Loneliness, fear, anxiety, rejection…more and more adolescents have to deal day by day with negative emotions that cloud their present and their future. Health care for mental health problems such as eating disorders has increased.eating behaviorthe depressionlas self harm and thesuicidal ideation and the different administrations try to attend to this cry of pain from the youngest with prevention and rapid intervention programs, but the irruption of suffering has been such in recent years that aid resources still do not reach all those who need it. All Spanish educational centers They must have a suicide prevention protocol and self-harm based on the provisions of the Organic Law for the Comprehensive Protection of Children and Adolescents of 2021 and from the regional governments, as reported to EL MUNDO by the different Education ministries, work is being done to mitigate suffering with new measures of for the next courses.
“Adolescents are not happy beings and full of energy. We are also wrong,” a 17-year-old girl reminded adults in a detailed survey carried out by Unicef in 2021 among 2,000 parents of children between the ages of 4 and 16 to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on their mental health. Four out of 10 see them as more isolated, restless and unhappy.
Children and young people today show greater emotional discomfort, but their mental health has suffered a deterioration in the last decade and the crisis caused by the Covid pandemic has made it even more evident. Its most devastating expression is suicide. Each statistic dyes the data in a dark mourning: the number of people under 20 who took their own lives in 2022 was 84, nine more than the previous year. Twelve children who believed they saw death as their only way out of pain were between 10 and 14 years old (the previous year 22 had taken their own lives). There is a significant increase in deaths among adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19: 72 lost their lives, 19 more than in 2021, according to provisional data provided by the INE on June 27.
“There are boys and girls who go bankrupt because they have seen a hole in the soul due to circumstances that they have lived or are living, related to the mistreatmentlos abusesthe exclusion, the rejection of their equals, the deficiencies, poverty; and there are others who, despite living in favorable economic or social conditions, they live loneliness every day, with compromised identities and difficulties to feel part of something or someone Most of the young people who in the last two years go to the ER suffer existential and vital crises, of a socio-familiar nature. Without your resources or those of your family being effective operating at that time. However, we are currently experiencing circumstances that have clearly opened the explicit request for help. They ask more today than ever for us to help them. Especially the teachers. Maybe a few years ago they felt, many teenagers could feel the same, but they didn’t tell it like it happens today; It was not as common (or reasonably well seen) to ask for help as it is today”.
That is hopeful information despite the fact that sadness surrounds it because seeking refuge in someone is one of the first steps to get out of a situation of anguish and hopelessness. And when suicidal ideation strikes, it is not easy to do so. This perspective is offered by the psychologist and counselor Jose Antonio Luengowho has been working for years with teachers on the front line to help them understand their role in the processes of accompaniment in the face of adolescent pain