Young people’s mental health report. Aneta Górska-Kot and Magdalena Śniegulska comment

If you are experiencing emotional problems and would like advice or support, here you will find a list of organizations offering professional help. In a life-threatening situation, call 997 or 112.

Next alarming data on the crisis faced by Polish children and youth. Only last month, the consultants of the number 116 111 had as many as 100 life-saving or health-saving interventions. This is the most since the existence of the helpline, i.e. since 2008.

The Unaweza Foundation, founded by journalist, social activist and traveler Martyna Wojciechowska, published a report on mental health of young people. It shows that every third student has symptoms of depression, every fifth has no will to live, and almost nine percent have attempted suicide.

These data were discussed in “Fakty po Faktach” on TVN24 Magdalena Śniegulska, a psychologist, psychotherapist of SWPS and Aneta Górska-Kot, pediatrician, head of the Pediatrics Department at the Children’s Hospital at ul. Niekłańska in Warsaw.

Children trapped between our “it’s always been like this” and “it used to be like this.” They are very unhappy

– In fact, for several years we have been observing a growing trend in the number of children admitted to a general pediatric ward with psychiatric disorders. These are, first and foremost, depression and suicide attempts. The record was how we took in six children after suicide attempts in one day. In fact, every day, every other day, we take in a child after a suicide attempt. At the moment, the youngest child is 11 years old – said Górska-Kot.

– We talk to these children as much as we can talk. Because we don’t even have special preparation for this as pediatricians. But the spectrum is very different. First of all, these children do not like life. You have to start with the fact that they don’t like life, they don’t want to live, because they have nothing in this life that they could cling to, she added.

When asked what she thought was the reason for such an attitude, she replied that “you have to start absolutely at home, because most often the story begins at home.” – This is the case with depression, suicide attempts, and it is much more common in the case of anorexia, which we also have more and more – she said.

Magdalena Śniegulska also spoke about the reasons.

– It seems to me that first of all we have a need to understand and look for blame – social media, us parents, school. I think that there are many different factors and that each story is a bit individual, but what is worth paying attention to, and what appears, for example, in the new reports on the mental health of children and adolescents, is the triad – loneliness, lack of perpetration and the resulting very low self-esteem, she said.

She explained what the lack of a sense of agency is all about: – It seems to me that we adults got a little mixed up. On the one hand, we would like our children to be self-reliant, independent, but we do not give them a complete space to test this independence. Or when we give, it is in such a way that we abandon them, that they are completely left to themselves. They don’t learn how to make decisions, how to make choices, how to face different consequences, with the safety of an adult.

The expert also talked about how adults can try to help their children. She pointed out that it is necessary to focus on what for their children is “the drama of life”, but also “without being ready to give golden advice right away. Just listen”.