Alae, 16 years old, and Jose Angel17, have given voice this morning, Tuesday, October 8, to the mental health problems that they have experienced firsthand and that they also frequently observe among kids around them. They are in their first and second years of high school respectively, and they complain, among other factors that trigger their discomfort, about social pressure to maintain good relationships, family pressure to get good grades, and stress. They also admit, says Alae, that “bullying” disrupts everything and influences that “if you are not integrated, if you feel excluded in your class for example, you do not feel like continuing studying, you want to leave your studies, you do not feel like talk to your parents or play with your siblings.
Says the fourth edition of the Unicef Children and Adolescents Opinion barometer 2023-24, published today and prepared by the UN organization that ensures the care of children in collaboration with the University of Seville, which More than four out of ten, specifically 41.1% of adolescents in Spain say they have had mental health problems in the last twelve months or believe they have had them. Because many are not sure, they doubt it, they do not clearly identify the root of their concern, but they feel bad. When they seek help and advice, they do so first among their friends (73.6% of them), before their parents or family members, and secondly with the psychologist (more than 60%). But almost half of those who have had or believe they have had a mental health problem have never asked for help.
Alae and José Ángel have also explained part of the reasons: due to the desire to keep the problems secret (almost seven out of ten), due to the thought that time will solve everything or due to obvious distrust in their educators. More than half of the young people interviewed (56%) do not believe that the staff at their educational center will help them at all. At the press conference it was revealed that the counselors spend more time on administrative tasks, collaborating with the management and their fellow teachers, than listening to the real problems of the boys. “They don’t have enough time for you, you see that they won’t be able to dedicate the necessary time to you and you prefer not to open up” to these people, said the young people present. They also make this clear in the report with their responses.
“It’s okay not to be okay” has to be the message for young people, to break down taboos and stigma and encourage them to talk to their families and surroundings about what’s happening to them.
These two young people have advocated breaking down taboos and the stigma that still persists about why a young person needs psychological help or from an educational counselor. “You still think about what they will say if you go to a counselor’s office to talk,” said the young man, while his fellow member of the Unicef advisory committee stressed that the message for young people has to be “it’s okay not to be okay».
Problems can become chronic
According to experts, mental health is an essential component of the comprehensive well-being of young people, especially during adolescence, a critical developmental stage in which fundamental emotional, social and cognitive skills are consolidated. What we wanted to emphasize in this report is the need for collaboration between the different social and academic agents to promote the well-being of adolescents and it contains recommendations even for the Ministry of Education because the figure of the protection and well-being coordinator who Lopivi contemplates is not implemented mainly in educational centers nor is it well developed in those that do have it, recognized José María Vera, executive director of Unicef Spain.
To do this, in addition to Alae and José Ángel, the authors of the research led by Pilar Ramos, During the last 2023-24 academic year, they interviewed nearly 5,000 boys (4,740 adolescents aged 13 to 18) from 168 educational centers in Spain, public, subsidized and private, Ramos highlighted in the press conference held today. Ramos herself has explained that to ask the young people they started from a definition of a mental health problem prepared by a panel of experts and that it has nothing to do with what is usually identified as such, schizophrenia, depression and spectrum disorder. autistic. The definition that was given to the boys was the alteration in their physical or mental health due to a problem in their normal functioning.
According to the WHO, approximately Between 10% and 20% of adolescents experience mental health problemsl throughout the world and half of all mental illnesses begin before the age of 14 and this is, the authors have explained, because part of those discomforts typical of a stage of evolutionary development such as adolescence are not addressed well, they are become chronic and lead to serious disorders. There is a section of the opinion barometer where half of adolescents express that they have “self-efficacy” to manage their mental health on their own, compared to a quarter of them (one in four) who are unable to cope.
According to the State of the World’s Children report that Unicef published in 2021, the pandemic exacerbated mental health challenges in young people.
Social networks, a space that should not be “demonized”, Unicef has asked, because they support a lot of information and help also for young people, are nevertheless a minefield for many. Many of them state that they show in their profiles “perfect lives” that they do not have, more so in the case of girls than in that of boys. They are the ones who perceive the most the impact related to feeling pressure to have a certain physique, the study concludes. Half of teenagers consider networks such as X, Instagram and TikTok “quite or very dangerous” for their mental health.
One in four teenagers believe that people with mental health problems still feel ashamed. In general, boys tend to have a more negative view than girls towards people who suffer from this type of discomfort.
The relationship with parents
When asked about how adults view them, nearly half of the adolescents interviewed feel that they are seen as too sensitive and vulnerable if they have a problem.
It should be noted that eight out of ten young people value the relationship with their parents, receiving support from close people and doing things that they like and that make them feel good in order to maintain a good state of mental health.