China Youth Daily and China Youth Network reporter Ma Yuping
Lin Meifang withdrew from all the "chicken baby" groups. Her life entered another pattern: sending her son in the next room twice a day to remind her to take medicine, going to the hospital every two weeks to prescribe a false note; cutting pills on the board every 3 days and putting them in a small green pill box with a partition. On the way to work, the child in the school uniform on the subway occasionally reminds her that she is the parent of a high school junior.
Here's her secret: Two years ago, her son was diagnosed with severe depression, experienced a failed suspension, return to school, and now continues to take time off at home. Except for her mother and husband, she can't tell anyone else that "my child is suffering from depression."
What makes her not alone is that there are seven or eight parent WeChat groups, almost every group is full. Like her, the group has children diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder, from junior high school students to college students. Children suffer from insomnia, sadness, irritability or scars on their arms, suffering from different side effects of drugs such as nausea, hand shaking, drowsiness, and gaining weight.
The medical community has not yet been able to give a clear trigger for depression in adolescents. There are no biological indicators for the diagnosis of depression, the results of the psychological assessment scale are used as a reference, and the doctor's "stethoscope" is the eyes, ears, and mouth—relying on empirical observation, listening, and communication.
There are more and more teenagers at the entrance of the clinic, and Pei Shuangyi, chief physician of the Mental Health Department of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, noticed this trend 5 years ago. Last year, his department treated more than 8,000 students outpatiently, and nearly 600 were hospitalized. In September 2020, the National Health Commission issued the "Work Plan for Exploring Special Services for the Prevention and Treatment of Depression", in which students are one of the four key prevention and treatment groups, and depression screening is included in the health examination of high school and college students.
The detection of depression is only the first step, and the side effects of drugs, the possible recurrence of the disease, the impact of disease stigma and the difficulty of restoring social functions are the barriers that most children and families face.
1
In the second month of the second month of high school, his son Chen Heng told Lin Meifang that he did not want to go to school, and he could not listen to it in the classroom every day, and he was dizzy and headache- He wanted to teach himself at home and go to school when he took the exams. Lin Meifang was not angry, "How can I not go to the city's key high schools?" I'll lose my face to you!" ”
The "agreement" reached by the mother and son was that when he was really uncomfortable, Lin Meifang helped him take leave, "half a day and a half a day please". Not long after, Lin Meifang was invited to the school, and across from her sat 4 "particularly strict" teachers. They helped her analyze her child's situation and reiterated that the grade group's rule that "only two days off per month" was still uncomfortable. She confessed that at that time, she was a mother who didn't know anything and was a little weak.
Lin Meifang observed that after her son Chen Heng enrolled in high school, he went out at 6 o'clock every day, took the bus and subway for 1 hour, and arrived at the school before 7:15. I came home at 6 o'clock in the evening, went to bed after eating with a tired face, and got up at two or three o'clock in the morning to do my homework until dawn. The son is not satisfied with his achievements in the middle of the stream and wants to catch up with him with all his might. On weekends, my son asked for a tutor to make up lessons and told Lin Meifang that "I am not tired, and I am tired if I do not look for a tutor."
"Do you want to find a psychiatrist?" She asked her son tentatively. "Yes." Chen Heng answered. She did not think about money to train children, psychologists came to counsel, 900 yuan for two hours, she decided to be effective and then continue until the third year of high school.
Chen Heng's palpitations became more and more serious, and his mood became lower and lower. He described that "when you sit quietly, your heart beats very fast, like you have just finished a long run, but you will not breathe", it is difficult to fall asleep at night and wake up very early, the spirit is very tired, and he once served as the main player of the school baseball team, and he has no interest in sports. Checking around in the hospital "has nothing to do with the organic stuff of the organ." Eventually, at the local mental health center, Chen Heng was diagnosed with major depression.
