Children's Hospital Colorado declares mental health state of emergency
coloradosun.com
coloradosun.com
My other concern is that whilst the contributors to mental health can be incredibly broad I do feel that the attention needs to be paid more in understanding the "why". We can't reduce the numbers of kids walking into emergency rooms with mental health problems by creating more beds. We need to understand the root causes, which I am sure they understand the importance of.
One of the hypothesis I have is the fear for the future, often depression comes when you have dread for the future. We know that the cost of living is extremely high, the dream of owning a home and starting a family are becoming increasingly more challenging for even those in the middle class. That's not to say this hasn't ever been challenging, but I do think that it is significantly more challenging. Couple that with social media painting false images of our peers and the pressures to be doing something amazing are making it difficult for people to navigate life as an average person.
As a side note, I remember a decade ago when I graduated high school I remember being under so much pressure (placed on myself) to get into University because in my bleak view of the world at the time I couldn't shake the idea that if I didn't make it, I wasn't going to have the future I wanted.
Both parents have to work bad jobs, are angry, struggling, and commonly there's only 1 parent. Add a child that costs even more money and requires further responsibility and time and it's no wonder why teens are having to grow up on their own and feel the world they've been born to is just a meat grinder with little sense of justice.
University doesn't save you anymore. White collar work can now pay just as much as walmart. All the things people in their 30s and 40s talking about has no bearing on today's landscape. It's a natural result of a market system that allows for the 1%. Someone is squeezing value, and the socioeconomic result brings us here.
The animals are running the circus.
And that the pandemic had contributed to the crisps.
However, the article says this problem had been increasing for years.
What in society causes so many kids to kill themselves? Why is it getting worse? What should be done?
I have seen a decline in mental health among my peer group, myself included. One common thread is an existential dread. Climate change, the current state of political discourse, the pandemic, the declining middle class, the raising costs of medical care, out of control education costs, and so on. It just leaves you with a feeling that you are screwed and there is nothing to do about it.
Teenagers are pretty aware of what is going on in the world, probably more now than ever. All this plus the normal teenage problems, and new problems like cyber bullying. This is just too much for someone who hasn't had time to build their coping skills.
Just look at the number of spots at top universities (didn't scale with population growth) and the number of applications the average student sends.
> One common thread is an existential dread.
Am Gen-X. I grok Millennials and other cohorts.
FWIW:
My nephew was born 2000. He's basically checked out. Because What's the point? Hard to disagree.
I asked him: But what if you're wrong?
I related that I had felt more or less the same. Punk, Raygun & MAD, No Future, etc.
No one is more surprised than me that we're all still here.
I'm sure there's some kind of Pascal's Wager, choosing to live for the future, despite everything you know.
Here's a radical thought: ask kids what's wrong. Find commonalities in their responses and then enact real change to address the issue. What we shouldn't do is give them platitudes like "things will get better, just wait." They don't have time to wait. This isn't a problem that we can solve by deduction from first principles.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/10/by-mol...
Nor does the intense pressure in universities combined with minimal mental health support (e.g. only paying for a few weeks of counseling, while ignoring many of the root causes of student distress.)
If you’re a parent and you think your kid might be suicidal, give them an out. Let them skip school occasionally, or go to one of those online schools. Let them know that they can do what they want with their life and they don’t need to live up to your expectations. Whatever they’re feeling trapped by, find an exit with them.
With no political and economic power, would children’s health have had the same impact on the world?
Consider that a growing number of bureaucrats have never raised children…
and now we have this. i think that doctor's diagnosis sounded reasonable -- kids have run out of resilience -- their tanks are empty.
and that's prob true of a lot of people.
i think the Trump Administration's handling of the pandemic pushed most people at least to the edge, if not over it.
Cuomo and the rest of the Dem governors and Mayors (De Blasio, Newsome, Witmer, etc.) were just as wanton in their disregard for humanity (and that, imo, is being generous).
Whether the CDC was intentionally handicapped and turned into a malevolent force, or was help along by misinformation 'heroes' like Fauci, the effect was brutal.
Biden's CDC is seemingly only marginally less worse.
The GOP/Republicans - literally the most dangerous orgnization in the history of the world - have been fighting climate change legislation for decades, trying to send us all to our doom, so their misinformation about Covid was to be expected, and in context, is really almost nothing in comparison.
Fox News runs wild with racism and white supremacy and conspiracy and misinfo.
Facebook and other mass media outlets are completely uncontrolled, and we're unwilling to regulate them, regardless of the obvious havoc and destruction they are bringing.
We had an attempted coup with almost no consequences at all. The US is not Chile or some other small democracy -- we're one of the few countries that can end the world in a single moment of insanity.
The origins of Covid itself have not been properly investigated, in part because US investors are so dependent on China's manufacturing -- and US conglomerates so dependent on China's population as prospective customers (e.g. NBA).
As adults, presumably we have at least _some_ control over our situations. For kids, it must often be torture -- right out of a CIA playbook -- make them feel the loss of control/agency.
The extreme capriciousnous of covid is now seemingly reflected in everyday life for most people, but especially anyone without real agency (kids, the poor/working class, the elderly, etc.).
And global warming risks/effects like Covid are just starting to hockey-stick.
failed political system. failed media. failed health care system. failing civil society. failing nation.
i'm not ready to give up, but we're in a bad way, and i feel like these Colorado kids might be sending us a desperate message -- we need to act differently, or maybe just act at all.