2023-11-27 20:00:00
The scientific journal PNAS publishes this Monday A study analyzing data from 27,572 people in Australia that shows worsening mental health among younger population groups. Although the deterioration had been detected when the entire population was analyzed, the authors of this work, led by Richard Morris, from the University of Sydney, saw, through surveys in which volunteers participated, that poor mental health was more common among those born in the 1990s and, to a lesser extent, at the end of the 1980s.
The trend observed by the Australian team coincides with results observed in other countries around the world, where a greater deterioration is also seen in younger generations. En EE UU, in data ranging from 2010 to 2017, it was seen that among those born in the nineties and eighties of the last century there were higher levels of anxiety or incidence of suicide, differences that were maintained when segregated by gender or socioeconomic group. In the UK, depressive symptoms are also more common among teenagers born in the 2000s than among people born in the previous decade.
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Although one could believe that the phenomenon is recent, A study who made an intergenerational comparison in Germans born after World War II and up to 1975, also found an increase in depressive symptoms in younger generations. “These differences may have begun to emerge much earlier than thought,” write the authors of the article published by PNAS.
Neither economy nor substances
Something that is striking is that the association between the circumstances in which the groups studied grew up and their current mental health are sometimes counterintuitive. In many countries, worsening mental health is led by people who grew up in good economic times and when alcohol, tobacco or drug use was reducing. “Our results support observations that indicate that population deterioration in mental health may not reflect the effect of economic indicators such as unemployment or substance abuse,” the authors state.
Among Australians, mental and behavioral disorders collected in their National Health Survey show an increase from 9.6% in 2001 for those over 15 years of age, to 20.1% in 2018 and 21.4% in 2021. Similar data is found in most OECD countries, although there are exceptions, such as Canada.
“We have seen that people born in the 90s have worse mental health for their age than any of the previous generations and that they do not show improvement when they get older as they do in those previous generations,” explains Morris. According to the researcher, this decline began to be seen from 2010 and also impacted those born in the 1980s and to a lesser extent those born in the 70s. “There are many things that happened around 2010, such as the great financial crisis. 2008 and the subsequent austerity, the prevalent use of social networks, the increase in disasters related to climate change or the awareness of the stigma of mental health, although all of this is speculation,” says Morris.
Greater vulnerability
José Luis Ayuso Mateos, professor of psychiatry at the Autonomous University of Madrid, who has not participated in the study, comments that, like previous ones, this work “shows a greater vulnerability factor to the same risk factors of some cohorts.” “In clinical practice we have seen a very marked increase in mental health problems and the need for assistance,” he says. For Ayuso Mateos, in addition to risk factors, such as “the negative effect that overexposure on social networks can have, which is somewhat more frequent in younger cohorts,” there are also protective factors, “such as social cohesion.” To prevent these mental health problems from continuing in the future, Ayuso Mateos considers it important to pay attention at an early age, “to problems such as bullying, which have a significant impact on later mental health.”
The results of studies like the one published this Monday, obtained from surveys, can produce conclusions that are not easy to interpret. Morris comments on the contrast between the results of surveys that measure subjective well-being, taking into account financial or employment factors, with others that evaluate mental health. In the first, no intergenerational differences are seen. “This is a bit of a paradox, because financial concerns should align with mental health outcomes,” Morris explains. However, differences have long been found between the evaluation of one’s own expectations and achievements, and the emotional response to current circumstances. “Our mental health outcomes tend to reflect the latter more than the former, and we may need to look to our immediate environment, our family, or our social relationships to improve our sense of happiness.”
Regarding the possible causes of the trends they observe, Morris refers to the impact of social networks, particularly among adolescents, but warns that the impact of these networks on mental health in all age groups is less than 5%. . “Although the evidence on social media is still maturing, we are also looking at other factors to explain the observed differences,” she adds.
One of those factors may be the same awareness of mental illness, particularly among younger people. This greater knowledge can lead to better recognition of mental health problems and their expression more frequently in surveys. “It is still unclear whether increased knowledge results in an overinterpretation of daily stress as an illness and the implications for its treatment,” Morris concludes.
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