In fact, psychological and emotional abnormalities can pull out somatic symptoms, and Pei Shuangyi and colleagues have seen a lot of them in the consultation, which is medically called "somatization disorder". Teenagers who come to the clinic have headaches, back pain, frequent diarrhea, insomnia before school, sweating palms, nausea and vomiting... The treatment experience is also similar - blood tests, mrimagnetism, internal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, some "hospitalized in pediatrics, more than 40 tubes of blood were drawn."
The children's medical record bags contained the diagnosis results of multiple hospitals, and the family conditions were almost all over the major hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. Most of the cases are written "depressed mood, decreased interest in life", "severe depression, accompanied by self-harm behavior", "moderate depression recurrence, second hospitalization", and so on.
"Basically, they have found that for a long time, and their learning ability has dropped very badly, and many children have not gone to school, but have returned to the family and isolated themselves." Pei Shuangyi said, "In school, the acceptability of their brains is already very low, basically going to sleep or going in a daze." ”
Kalir, an 18-year-old depressed patient, recalls that when she was ill, she wanted to stay in bed all day, and only the kitten accompanied her. Courtesy of Visual China
2
Explaining to outsiders that "depression is a disease" is sometimes not an easy task. Even parents have a hard time empathizing with their children.
Chen Heng confessed his illness to his friend, and the other party laughed at him, so he stopped mentioning it, thinking that it was more appropriate for his mother to make up "the child's heart is not good" as an excuse for not going to school. At first, he himself could not accept the diagnosis of "depression", which was more like a disease born of weakness and infirmity, and he would once disguise it in the direction of "mania".
In the 15th floor ward of the Zhejiang Rehabilitation Medical Center, there are more than 40 teenagers suffering from mood disorders, nearly 80% of whom are moderate or severe depression. Among them, there are bullyes who have been suspended from the provincial key high schools, and there are also "outliers" in the eyes of teachers and parents - school aversion, smoking, alcoholism, hatred of relatives, addiction to the Internet, and violent behavior. In the eyes of healthcare workers, "most of them are smart and sensitive."
Most children have marks of self-harm on their arms, dense scars, like red spider webs. When Pei Shuangyi receives treatment, he will first examine the child's arm, most of which is non-suicidal self-harm. He believes that when children have difficulty telling others about pain, they will choose to scratch themselves, bleeding wounds that stimulate vision and produce endorphins to alleviate their anxiety. "Searching knives" is one of the daily tasks of nurses, and there are always children who want to transport blades into the inpatient area through takeaway or courier.
The ward of the rehabilitation center is not a closed ward, and the minors need to be accompanied by parents when they are hospitalized, and the children wear blue-green hospital gowns and black positioning bracelets on their hands. At the time of discharge, the bracelet is removed by the nurse with a tool. Some children bought iron absorbing stones on the Internet, cracked the way to open the bracelet, and found the blind spot of the hospital's monitoring, and when the parents did not pay attention, they ran over the wall and ran out. When he found him, he said sullenly that he just wanted to go home.
There will be screams from children in the ward almost every day, perhaps just a sentence from a parent that irritates him; there are children who chase after their mothers and beat them up, and there are fathers who can't help but teach their children. When it is necessary to temporarily restrain calm, the security guard who is more than 1.9 meters tall will enter the ward to help.
In one hospital room, the mother listened to her son's angry "accusations", covered her chest and crouched down against the wall, covering her face and crying. The doctor and nurse entered the door to mediate, and the son sat indifferently brushing his mobile phone, "I don't feel anything, she will only make me feel that I am a burden to this family."
"You can see the pain of parents, but you can't see or imagine our pain." You only saw those few minutes of family relationships. Li Tianran, who has been ill for 3 years, described, "When I was sick, I felt very tired of being alive, and the most painful thing every day was waking up." When he relapsed last year, he stood on the roof of the 19th floor and called friends and family to say goodbye.
