The number of adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinics has skyrocketed, and children in the winter vacation need to "overtake in corners" the most, but completely relax

 Highlights At present, primary and secondary school students across the country have ushered in the long-awaited winter vacation, on the other hand, the winter vacation is also a period of rapid increase in the number of psychiatric outpatient clinics. With the trend of younger people with the incidence of depression, adolescents have serious mental health problems. In this article, psychiatrist Yi Jialong and writer Li Lani share their views.

文丨Jennifer    编丨Chelsea

In the TV series "Little Shede", Song Jia said, "I'm not afraid of being a school bully, I'm afraid that a school bully will be on vacation." ”

This sentence actually reflects the "holiday anxiety" in the hearts of many parents - the holiday is a game field, either the stronger the stronger, or the corner overtaking.

Behind educational anxiety is a growing mental health crisis.

Yi Jialong, deputy director of the Department of Clinical Psychology of Peking University Sixth Hospital, said that at present, educational anxiety has been transmitted to children, and the anxiety and even depression of adolescents have increased significantly.

Over the years, in the process of treating countless children and families, he has found that the mental health problems of adolescents have exceeded everyone's imagination, and even among the students who have "school boredom" and psychological problems, there are many children with good grades and excellent performance.

The writer Li Lani was tortured by depression. In the process of hospitalization, she came into contact with many primary school students, middle school students, college students, including graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and other outstanding young people. She communicated with these "patients" and wrote their experiences and growth stories into the book "Spiritual Light in the Wild".

Li Lani "Wild Inspiration"

She found that many outstanding children and elite school students end up in depression and even human tragedy, and there is often a "generational dispatch theory" proposed in psychodynamics, that is, these children are entrusted by the family to realize the unfulfilled wishes of their parents.

Back to the present, how should we spend the winter vacation? What should be the significance of the so-called "corner overtaking"? In the following, Yi Jialong and Li Lani shared their views.

During the winter vacation, the number of adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinics skyrocketed

As a professional psychiatrist, Yi Jialong suggested that winter vacation, for children, is an opportunity for self-adjustment and rest, and complete relaxation.

For parents, you can see if your child has accumulated some emotional problems in the past semester, such as anxiety or depression, and whether they need to adjust during the winter vacation, or seek help.

He reminded that judging from many surveys and clinical data, the current rate of depression among adolescents is far higher than we imagined.

In particular, the winter vacation is often a period of explosion in the number of adolescent psychiatric outpatient clinics. Because some children have a lot of pressure backlog in a semester of study, which leads to some emotional problems, they usually have no time to deal with them, and the winter vacation is often a time for intensive medical treatment.

Over the years, Yi Jialong found that a large number of children suffered from "school boredom" in the outpatient reception.

The causes behind "school boredom" are very complex, including emotional problems and family relationship problems, such as parents paying too much attention to learning and not paying attention to other aspects of their children, and not paying attention to cultivating children's abilities in other aspects.

After learning that their children are suffering from "school boredom", many parents open their mouths and say, "How can my child not go to school?" and "Doctor, please hurry up and let my child go back to school." ”

He reminded that if parents only focus on how long their children can go to school, the situation will only get worse, and we must see the reasons behind children's "school boredom".

In fact, many children with "school boredom" do not really want to go to school, they may even be some children with good grades and very good grades.

Generally speaking, those children who have good grades and are more introverted tend to have very high self-requirements, pursue perfection more, and find it difficult to tolerate failure. When these children encounter setbacks and blows, they need support from their parents and families to help them get through the difficulties.

In addition, children are highly perceptive and sensitive to the attitudes of their parents and those around them towards their failures. Mutually supportive and encouraging interpersonal relationships and family environments, in their own right, are therapeutic and may be more effective than medications.

Behind the "boredom of school", anxiety and depression have become the two major psychological problems faced by teenagers.

Yi Jialong said that anxiety and depression are like twin brothers, and anxiety for a long time will inevitably lead to depression, depression and loss of interest.

Depression, the most intuitive manifestation, is a bad mood, a sad face all day long, unwilling to move, and some other important indicators, such as decreased energy and physical strength, and weakened interest, including sleep and eating problems.

At present, a considerable number of children and adolescents belong to "atypical depression", for example, their emotional problems may not be prominent, but more often feel physically uncomfortable, that is, the physical symptoms of depression.

For example, if you feel a headache today, a stomachache tomorrow, and a feeling in other places the day after tomorrow, you go to the hospital for an examination and show that everything is normal....... Parents may wonder if their child is faking illness.

