Editor's Note:
On September 17th, the 2021 Asian Education Forum Annual Conference opened in Chengdu, and Mr. Kevin Xu, founder of Da Ru Psychology and doctor of clinical psychology, was invited to deliver a keynote speech - The Era of Values Is Coming: Cultural Healing of Adolescent Depression, and the following is the transcript of the speech.
Kevin Xu spoke at the forum
Thank you to the moderator Mr. Wang Xuming for your introduction. I am a PhD in clinical psychology and a psychiatrist. After the appearance of hollow heart disease in adolescents, there will be many serious psychological and behavioral problems, and even extreme cases, I will give my speech on this topic.
1. Survey data
The Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences released a national health data this year, surveying the incidence of adolescent depression, the incidence of adolescent depression is as high as 26.4%, both middle schools and universities are doing this survey and research.
What I want to tell you is that when we conduct psychological interviews with middle school students, especially middle school students, when we go to the psychological assessment, not only test, but also one-on-one interviews, we will find that the incidence of depression in adolescents has reached a very high proportion.
After the epidemic last year, everyone took a holiday at home, and after the resumption of school, teenagers across the country, especially in first- and second-tier cities, had a suicide rate of 3-4 times that of previous years, and it may be possible for a province to reach 3 figures, which is a very terrible situation.
Recently, Professor Zheng Yi of Beijing Anding Hospital conducted a national epidemiological survey, which resulted in up to 17.5% of children and adolescents suffering from mental disorders.
This is a shocking statistic, and the country is happening in the face of increasing national strength and material abundance.
What's wrong with the kids? Why are serious psychological disorders widespread?
What I'm talking about now is depression, the problem of suicide and self-harm is very common, and 10% of the children in a class may have self-harm behavior, even suspended from school, or even ended their own lives, and school aversion has become a very common phenomenon. I now receive contacts and requests from all kinds of parents, or friends, every day, asking me to help their children.
2. Hollow heart disease
What is the condition of hollow heart disease?
It superficially looks a lot like depression, depression, loss of interest, anhedonia, much like depression, and can be diagnosed as depression by a psychiatrist.
But this kind of refractory, the traditional rehabilitation effect is not or very little, such adolescents will feel very lonely, we are now the only child generation, the two- and three-child policy may change, but the current only child has a fairly high proportion.
Loneliness is not only loneliness, but no connection with the world, not knowing who you are and what kind of person you want to become.
The lack of self, not knowing what the value and meaning of life are, and even have the tendency to give up life.
I am often asked questions like this by teenagers, saying Dr. Xu, can you tell me an answer? In the words of children, it is you who give me a reason to live, which may seem to me that there are reasons to live everywhere, the world is so beautiful, but those children who are rich in material things are so empty in their hearts that they do not know what the reason and meaning of living are.
They don't know who they are, how to find themselves, find themselves from the praise of parents, the affirmation of teachers, find themselves from the recognition of others, so they have to be 'good students'' to meet the needs of adults, rather than the needs of their own inner development, maybe interpersonal relationships are good, but they feel that they are living a very false life.
I have worked at a top university in the country for 12 years, and I have been in contact with the best students, and among these excellent students you will find that they have a strong fear of evaluation, they do not like or do not want to be evaluated.
I asked them why, you guys are so good, you've always been number one, and he said you know what's harder than first place? That is, always take the first, who can guarantee to always take the first, I am the first, if the next exam can not take the first, it is not myself, as if all the value and meaning of life are based on academic performance.
We now have such a single evaluation system for children that academic performance is the only criterion.
So I very much agree with the previous teachers mentioned that morality, intellectual, physical and aesthetic work is probably only the grades now, and the rest is not needed. In this case, our children will strongly self-deny, you know I have been doing this work for 24 years, when I first approached these children, I thought you were so good, your family background was so good, and then you yourself were so good in your academic performance, so good in all aspects, why would you hate yourself.
People are still narcissistic in nature, we all like ourselves, why do we hate ourselves?
They know they're doing things that don't have value and meaning, they know that they're trying hard to improve their academic performance, just to take a few more tests, it doesn't make sense, they don't know what meaningful things are.
There are so many beautiful things in this world, but they are completely guided to a dead end by the baton of achievement, so this dead end even leads to suicide and self-harm.
3. Why does this phenomenon occur?
Such a high rate of depression, such a high phenomenon of suicide and self-harm, is not accidental, it is inevitable. How to understand these problems?