A high school girl diagnosed with severe depression told her father on the phone that she was tired and couldn't stand it. Her father encouraged her, "Be stronger, be braver, and the top will pass." My daughter's cry came from the other end of the phone, "I'm calling you to say goodbye to you, I really can't do it." ”
Zou Feng, a counselor who has "survived" the community of depressed patients, has met many parents who do not understand and accept their children's illness.
Once, Zou Feng was forced to be anxious by a father who "did things very seriously and diligently, and his career was very successful". Regardless of how doctors and counselors explained it, the father insisted that the child just didn't understand things and didn't listen, and repeatedly touched his bottom line, depression was just a reason to avoid learning, "he was not sick at all."
Zou Feng was indignant and couldn't help but reply, "This is your own child, he is not a bad breed, he is not born lazy and does not seek progress, he has encountered difficulties and pains, and he has become like this." If you think he was born a bad breed, that's also inheriting you. ”
When meeting parents who come to consult, Zou Feng often says that he is too hard and too sensible to get sick, and the child has done his best, he is already depressed, does not want to live, and hurts himself. He was just sick, not bad. "Parents must understand this level before their children feel safe."
3
The clinic is a thick wooden door, and Li Tianran has personally tested its resistance to blows. That time, in a manic state, he quarreled with his mother in the clinic, and he suddenly stood up, turned around, and slammed his fist into the door. "The door didn't move, the doctor saw the big scene, just calmly drank the soda." Li Tianran recalled afterwards.
Li Tianran participated in psychology-related studies. Photo courtesy of the interviewee Li Tianran participated in psychology-related studies. Courtesy of respondents
The girl in the school uniform began to cry quietly from the moment she sat in the examination room, and her legs and feet could not help but shake. "I'm just fine." She told the doctor that she was in a very low mood when she was alone, but she couldn't cry, and she hadn't cut her wrist with a knife recently, "because there were no tools."
"Have you eaten a lot of food?" How about psychotherapy? Are there bad thoughts, such as suicidal thoughts? The doctor asked. The mother answered most of the questions.
Pei Shuangyi has met some "not very honest" parents in order to make their children's illness look a little lighter and return to school as soon as possible. "But the problem is, if you don't figure out this disease, the child will still have problems." A girl who Pei Shuangyi received had "command auditory hallucinations" and was stopped by her classmates when she climbed to the second floor to jump.
"Cracking down on counterfeiting" is one of the daily tasks of him and his colleagues. Faced with children and their families who have hidden something, they rely on experience, questions and observations to repeatedly verify.
A father often drives long distances to take his children to see a doctor. The girl feels sorry for her father, feels that she is a useless person, a burden on the family, and feels guilty. So as long as her father came with her, she told the doctor that she was fine, and she was in a good mood, and she didn't need much treatment.
Pei Shuangyi saw the child's eyes trance when she spoke, sometimes her eye circles were red, and she did not lie when she did the psychological assessment scale. He continued to try to communicate with the girls.
"Doctor, I've been here for so long, I haven't changed at all, I don't feel happy, I still feel superfluous, I'm a burden on my family, so I really don't want to treat it anymore." The girl told him.
Almost every day parents and children ask the same question. "There is no improvement, I want to give up, I can't see hope" "He has been taking medicine for 3 months, psychological counseling is also doing, our wrong education method has also changed, how is he not good!" "Looking forward to next year this year, next year to the next year, I am almost sick with my children"...
Most of the time, Pei Shuangyi and his colleagues are solving the problems of parents, "because parents are too anxious, he always wants you to give him a positive reply, such as when it can be good, they want to see hope." 」 Zou Feng had seen some parents who helped their children treat their illnesses, and in the end he was even more sick than his children.
"There is no way not to be anxious, she can't go to school when she is sick, she can't go to school without friends, she is more likely to get sick, how will she work in the future without a diploma?" A mother who has tried many "positive" and "evil" treatment options, she blocked the message of the child's illness to all relatives and friends, "Saving the child is the mother's instinct."
4
For most families, finding the cause is the most urgent thing parents do after their child is diagnosed.