In this case, parents should consider whether the child has emotional problems. Because the body sometimes plays a part of the emotional expression role. When emotional problems cannot be expressed and alleviated, the body expresses itself through "discomfort".

In adolescents, there is also a typical symptom of anxiety, which is compulsive behavior, which is also part of anxiety.

For example, some children take exams or do homework very carefully, and they must check until they feel that there is no problem; in a state of anxiety, there will even be compulsive inspections, if they can't read once, they have to read it a second time, and if they can't read it twice, they have to use a pen to look at it word by word, so that they can see it clearly.

Anxiety reaches a certain point, and the brain becomes confused. This is also why, some children know what each word means, but when the words are connected, their brains are blank, and they don't know what the passage is talking about, so they can't complete their homework, or it takes a long time to complete it. There are also children who keep remembering what the teacher said when they are in class, do I understand a certain sentence just now, so that they can't pay attention.

Of course, some children will have other behavioral abnormalities, for example, children who used to be very sensible and obedient suddenly become very irritable, collide with their parents, drop things, and have some rebellious and impulsive behaviors. Or we see that our children are getting thinner, sleeping poorer, less and less willing to talk, and locking themselves in the house all day.

Yi Jialong suggested that parents should communicate more with their children on a daily basis, intervene early when they find the above conditions, and use the winter vacation to do a good job in psychological counseling, which may not develop to the point of needing to take medicine or be hospitalized.

Why there are children,

It's easier to go from anxiety to depression

In fact, in daily life, everyone will experience all kinds of stress, but not everyone who feels anxious will suffer from depression.

So, why do some children go to depression under anxiety, depression, and pressure?

Yi Jialong said that there may be several reasons:

First, the pressure itself is too great and more than the child can bear.

second, the ability to resist pressure is not strong, and you can't cope with the past on your own;

In addition, it may be related to the duration of the stress. If you are just facing an exam, or a very important event, the end of the event may be relieved, and the terrible thing is the ubiquitous and constant pressure.

In reality, the learning pressure faced by children is a long-term pressure, and now children's ability to resist pressure is generally weak, and compared with knowledge-based education, they have experienced less frustration education, so they are prone to psychological problems.

Behind the general anxiety, it is also related to the evaluation atmosphere of the general environment. "We often evaluate a child by grades and rankings, ignoring his other strengths. The value judgment criterion is too simple, which is an important reason for anxiety. ”

Over the years, Yi Jialong has found in his clinical work that many parents will invisibly pass on their anxiety to their children through some details of family life.

For example, when a child stays alone in the house, parents always like to open the door to see what the child is doing, whether he is lazy, or whether he is doing something that has nothing to do with learning. This is actually a reflection of the parents' own anxieties.

He reminded that during the winter vacation, children should be fully rested, which is not necessarily only physical and physical, but also mental.

Especially after the child reaches puberty, his self-consciousness becomes stronger and stronger, and he needs to have a space for himself. Many teenagers make a mess of their rooms, which is also a way of saying "I have my space at my disposal, you don't interfere", and if their parents trespass frequently, they will always feel that they are living under their parents' supervision.

In addition, many parents also have serious communication problems with their children.

"Although the time for each consultation is only about five or ten minutes, sometimes in such a short period of time, we may know more about emotions from our children than we do from our parents. This shows that there is a problem with communication between parents and children. ”

He suggested that parents should read some books on mental health or read together during the winter vacation.

After reading it, you can also talk about the content of the book and let the child say that he is confused. If parents have more understanding of the field of mental health, it is not only conducive to self-psychological construction, but also to build a psychological support system for their children.

Li Lani "Wilderness Trilogy"

Parent-child communication and psychological construction are actually very important compulsory courses for parents. If you establish an equal and smooth communication foundation with your child, you can avoid many problems in the future.

Writer Li Lanni found that today's children generally report good news to their parents but not bad news, which is actually a barrier to parent-child communication.

In the book "Aura in the Wild", she wrote the story of Little Australia (pseudonym), an international student. During his study abroad, he first studied a popular major, and after four years of study, he found that he could not find a job in Australia, so he studied another major, although the salary was relatively high, but because of the accumulation of too much anxiety in the early stage, he broke out all of a sudden, and later returned to China to receive treatment in the Sixth Hospital of Beijing Medical University.

Little Australia told Li Lani that many of the international students around him suffer from depression, bipolar depression, and schizophrenia, but they all report good news to their families.

