of current concerns.
If mental health seemed anecdotal a few decades ago, we can only applaud the spotlight on this public health topic in recent years. But work remains to be done. “It may seem at first glance that previous generations had it harder, given the Great Depression, world wars and nuclear threats,” explains the psychiatrist. “But in reality, the current generation also lives with a lot of doubts and hopes for a better future. The challenges they face are unprecedented, they are devastating and they are worse than ever.”
Overexposure to digital
Social networks, cost of living, lack of employment, difficult access to property… All these elements cause great anxiety among the younger generations, recalls the report from The Lancet, which also mentions better regulation of platforms run by digital giants to protect the mental health of young people who are sometimes exposed very early to violent or traumatic content. The report collects the testimony of a 23-year-old young woman exposed for the first time to online pornography at the age of 12. Nicknamed Li, she recounts the lasting and devastating impact on her self-esteem and body image of this experience, also mentioning the incomprehension of her parents’ generation in the face of this malaise.
Young people, the biggest users of the Internet, are “constantly” online. According to the report, this habit can be harmful to mental health and is constantly increasing. These disorders, on the current scale, are becoming dangerous according to The Lancet, “a major threat to the lives and futures of young people”. “[…] Alarming evidence suggests that its prevalence and impact are steadily increasing in many high-resource settings.” Developed countries are therefore not immune to these problems. The evidence presented by the report has been verified by King’s College London, which acknowledges that much of the evidence underlying the commission’s report comes from high-income countries. In low- and middle-income countries, the level of unmet need for mental health services can be as high as 100%, said Carla Drysdale, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO).