Some mothers reflect that their desire to control their sons is too strong, and they direct and supervise too much. The child told her that she wanted to be free too much, and would rather be free than to be sick; some traced back to the child's infancy, because of premature birth, the child slept in an incubator for 6 months, and had no sense of security since childhood; some analyzed the family, the couple broke down and divorced, the daughter never got close to the father, afraid that doing that would hurt the mother, and when she grew up, there were many difficulties in making friends, especially heterosexual friends; some experienced domestic violence, they were beaten, and the children were also beaten; and some speculated that the son changed to a new learning environment. For a while, I couldn't accept the gap in my grades, so I fell ill.
Chen Heng once thought that "loving this kind of thing is very nihilistic." In his childhood, he felt that his mother did not like him and always wanted to get rid of the responsibility of educating her children. This is the conclusion he came from his own "observation": for example, when he was in elementary school, his mother asked him to study at school until 5 o'clock every afternoon after school, and then go home by himself, and his grandparents tried to pick him up and was stopped; once his handiwork forgot to take it to school, his mother sent it to him, but it was broken; one summer vacation, he was not taken home, but was sent to his grandmother's house, "I was also very uncomfortable at that time."
These small things, Lin Meifang forgot. She remembers when the child was in the first grade of primary school, the teacher told her that the child was always half a beat slower than others, other children lined up, her son was still packing his school bag, and finally packed up and walked to the end of the line, with a loud bang, the contents of the bag all fell out. She took her son to a private hospital to test IQ, emotional intelligence, and check for autism. The child is sometimes disobedient and especially sharp, and she is grumpy and can't help but scold the child.
Lin Meifang knows that her son hates her, and she has taken many detours in educating her children. She wanted to apologize to her son, but as soon as she said, "Where did my mother do badly in the past, you pointed it out", and the son waved his hand to signal her not to say it again, "No, no." ”
"Communicating with adolescent children is not easy in itself, especially if there is no such environment and foundation at home." Pei Shuangyi has seen the child scolding the mother in the clinic and telling her to "get out"; there are fathers who can't open the child's door, worry that the child is doing stupid things in the room, and climb into the child's room from the outdoor balcony; and the mother takes full responsibility for the child's illness and keeps saying sorry to the child, your illness is caused by the mother. When she came back to the clinic, she rarely described the child's symptoms, and always reviewed what she had done wrong, or which sentence was wrong, which caused her daughter to resent, causing her illness to recur.
"When we focus on adolescent depression, we are most concerned about the family." Pei Shuangyi believes that "one of the reasons why a child is sick and has an emotional or behavioral problem is that the family is 'sick'." But family is only part of the relationship. ”
But Pei Shuangyi and his colleagues hardly count the parents in front of their children, they feel that it is unfair to their parents, and it is not conducive to the repair of family relations and the rehabilitation of children.
His "general" guidance to parents is that when getting along with children, we must change from what parents say to what children say, parents listen carefully, and do not easily judge.
Cao Xinyi, attending physician of Zhejiang Rehabilitation Medical Center, believes that in recent years, adolescent depression has been related to the living environment, the progress of science and technology, and the academic pressure of children. "Children participate in the middle school entrance examination, and the ratio of vocational high school to general high school admission is 1:1." How many parents who have come out of the countryside to become 'middle class' can accept their children to learn technology and may become a blue-collar worker in the future? Parents fill their children with extracurricular classes, and children don't even have time to go out for a run. ”
"Too (inner) volume (inner volume: more refers to irrational internal competition)," a manic first-year student described to reporters of his class environment. Some of the students in the class have completed the third grade of mathematics by themselves. His strength was philosophy, and he liked Hegel the most, and often read The History of Modern Philosophy, which was what set him apart in his class.
Before he fell ill, he often engaged in self-philosophical debates, like Zhou Botong's left and right hand fighting. His plan was, "Roll with them, and the volume wins and then change." "But before the plan began, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder — when he was ill, he hadn't slept for two days, his mind was clear and energetic, but then he went into a period of depression and had no motivation to do anything, including getting up and drinking water.