After reading a lot of psychology books, Li Lani found that there is a concept in psychodynamics, called "intergenerational dispatch theory", that is, children are entrusted and dispatched by the family, leave their parents and acquaintances, and go abroad to study. At the same time, parents are also passing on their unfulfilled wishes to their children, "Mom and Dad have not gone to Peking University, you can go to Peking University to glorify your ancestors", or "You have to be better than Mom and Dad"... It invisibly puts a lot of pressure on the child.

However, when children go to a completely unfamiliar environment abroad, they face more life, social and academic pressures than they can bear, and fall into isolation, it is easy to have some tragedies, such as depression and mental confusion.

She reminded parents, "If my child tells you that he is particularly uncomfortable abroad and wants to come back, you should open your arms and let the child return to your arms." ”

In addition to the "intergenerational dispatch theory", she also found that many teenagers today feel guilty about their parents.

"If they don't study well, they first feel sorry for their parents, which may be behind the parents' usual over-indoctrination, or even emotional kidnapping. In fact, every child should be responsible for his or her own life. ”

The key to solving your child's problems

Often in the hands of parents

Nowadays, many parents use the holiday to "add food" to their children, hoping to jump in grades after the start of school, but often backfired, not only did the grades not make up, but also accumulated a lot of emotional problems after the holiday.

Lanie Lee recalls her learning experience.

When she was a student, she did not do well in mathematics, physics and chemistry. Her grandfather graduated from Tsinghua University and was a physics teacher, which also gave her invisible pressure. So during the winter vacation of her third year of high school, she wanted to catch up with her by crazy make-up classes. Unexpectedly, the class did not make up for it, but instead developed depressive symptoms and was in the hospital for five months.

From the perspective of children's long-term happiness, Li Lani suggested that parents can give their children a few days of real vacation, especially those who are more thoughtful, very self-disciplined, and very sensitive, and should reduce pressure during the winter vacation.

For most children, what they need most is not catch-up lessons, but free time to be completely on their own, even if it's just three days.

1. Let your child sleep until he wakes up naturally

Children are also very hard at the end of the semester, and the academic pressure is very high, and they may get up early every day and do their homework late at night, so you might as well spare a few days during the holidays and let your children sleep as much as they want.

You can let them sleep until they wake up naturally, and when they wake up, they can also nest in the quilt confidently.

In the hospital, Li Lani has come into contact with some junior high school and high school students, who will feel that they have no voice at home and are always watched by their parents. Occasionally, if you take a vacation to sleep in, you will also feel guilty.

They all crave physical and mental relaxation, the satisfaction and security of being carefree and nestled under the covers, and they also hope that their parents will not disturb them, let alone use body language to exert mental pressure.

2. Let your child go to dinner with friends

During the holidays, parents can try to satisfy their children's food needs.

For example, classmates often say which hot pot restaurant is particularly good and which Western restaurant has a particularly good buffet, so let the child make an appointment with a few classmates to go to the restaurant that he has admired for a long time and have a happy meal. Parents only need to give a reasonable meal fee to their children, don't nag, and don't give their children a look.

Today, many children are so pitiful that they don't even have the right to choose what to eat, and what to eat and how much to eat are all decided by their parents. In fact, food can cause emotional pleasure very much, and there are too few food pleasures that primary and secondary school students can decide, and it is often the elders who have the final say.

Li Lani suggested that during the holidays, children should at least enjoy the freedom of food.

3. Let your child enjoy his hobbies to the fullest

In terms of children's interest activities, many parents will restrict their children, for fear that playthings will lose their minds and delay learning.

During the holidays, let your child enjoy hobbies: playing basketball, soccer, watching a ball game, or watching a favorite movie, or go skiing, skating, climbing, sweating, and having fun with their classmates.

In addition, parents should also find a time to open up to their children and talk about what is the biggest psychological distress of their children this semester, have they been bullied at school, and under what circumstances do they hope their parents will help them in time?

After the child finishes speaking, the parents also talk about their hearts, such as what the parents were most worried about last semester, which event caused the parents' mood swings, and what knots need to be untied between parents and children...... It is better to have dialogue on an equal footing, to respect each other, to encourage each other, and only then can there be real communication.

"The key to solving children's problems lies in the hands of parents. ”

The two guests hope that the winter vacation can return to its essence and truly become an opportunity to rest and relax, and become a gas station for children's physical and mental health, rather than a place for overtaking in corners, which is actually a good opportunity for parents.

Some of the images in this article are from Pexels