Why do young people commit suicide?
Over the past few months, we have observed with growing concern how one of the many undesirable effects of the pandemic has been the exponential increase in mental health problems. Our daily lives have been profoundly disrupted in every aspect and have undoubtedly contributed to worsening a large number of economic, employment, and emotional indicators that were already unbalanced due to the economic crisis of recent decades. One particularly alarming element has been the evident increase in mental health consultations among adolescents, but perhaps the most widely reported aspect has been the rise in suicide attempts and self-harm of all kinds in an increasingly younger population.
The demand for urgent mental health care for children and adolescents has doubled with the pandemic
Perhaps we should finally be “gratified” that COVID-19 has had the unexpected consequence of highlighting the urgent need for policies to preserve the mental and emotional health of the population and prevent suicide, but in reality, this problem has been growing for decades without receiving the necessary attention. Numerous bodies, such as the World Health Organization, the Council of Europe, authorities from various countries, and prestigious institutions like the American Psychiatric Association, have spoken out over the last twenty years, drawing attention to the rising rate of suicides among children and adolescents.
Even knowing that when we talk about suicide and serious self-harm the factors are individual and diverse, we must ask ourselves if our society is doing enough to improve the emotional health of its citizens and, likewise, if the social processes that this post-industrial era of climate change and digital revolution entails are not determining factors in understanding these emerging behaviors.
The truth is that the cult of adolescence and youth is a fundamental characteristic of contemporary society. It entails profound changes in the cultural construction of that age, which today can be an extremely long period, extending approximately from 12 to 35 years of age. In fact, we can undoubtedly speak of an adolescent identity as a defining feature of contemporary society.
The controversial conservative philosopher Alain Finkielkrat aptly analyzes this adolescent society in which we live when he reflects: “In our day, youth constitutes the categorical imperative of all generations. As one neurosis expels the other, those in their forties are prolonged teenagers ; as for the elderly, they are not honored for their wisdom (as in traditional societies), their seriousness (as in bourgeois societies) or their frailty (as in civilized societies), but solely and exclusively if they have managed to remain youthful in spirit and body. In a word, it is no longer adolescents who, to escape the world, take refuge in their collective identity; it is the world that runs madly after adolescence” (Finkkielkrat, 1990).
Adolescence at the heart of consumer and mass culture
If Piaget referred to the fundamental task of adolescence as achieving integration into the adult world, today it would seem that this is no longer a clear objective. Adolescence no longer appears to be a transitional stage toward adulthood. The value of adolescence is so high that those who embody it have become a point of reference. The adult is no longer the point of reference, and therefore, adolescents are no longer certain that this is their destiny . (Piaget and Inhelder, 1985)
But in the face of this evident phenomenon, the stereotypical image of adolescence as a "problem," as a "crisis," is imposed in parallel. As the scholar of adolescence Nancy Lesko rightly points out, the current view is based on a construct built upon the biological image (Hall, 1904) of hormonal change and "emotional dysregulation" (Lesko, 2012). Even though later, Stone and Church (1959), Bandura (1964), and Craig (1997), among others, worked with a large number of adolescents and suggested that a good part of the conflictive aspects of adolescence lie more in the expectations of adults than we think, and that much of the supposed conflict may be due more to the social and environmental influences of a specific cultural context than to the adolescent stage itself.
The imposition of this vision of adolescence is based on the need to incorporate a "rebellious" population into the expanding industrial and capitalist society of the early 20th century, forcing them to conform to a specific view of the adult as the archetype of a rational, autonomous, and self-determined person. "Adolescence became a way of talking about the future of the nation and developing modern citizens who were rational and self-disciplined" ( Talburt and Lesko, 2012). Currently, this same society "blocks" this integration into the adult world and prolongs the period of adolescence more and more.
Long, almost endless holidays where young people live free from adult responsibilities, from working, starting a family, being financially independent, but they can access the "benefits" of the system at an increasingly early age: leisure, sexual freedom, the consumption of all kinds of material products...
However, this supposed "brave new world," like the novel of the same name, is a dystopia that prevents their lives from unfolding normally. They are trapped in a stage of digital relationships, consumerism, and leisure, but they cannot envision how they will integrate into the adult world.
The perception of the difficulty of planning for the future, popularized by the punk movement in the 1970s with its iconic " No Future , " has never been more relevant than today. This existential pessimism has surfaced with greater severity in the wake of the pandemic, as thousands of teenagers clearly perceive that their studies, relationships, family finances, and their parents' health have been affected.
Where is Marta?
The combination of stressful situations related to the difficult definition of their identity, and the constant exposure to which adolescents are subjected in their parallel digital life, are emerging phenomena that we do not yet fully understand, but they can help us to intuit the extent to which they are affecting their emotional health.
Adolescence comes from the Latin word adolescens , meaning to grow, and not "one who suffers " or "one who ails ," as some texts insist on emphasizing. For the psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto, this stage of growth is practically a second birth, where individuals gradually shed the protection of their families. They are like shell-less lobsters facing the world with all its fragility. This developing personality must now unfold within a society that has made adolescence the center of consumerist and mass culture, reducing the concept of human relationship to the compulsive exchange of digital images that summarize our personalities. It is an accelerated society, with a pathological competitiveness that gradually narrows the possibility of advancement for the less fortunate.
According to philosopher Hartmut Rosa, author of the essay "Acceleration: A Social Critique of Time " (2005) , the logic of an increasingly "accelerated " society could explain the "clear increase in illnesses such as burnout , but also depression, all kinds of depressive and anxiety disorders. And we also see how among increasingly younger people, in high schools or universities, even among teenagers in the most prosperous places, rates of depression and even suicidal thoughts have increased, and in fact, suicides are also on the rise..."
And this seems to be the case because " people are frustrated. We don't get from life what we were promised, and I think this isn't something that can be explained solely by economic hardship. "
Consumer society has made us addicts , but " the most interesting thing about how capitalism works is that, even if we are disappointed with the objects, we don't stop buying, because if we were satisfied with what we bought, we wouldn't buy more. So we are disappointed by the objects, but not by the overall plan, so we go for the next object," the philosopher reflects .
Contrary to the prevailing stereotype, being a teenager, being young, is anything but easy these days. Subjected to the evidence of climate change, accumulating economic crises, and finding themselves more prepared than ever, the vision of a better future seems like an unattainable dream for many of our adolescents. Alienation and frustration are the breeding ground for many of the behaviors we observe with concern. It is vital that we be brave and honest in analyzing these phenomena so that the solutions we implement are headed in the right direction.
Featuring