According to data from the National Health Commission, about 30 million children under the age of 17 and adolescents in China are plagued by emotional disorders and behavioral problems. According to the "Report on the Development of National Mental Health in China (2019-2020)" of the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the detection rate of adolescent depression in China is 24.6%, of which the detection rate of severe depression is 7.4%, and the detection rate increases with the increase of grades.
According to the National Institutes of Health, about 9.4 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds had a major depressive episode in 2017. Liu Huaqing, a child psychologist at Beijing Huilongguan Hospital, mentioned in an interview with the media that the proportion of children suffering from depression is 12.1% in Australia and 11.4% in Sweden.
Lin Wei's son was sick and took a two-year absence from school and was forcibly admitted to the hospital four times. She said bluntly that in the moment, it is difficult not to be a "chicken baby". With the efforts of her and her child's grandmother, her son can memorize "Three Hundred Tang Poems" in 20 months, and at the age of 3, he has mastered more English words than his 6-year-old cousin. My son had never read a children's edition of a book, and the books in the bookcase were several notches higher than those of his peers. But now, my son is hospitalized again, the refrigerator and coffee table in the house have been smashed by my son, and there are pits on the newly renovated floor.
A patient of the same age as Lin Wei's son recalled his childhood, and the most impressive thing was that he had to know the word card every day when he came home from kindergarten. For each mistake, the small bamboo pole in his mother's hand left a mark on his leg. He would now be terrified when he saw the word "butterfly" .
Some parents do not care about their children's childhood experiences, saying that "it is really to find a cause for this disease." Children pursue perfectionism too much, and if they fail to achieve their goals, they will be lost and enter a vicious circle of emotions. But in Zou Feng's view, most perfectionism is cultivated from an early age. Some parents start training when their children are two or three years old, "If you are not obedient or serious, your mother will not want you and will not like you." For children before the age of 6, "Mom doesn't want me anymore" means "I'm going to die." "So these children's fear of imperfection is the same as their fear of death."
"My son got this disease, but I was actually half wrong." Lin Meifang said, "Including the families in our WeChat group, many of them have changed after their children have fallen ill, and the parent-child relationship and education methods within the family have all changed." ”
Recently, a TV series about "How Parents Chicken Babies" is currently airing. Lin Meifang and the mothers in the group refused to watch it, because they would "keep looking at their former selves" in the play.
5
Chen Heng also "has been looking for the thing that directly triggered the sick switch."
In his opinion, there is no specific or directing thing, "emotions have been accumulating, and it just so happened that many things happened together at that time." ”
Chen Heng was once sent to a local internet addiction school on the grounds that he played games upside down day and night, with straight eyes and a short temper, breaking the windows of his home and beating his mother.
Lin Meifang recalled that when her son was angry and beat people, they wanted to send him to the mental health center to be hospitalized, but the bed in the children's ward had to wait. She did not think of a better way, and sent her son to the net ring under the introduction of others. The addiction school has appeared in the local evening newspaper and hired well-known education experts for 60,000 yuan a year. Several instructors at the school, posing as plainclothes policemen, took Chen Heng away on the grounds that he had "beaten his mother and had to take her to the police station for a record."
It was not until the exposure of "Yuzhang Academy" that Chen Heng first described his experience in the Internet addiction school, because he felt that "public opinion finally sided with the child" and he could prove that he was a "victim". He had never mentioned his experience to anyone before, "because schools are seen as 'juvenile detention centers' or the last stop before teenagers go to jail."
In the School for Quitting Internet Addiction, he was physically punished for hundreds of squats because he did not sort out his internal affairs, so that his muscles were strained and he could not sit down. Sometimes there are bugs in the meals, which are difficult and not enough to eat, and he often dreams of eating snacks. After 3 months, the parents were allowed to visit, and when he met the parents, there would be an instructor to accompany him, and he did not dare to tell his parents, because he was afraid that his parents would not necessarily believe it, and if he did not believe it, he would be extended to graduate. But being away from his parents allowed him to enjoy his freedom, and sometimes when he taught himself mathematics at night, he would even lament the beauty of life.
