America, and Young Americans in Particular, Are Facing a Mental Health Emergency
Of all our myriad of national failures in recent years, the abandonment of young people and the near total disregard for their future is perhaps the most glaring example of how badly our society is unraveling.
By Jim Miller
We are broken. That’s how it felt last week as I watched my college district’s work email distribution list explode into “reply all” lunacy and vitriol in response to our looming vaccine mandate. While the number of anti-vaxxers in our ranks is very small, watching some of my fellow employees let their “inside voice” out complete with a host of conspiracy theories, upside-down world alternative facts, and irrational hostility to science and/or any institution that wanted to “tell them what to do” was unsettling to say the least.
Beyond the embarrassing display of ignorance by people who work for an institution of higher learning, what was also uncomfortably clear was the anger and anguish evident in the flood of my colleagues begging people to stop unleashing their word hoards. “Make it stop,” someone exclaimed in the midst of it all.
But it’s not stopping, not in that unhinged period in my virtual workspace, or at public meetings here in San Diego, or in Washington, D.C. where our leaders seem to unable to keep the focus on serious policy, even if the future sustainability of our planet is at stake. We are bickering and fiddling as the world burns.
If watching all of this unfold in your corner of the world or on TV makes you anxious or depressed, you are not alone. Earlier this year, the American Psychological Association (APA) released a report noting that our mental health problems had reached crisis level:
APA’s 2020 Stress in America survey released in October revealed that Americans have been profoundly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and are struggling to cope with the disruptions on top of other factors creating stress, including political conflict, the impact of racism, and an economic downturn. The combination of these compounding stressors and the persistent drumbeat of an ongoing public health emergency has prompted APA to sound the alarm on a growing mental health crisis that could yield serious health and social consequences for years to come.
Nearly 78% of adults say the coronavirus pandemic is a significant source of stress in their life. 63% of adults say the economy is a significant source of stress, which is nearing levels reported during the 2008 recession (69%). 59% of adults, regardless of race, report that police violence toward minorities is a significant source of stress in their lives. 33% cite discrimination as a significant source of stress in their lives. Gen Z adults ages 18–23 are the most likely age group to report experiencing common symptoms of depression, with 75% noting that in the prior 2 weeks they felt so tired that they sat around and did nothing. 51% of Gen Z teens ages 13–17 say the pandemic has made planning for their future feel impossible.
As a father myself and an educator of young adults, those numbers resonated when I first saw them because I had been hearing about kids in my son’s school experiencing problems and/or dropping out as well as dealing with them in my own classes as my students struggled to make their way through that last couple of years. Every due date for my students brings with it a chorus of trauma from Covid deaths in the family, to economic hardships, domestic abuse, anxiety issues, depression, and other obstacles to their success. It’s a house of pain.
Now, just last week, it appears that declining Covid cases and the return to school have not made things better for young people in America who are facing a mental health emergency. National Public Radio reports that:
A coalition of the nation's leading experts in pediatric health has issued an urgent warning declaring the mental health crisis among children so dire that it has become a national emergency.
The declaration was penned by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Children's Hospital Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which together represent more than 77,000 physicians and 200 children's hospitals.
In a letter released Tuesday, the groups say that rates of childhood mental health concerns were already steadily rising over the past decade. But the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the issue of racial inequality, they write, has exacerbated the challenges.
So as an army of corporate lobbyists and self-interested politicians do everything they can to hack away funding for the care economy in the President’s soft infrastructure package, we might be wise to remember that what our institutions are supposed to be there to do is serve people and do what they can to lift everyone up, particularly the most vulnerable among us. Of all our myriad of national failures in recent years, the abandonment of young people and the near total disregard for their future is perhaps the most glaring example of how badly our society is unraveling.
It appears our children and young people are watching us and screaming at us to “make it stop” as they will be the ones to pay the most severely for our lack of wisdom, compassion, and failure of imagination. Doing everything we can to heal their psychic wounds and build a better future is the bare minimum that a civilized society should ensure.