Mental health issues have been overlooked and ignored in past generations, but recently there has been a spike in depression among young people. There are a number of reasons for this spike, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Studies have shown that the trends of psychological distress are “weak or nonexistent among adults 26 years old and over.”
Many young people properly “self diagnose.” How has this affected society today and what will the future impacts be?
In the past, there was little conversation on mental health. Social media was not around to start the conversation on the subject. There was a sharp increase in mental health issues in 2011due not to genetics or economics, but rather a cultural shift related to how young people spend their time at school or work.
Millennials and Generation Z helped open the way to discussion on the subject.
In 2020, mental health diagnoses started to increase rapidly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in young people who had been affected by loneliness, fear of infection, suffering and death for oneself and for loved ones, grief after bereavement, and financial worries, which have all been cited as stressors leading to anxiety and depression. Within the first year of the pandemic, anxiety and depression had increased by 25%.
The isolation was a hard hit to a lot of teens who went from socializing every single day to being totally isolated behind a computer screen in a dark room from morning to night.
I spoke with a former classmate who struggled during the pandemic.
“When we switched over to online learning, I was never ale to catch up to my classmates,” he said. “I ended up dropping out and getting my diploma in an alternative school,”