The Internet addiction school was just the beginning of the destruction of Chen Heng's trust with his mother, and when he returned home, he found that his parents would only be more strict with him. He had a troubled year, afraid of upsetting his parents, and his grades were better than ever. The following summer, Chen Heng's mother sent him to the Internet Detention Center during the summer vacation on the grounds that he did not study hard, and stayed until the beginning of the school.
"I think it may have been too much damage, such as the relationship with parents, the relationship with school, and the self-perception, just such a feeling of confusion, and then the 'leg' is broken." 」 Chen Heng told the China Youth Daily and China Youth Network reporter that he likened his illness to a "mental fracture."
Lin Meifang knew the story behind this experience many years later. She had a picture of her son in the internet ring on her mobile phone, which was sent to him by the instructor that year, and his son was tanned and sat on the edge of the playground, grinning.
The second time she sent her son in was because she saw the results of the previous year's "education", the son looked very sunny, folded the quilt neatly every day, and she wanted her son to maintain this state and not change. She also admitted her greed for money, and the internet ring had promised to send her for education for free if she was not satisfied within a year.
"I had a complete breakdown that time, I didn't want to talk to my mother anymore, I wasn't a channel person with her at all, and it didn't matter what I said to her. I didn't cry when my grandfather died, I cried at that time, I was really sad, I really wanted to leave this house, and the damage of sending me to the net ring for the second time continues to this day, which is a complete and utter harm to me. Chen Heng said.
In the Internet Addiction Clinic of Beijing Anding Hospital, Sheng Lixia, deputy chief physician, said in an interview with Health Times that 70%-80% of the children who were treated were considered by parents to be children with mobile phone addiction, and finally they were diagnosed as depressed, and mobile phone addiction was a behavioral manifestation of children alleviating symptoms related to depression.
Chen Heng said that he does not like to play games, "but playing games allows me to connect with others and communicate with others."
In the past two years, after contacting hundreds of sick children, Zou Feng feels that smoking, playing games, and tattooing are in a sense ways for children to alleviate anxiety. "Parents see that these behaviors of theirs are also anxious, so in order to eliminate their anxiety, they will rudely prohibit it, but the way for children to alleviate anxiety is gone."
Cao Xinyi observed that some depressed children did not come to the hospital, but were sent to the Guoxue Academy or the Internet Addiction School. "It's good to study the Three Character Sutra and the Disciple Rules, but if you have a disease, you must first cure it." Cao Xinyi said, "Depression is detected early and intervened early, and the prognosis effect will be better." ”
On April 9, 2020, students of Hohhot No. 26 Middle School hit "inflatable dolls" in the emotional catharsis room. Courtesy of Visual China
6
The course of the disease is long, parents are familiar with the symptoms and dosages of different drugs, they believe in "long-term illness becomes a good doctor", trying to control the child's "medication".
Li Tianran has seen parents who give guidance to other people's children in the WeChat group, and there are also children who have been "cut off" by parents, and the children have no financial resources and can only carry them back to school. A patient with a 9-year history of depression understands the rejection of drugs by parents – "because they only see the side effects of the drugs, they don't see the side of saving children." ”
Some children show side effects like drug instructions, nausea, shaking hands, drowsiness, and memory loss. Li Tianran took the medicine of "directly beating himself down", after taking that medicine, the idea of suicide was completely erased, and he fell asleep for two weeks; curious about the metal taste in the drug, he took the medicine in his mouth, his mouth was numb until the next morning, and some patients directly called out "That medicine is as disgusting as eating shit"; some will numb the nerves, a little like slightly drunk after drinking, and some make people gain dozens of pounds in a short period of time.
