Sharing – Are We or Are We Not in a Youth Mental Health Crisis?
Hmm.
A closer examination of the “teen mental health crisis” challenges whether there really is a crisis or if a confluence of cultural factors has exaggerated the reality.
Is it a crisis that has teens struggling with mental health more recently, or is it some combination of cultural factors and more willingness to talk about mental health?
It’s an interesting question, and we should consider it much more before we run off to “do something” for the kids. Because the things we run off to do might do more harm than good, or they may be addressing the wrong problem.
If it’s true that today’s teens are more likely to talk openly about mental health and seek help, the fix is to get them more help. It’s not to ban smartphones. That’s an indication that what is happening is not a rise in mental health issues but a rise in the number of people willing to ask for help. This also means that there has been no rise in mental health issues. It’s remained the same.
At the same time, if the rise in mental health issues is due to what teens are hearing from the wellness industry, the fix is to deal with the wellness industry and its messages that all negativity can be cleansed away with their products. I don’t doubt for a second that the industry, especially the parts of it that promote toxic positivity, is creating mental health demand. After all, if you don’t feel gratitude and positivity the way they describe it all the time, there must be something wrong with you.
Except that’s not reality. Kids who are identifying mental health struggles due to these incorrect messages need help to determine what is going on. Still, they also don’t represent a crisis of increased mental health issues.
How much do these two things contribute to the overall rise in reported mental health issues? How much do things like war, climate change, poverty, and anti-LGBTQ policies contribute to it?
These are not necessarily mental health crises. They may be something else, and we should spend more time considering other possible causes that need to be addressed before we run off with half-baked ideas of how to fix them. Those don’t help.
It’s worth thinking about.