The effect of taking medicine is not good, the effect of electroconvulsive is not good, and the effect of traditional physiological treatment is not good.
We have to face a problem with our children, what is the value and meaning of life, what kind of things people live in the world for, what kind of things can stir our hearts, and can make people feel that life is a beautiful and meaningful and worthwhile life.
Why is this happening? Let me talk a little bit about my reflections and observations.
We are now facing an era of pluralistic values, and children are very precocious now.
I have a friend who is a college phD supervisor, and his junior year of junior high school will say that his mind is too simple. Why?
Our children are facing an open internet age, they may have read Sartre in elementary school, and They may have read Heidegger in middle school, so they are exposed to a wide variety of diverse values and knowledge, their world, their IQ is precocious than our generation
Our generation, I am a post-70s, now my parents are 60, 70, 80, our generation of red flags under the red flag to grow up, our values are very simple, we are very happy, because the values are very single and strong, that is, five talks, four beauty and three love, learn from Lei Feng's good example. So actually we're lucky, we don't have that many multiple choice questions to do, we just pick the best one.
Parents think that what is happiness, eating and wearing warm is happiness, this is the happiness concept of this generation at the beginning of reform and opening up. Today's children will give up their lives because their parents can't communicate with him with equal respect.
When we measure the current situation with the experience of decades ago, there will be serious conflicts. Children live in the era of Internet information explosion, full of a lot of spam, bad information, but they are overwhelmed by this information, so they can't feel these beautiful things.
Let me use an analogy, if you always eat takeaway fast food, you will feel that there is nothing delicious in this world, and delicious things can only be tasted by sitting in a restaurant.
The whole society is now very anxious, very impetuous, and this anxiety and impetuosity make children the ultimate bearers, and they are also the most vulnerable link.
In the context of the difficult choice of values, there is only one system for training them - academic performance, so when there is a little problem with academic performance, or he can't become the only one in the first place, he will become extremely vulnerable.
We must not turn a social and educational problem into a medical problem, we let children take a lot of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs, which is not enough to solve this problem. Just like if someone has a respiratory disease now, it may be a problem of his own body, if 50 out of 100 people have respiratory diseases, we may have to consider the smog to be treated, if the haze environment is not treated, it is probably impossible to bring physical health.
4. How to solve it?
The last thing I want to discuss with you is that the origin of hollow heart disease has Western factors, simply put, this kind of nihilism, this kind of consumerism, extreme individualism, such factors have long existed in Western psychology, why so many drugs, more and more punk, rock and roll movement, are the pursuit of their own life value meaning. Why is this problem in the West?
Because everything can be materialized, everything can be consumed, everything is measured in money, and this Western disease has also infected our children now, which is what Marx said about the alienation of capital and material on people.
Our education is becoming more utilitarian and commodified, and we are turning our children into refined egoists and hollow heart patients, and these values that we pass on, all kinds of values, these values are all utilitarian
Why don't kids accept it?
I will finally talk about how to solve it. I am a psychiatrist and a Doctor of Clinical Psychology, and I have had the privilege of gaining the trust of my clients and going into their inner world, and I have also studied all sorts of people, the craziest people I've ever met, and the most evil people I've ever met.
Man has a spiritual world, what is man's spiritual world?
The biggest difference between Chinese culture and Western culture is that Chinese culture believes that people are born with conscience, what is conscience?
If you help others, you will affirm yourself, and others will affirm you, which is a common value.
But if students, children, and even themselves have been doing things that go against values and do things that violate their conscience, they will deny themselves and dislike themselves, especially children.
To solve this problem, I am afraid that the most fundamental thing is to find the answer from education.
I am very much in favor of the decision of the Ministry of Education and the Central Committee to reduce the burden, reduce the objective burden, but if the heart can not adjust, the heart can not return to the road of self-affirmation of conscience, I can not let my life become a person who helps the progress and development of the country and the nation and even the world's human beings, my wisdom and wisdom are highlighted in this regard, then I am just for a good score, get good results, and finally go to a good university, and finally find a job with a high salary. These lives have no meaning for the children who are now materially rich, because they need to upgrade their hearts, need a better life, a more meaningful life.
The last fundamental problem, from education, to education, is to return to the Lide tree through education, and the essence of returning to education is to teach people to become a beautiful person. Instead of making a good grade, having a glitter for our parents, earning a little more money for the future, and for this school to seem to have some political achievements, we have to leave the utilitarian view of education
That is what I would like to report. Thank you.