Parents are anxious that medication and psychological counseling do not make the child get better immediately, and even the condition is repeated. The group moms began to read books on psychology and communication with their children, and tried "animal therapy" – caring for pets can stimulate their enthusiasm for life and reduce negative emotions.
Lin Meifang suggested that her son keep a cat. Chen Heng gladly accepted that the cat was very sticky to him, and when he was sick, "feeding the cat and getting up to see what the kitten was doing" became the motivation for him to get up. After a fierce quarrel with his father, Chen Heng ran away from home. His mother sent him a photo of the cat on WeChat, "There are still kittens waiting for you to come home." ”
The cat became the reason for Chen Heng to go home. "I feel that the kitten needs me and depends on me." "So are my parents." "But cats don't judge me." Chen Heng said.
No "therapy" is a panacea. Some friends said that they had a dog for their children, and now they feel that the dog is depressed.
Some parents in the group looked for "great immortals" to tell fortunes, some begged all over the temple, some stood outside the door of the children's room at a fixed time every day and chanted the sutra, 3 hours, not less than a minute, and some invited Taoist priests to come to the house to practice. If children reject these, parents mostly carry out it quietly, "superstition seems to be a necessary way."
There are always a few people in the WeChat group who love to speak. There are only a few reasons for the silence: the child is cured, the child's recovery has entered a bottleneck period, and the child is gone.
7
Lin Meifang will be angry at some of the views that "it is not recommended that depressed children go back to school" because "going back to school is almost the hope of all mothers", but she also knows that "that is not the only measure of recovery".
When children return to school, parents suddenly become the "stars" in the group, and while other parents are envious and jealous, they are more likely to "learn the scriptures" - in which hospital? What medicine did you take? Which counselor to watch?
After a year off, Chen Heng returned to school. Feeling that he was recovering well, he quietly cut off the medicine. "I especially want to go back to school because I want to integrate into society, I want to communicate with teachers, and learning enriches me."
After her son returned to school, Lin Meifang received calls from teachers almost every day, mostly about the "abnormal" behavior of children in school, such as being two minutes late for class and wearing a hat to go to school. The teacher told her that she should pay special attention to the child, "I will go to see if he is in the classroom after class, and if he is not in the classroom, I will look up, afraid that he will jump off the building." ”
Chen Heng believes that the teacher is doing this to exclude himself. "Teachers may think that what students like us are most afraid of is that they will go to their parents to file a complaint." Chen Heng said, "The teacher is the teacher of the school first, and the teacher of the student is the second."
Many parents in the patient group are teachers, and they advise Lin Meifang to understand, "In case of an accident in the school, they are all responsible, and the school and teachers also have a lot of pressure." "A student at a group of friends' schools committed suicide by jumping off a building, parents came to pull up banners, and a teacher was expelled.
"Later, the teacher asked to bring the medical records and the scales that the child had done, and the school should look at the relevant data and medical history." Lin Meifang didn't sleep much after a night, she changed her mind, and these things were not taken to school. She was worried about her son's information leaking.
The trust between parents and the school is torn apart little by little. "I sent a lot of voices to the teacher, and I said that my child was not sick, he was depressed before. If you are afraid of taking responsibility, I can write a certificate of exemption, as long as the school provides him with a relaxed learning environment, I am really thankful. ”
A few months later, Chen Heng's illness recurred, and he retreated back to his home again. But this time there was no suspension from school, and the school acquiesced to his long-term leave.
Lin Meifang now does not care whether her son can go back to school to study, she hired a one-on-one tutor, and the teacher came to tutor every week. Everything looks like it's recovering in a good direction. Half a month ago, after my son returned to school to take the mock exam, he sent a WeChat message to tell her that he was very uncomfortable, his heart palpitations were severe, and "the school evoked a lot of bad memories of me", followed by a series of "fear" expressions. The tutor teacher has been standing at the door for 10 minutes, he will not let the teacher in the door, said canceled, he must first go to the school to find the teacher to evaluate.
