After the pandemic and the lockdown, the debate about the importance of mental health and the fight to demystify problems such as suicide or mental disorders has been increasing. During that period, with the consequences of the lockdown, the demand for psychological care grew throughout the country, but also in Lanzarote.
"Mental health does not only involve the health services of Psychiatry, the term mental health implies much more", begins the psychiatrist of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit of Lanzarote Francisco Sande. Mental health is a transversal term that concerns everything from "family health to occupational health or educational health, among others."
Psychiatry expert Francisco Sande explains that in medical consultations they began to "notice the increase" in demand around September 2020. According to his experience working with children and adolescents, "there was then a significant increase in people demanding care in the Psychiatry services," he adds. This trend, which was aggravated by the coronavirus, had already been increasing for some years.
Sande explains that not only are more and more young people demanding psychological or psychiatric care, but "above all, the severity of the cases has increased" among his patients. In this line, he explains that self-harming gestures, ideation and suicidal tendencies have also increased.
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In the particular case of adolescents, cases of anxiety and depression and "the severity of those anxious and depressive states" have "increased a lot", but also eating disorders have appeared more frequently. The most frequently diagnosed eating disorder is the unspecified one, "which is the one that has symptoms and signs of both anorexia and bulimia. That is the one we diagnose the most. It has restrictive behaviors regarding food and periods of binge eating."
Regarding whether this trend will continue to increase as much as it did during the year of confinement, the psychiatrist of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit estimates that his perception, "subjective and without data, is that this year 2023 is decreasing a little."
Mental health in adolescents
Regarding whether social networks play a fundamental role in the damage to mental health, Sande affirms that there are "many unconfirmed hypotheses", but that the impact of the technological revolution, the excessive use of screens and smartphones on the population is being studied. "I believe that isolation always generates many problems of anxiety and depression and therefore suicidal risk," he says. Furthermore, "the successive and indiscriminate misuse of social networks and new technologies in general can generate isolation and problems in these pathologies."
In this line, he points out the role played by "a culture that tends towards individualism, not towards the grouping of people from which our families probably came. Before there was a much more social culture and now we are moving towards a more individual culture. I think that is also generating this type of problems or difficulties," adds Sande.
The family and friendship group, fundamental
Faced with these difficulties, the healthcare professional highlights that the best tool is "precisely" the feeling of belonging to the "group." For adolescents, more affected by emotional instability, problems with image, or the way of facing frustration, it is essential to have two strong cores: the family and the friendship. "It has been shown that an adolescent from a well-adjusted family, where there is feeling and an important union, is less likely to develop psychiatric pathologies," he exemplifies. Spending quality daily time and good coexistence is one of the pillars in the mental health of adolescents.
Likewise, Sande explains that adolescence is the "most important" period and where friendship is "most valued." In that sense, it is valuable "to be able to keep them in a reasonably stable group of friends and of good emotional quality. I think those are the two keys," adds the psychiatrist.
To understand it more graphically, the expert adds an example. "An adolescent also needs to be in their room, a time of independence, but that should not become spending the whole afternoon in the room, but rather leaving their room, of course, outside the house in the open air or doing sports activities with their peer group," he explains. Also, that they leave their room and are at home with the family to "share lunch, dinner and time. That is one of the tools we always talk about in consultation."
How to manage frustration
"We work a lot in consultation on tolerance to frustration," continues the psychiatrist of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit of Lanzarote. "It is true that we must talk and say what bothers us, but we must understand that not everything has to bother us and we must learn to graduate the annoyance that things produce in us," he informs. In a practical case, the specialist puts in situation: "Before, I would go to a restaurant and if they put the food that was not quite right. Well, they talked about it among themselves and said well, we won't go back, but now such an intense discomfort is generated that in the end neither the day nor anything is pleasant."
In a pending matter not only in adolescents but also in adults, Sande values that "to each thing that happens to us in an unwanted way we give a degree of importance so high that, in the end, we always find ourselves in that state of discomfort. That does not mean that we should not validate those states of discomfort because there are people who are having a bad time and we have to say it, but that we do have to work progressively."
Is the term glass generation fair?
The modern philosopher Montserrat Nebrera has renamed those known as Generation Z and Millennials, those born between 1993 and 2012, as Glass Generation, alluding to their emotional "sensitivity."
"Generalizations are never good, we have already gone through a few and they sell, they sell quite a lot, but I think it is only used to catalog a lot of people who don't have to be," Sande defends. Regarding the term glass generation, Francisco Sande explains that historically human beings "have always had a discourse about youth that is not fair or adequate." Furthermore, he adds that more than 3,000 years ago in Egypt young people were already related to as "lazy."
