Gen Z reports the highest mental health problems - gun violence, social media, sexual harassment, and the list goes on
Both CNN and TIME recently published news releases on the state of mental health across the country.
According to the American Psychological Association, Generation Z (ages 15-21) reported the worst mental health. Additionally, stress was prevalent across all generations with Millennials (ages 22-37) reporting the highest overall, followed by Gen X (ages 38-53), and then Gen Z.
What were some of the contributing factors that added to their stress? For Gen Z'ers, who are the youngest group most likely still attending school, it was gun violence. For students and parents alike, the possibility of a mass school shooting was a main source of their stress. Other reasons included sexual harassment, the political disarray of the country, fear of loneliness, the watchful and judgmental eyes of social media, climate change, and personal finances.
Recently, EENet held a webinar on drug use among Ontario students which pointed to trends in our Ontario context, north of the border. Our panel of experts discussed the possibility of youth being more susceptible to drug use as a result of social norms. Furthermore, youth are constantly hitting new periods of transition such as going to university, getting a new job, which more often than not are accompanied by stress.
What are your thoughts?
(Ducharme, 2018) (Diaz, 2018)
From above post, "youth are constantly hitting new periods of transition such as going to university, getting a new job, which more often than not are accompanied by stress. " While this is true for young people's increased stress, I am not sure if it explains their increased mental illness in comparison with historical occurrences. Previous generations went to university, got new jobs, too. But the negative impact of 'stress' did not cause mental health issue to approach today's epidemic level.
Today, the society, including younger generations, has less physical activities, less sleep time, less family time, and less community involvement (churches, for example), more access of drugs, and food with less nutritional values.
Separately, from psychiatric medications adjust hormonal levels for treatment, there seem not enough research on (food) sources that impact hormonal level resulting imbalance.
I think global economic insecurity and very rapid technological changes are fueling high rates of anxiety, which trickles down the generations. People used to be able to have predictable life stages, affordable housing and secure jobs. That is no longer the case. Things are much more fluid and temporary now and I think that instability can be very mentally challenging.