"I kept telling him you were the best and the best, and Mom supported you. Don't get excited, take a deep breath and relax, you take a taxi to school to tell the teacher clearly. "Later, my son was sent home by the teacher at the school, who waited until Lin Meifang got off work." As soon as I got out of the subway, I couldn't help but cry, I thought we tried so hard to help him recover, how did you break it again. ”
The mothers in the group also encountered various problems about returning to school. Lin Wei's son was ill in the second year of junior high school, continued to take leave at home, did not go for a day in the third day of the junior high school, had no attendance record, and did not participate in the middle school examination. To her surprise, the school issued her son a junior high school diploma. After his son's condition improved, he wanted to return to school to study in the third year of junior high school, but the school refused to accept it, on the grounds that he had not taken a leave of absence and had already graduated. Lin Wei went to the District Education Bureau and got the same reply.
There are also mothers who have organized groups to "visit" international schools, and they guess that there is less pressure there, and changing the environment may be beneficial to their children. Some people hold the idea of "resolutely not taking a break from school", "half a day can be half a day, and the school's nearest school time is calculated by the hour." But most of the time it is just "thoughts", and they gradually learn to respect the wishes of their children, feeling that "this disease must be slowly nourished by love".
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Pei Shuangyi has seen many children who interrupt their studies, with the largest number of junior and high school students. Some can be restored to a good state after drug treatment, psychological counseling, and changes in the child's relationship with the family and the surrounding environment.
"Teachers and classmates also need to give them some support, depression is just a cold in the heart, it is a temporary situation, it will get better." He hopes that schools will popularize relevant mental health knowledge and eliminate the stigma of children and parents.
In April, the Zhejiang Rehabilitation Medical Center, where Pei Shuangyi works, will conduct psychological screening of 10,000 students in Zhejiang Province, which is an attempt to achieve "medical and educational integration". The condition of a child in the inpatient area was found when the school did the psychological scale screening, and was suggested by the psychology teacher to come to the hospital for examination, "the psychology teacher is the history teacher."
Before going to the hospital, Chen Heng sought the support of the school's psychology teacher. He was a little disappointed, "The teacher was not very professional, and he also revealed to me the secrets of the classmates I knew."
In the face of different patients, doctors give different treatment options. "Children in the early acute phase need medication. We will also be involved in some methods of psychotherapy. Pei Shuangyi said, "Parents should accompany, listen and support, not provoke, not provoke, and the opinions of both parents should be consistent and assist their children to seek medical treatment." ”
He suggested that parents should judge less when communicating with their children, do not talk about big reasons, and give their children more opportunities to express themselves. In addition, allow the child to express some irritable and angry emotions appropriately at home.
"But for example, if the child has established an emotional barrier and refuses to let the parents come closer, this is to take time." Parents can't say, I have changed, how can you not be good, I apologize, what do you want me to do? Zou Feng asked rhetorically, "Isn't that a new injury?" ”
"It's good to be a parent with 60 points, and in raising children, 100 points equals 0 points." Zou Feng believes that during the rehabilitation period, parents should give their children a sufficient sense of security.
Chen Heng hopes that those who are "healthy" can understand that they do not have to be careful with people with depression. "Children with depression are not fragile, and it is not too low to exchange emotional intelligence as healthy people." When you communicate with normal people, you should think more from the perspective of the other party. ”
Lin Meifang remembers that during a visit, the doctor asked her, what are the advantages of the child? She said no, and then listed her son's string of shortcomings. The doctor told her to take the child home, "think about it, and then bring the child's father with you next time." And now, she feels that her son is full of merits.
She gradually moved closer to her son. He likes the podcast anchor, Lin Meifang also likes. When her son closes the door and tinkers with public welfare work, she sometimes quietly stands outside the door and hears the laughter of the child, she is happy, "I hope this laughter is more."
(At the request of the interviewees, Lin Meifang, Chen Heng, Li Tianran, and Lin Wei are pseudonyms)
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