Do you know that for a decade now, research retains that every seven out of ten (7/10) young people you take in Ghana are mentally unhealthy?
Mental health is the wholeness of oneself in a perfect shape. It includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being.
It affects all ramifications of our lives as humans.
Mental health issues spring forth when there is imbalance well-being of our psychological state and physiological welfare.
Young people are the ones who suffer from mental health disorders the most in our societies.
The question then is WHY?
The global statistics on mental health disorder in young people put together by SALONI DANTTANI, HANNAH RITCHIE, and MAX ROSER in 2017 shows that 10.7% of the global population have mental problems.
The 10.7% amounts to 792 million people. Out of this number, 9.3% are males and 11.9% are females.
However, this research accounts for mental health problems caused by scientific-related reasons.
Now, one may ask “ what about the social and economic reasons? “
In Ghana, the WHO 2012 estimated that 650,000 people were suffering from severe mental disorders and a further 2,166,000 were also suffering from moderate to mild mental disorders.
According to WHO, the treatment gap was, 98% of the total population are expected to have mental disorders.
It continued to say that, the prevalence of mental illness and its burden among adolescents in Ghana was unknown on a national level.
In 2021, a survey was done by my team and I revealed that a little above 71.04% of the youth in Ghana are mentally unhealthy and interestingly, the root causes appeared to be not scientific or science-related.
So the question we asked ourselves was, “ What may be the real causes?”
So to assuage my thirst for curiosity and to try to provide a solution to this predicament,
I researched the root causes of this problem and found the root causes to be what I call “ the four destructive-virus of mental health disorder “.
These four destructive viruses are all social players.
What I found to be the causes are:
* The structural chaos of modern society.
* Toxic parenting.
* The adverse effects of social media on young people.
* Lack of purpose.
Now, let’s give them an in-depth dissection as to why these social players antagonize the mental health of young people in our various societies.
1. The structural chaos of modern society.
The structure of our modern society is chaotic, it is in great conflict with its very members.
Our societies antagonize the efforts of young people to create a meaningful life for themselves.
The structure and the dominance hierarchy of our societies seek to displace values and ethical approaches to life. Which is a great fundamental problem our societies are bedevilled with.
Our society has misplaced its priorities and has rather given credence to things of lower value.
For instance, our society today blindly worships money and other material possessions without caring about how one acquired those; whether through ethical means or heinous ways.
Our various societies in Ghana have had four metrics for success for about three decades now.
These four metrics determine the trajectory your life is likely to take as a young person.
These are the metrics:
* The economic status of your family
* The kind of political card you hold
* The people you know
* How ruthless and unethical you are and you can be
There is no meritocracy at play in our society.
However, young people in our societies begin to appear worthless when they have no material possessions which seem to place them among the perceived successful people in our societies by age 30 based on our societal standards.
Most of these young people are building from the scratch and because our society demands so many unnecessary things from them at a very early age, tends to frustrate them.
Because these young people don’t have the coping mechanism to deal with such pressure, they get depressed.
Our society pushes one through the ranks to a place of delusional prominence when one ‘appears’ rich.
We have no more regard for values and ethical principles of social standards.
In Ghana now, the honest person is the one who suffers whiles the corrupt get rewarded.
Our society has made our young people believe that they are worth nothing!!!!
Our society incentivises evil, so our young people don’t just lose the truth but gain distortion.
This structure of our society with time has deprived so many young people of their self-worth and confidence and has pushed them into a state of depression.
No wonder most of our youth are depressed!!!!
Our political, social and religious leaders are the ones to be blamed because they are the core advocate and builders of such chaotic structures in our societies.
Modern society has now been structured to fight its initial set standards.
Our Ghanaian society is fundamentally built to stifle the initiatives of its members by frustrating them and beating depression out of them.
Young people in Ghana are stricken to lose their mental health by our societal structures in place.
The caution in this is that a time is coming when young people will start fighting back the society for the harm it has caused them, and when that time comes, no one can stand the heat!!!.
2. Toxic parenting, over the years, has appeared to be one of the causes of mental health disorders among young people.
Toxic parenting often manifests itself in two parallel dimensions. One reveals itself as abuse of children by irresponsible parents. The other subtly finds its way through responsible parents in the form of over-protectiveness.
The former has been addressed with time whilst the latter has not.
However, the latter causes more harm to young people than the former.
Most parents over-protect their children, they shield them against anything outside their comfort zone. This action limits the potential of the child and makes the youngster develop low self-esteem as well as low self-confidence.
Over-protectiveness of children dampens the spirit of the child and makes he/she lives in perpetual fear and a delusional world.
What parents ought to do is to carefully push their children into the unknown, because the unknown world is where the child can grow and develop self-confidence and high self-esteem.
It is exactly like the analogy of the dragon and the gold.
So let’s assume that there is a cage wherein it lies a pot of gold and a dragon, and for one to get the pot of gold, one has to confront the dragon.
And when one fails to confront the dragon, one gets not the gold but when one confronts the dragon, one gets pushed beyond his limits but eventually get the pot of gold.
Assuming the youngsters confront the dragon and get the gold. The excitement from the achievements will make them more confident and do away with the anxiety and become mentally healthy.
This is exactly how parents have to carefully allow their children to encounter the unknown and get them to push past their perceived limitations.
It is also like having a garden in your house and then protecting your child now and then against the reptiles who invade the garden.
So the question is “ what happens to the day that the snakes attack your child in your absence?
Well, the child will probably get killed by the reptiles because the parents have made him or her vulnerable.
The best option is to arm your child with something that he or she can use to chop the snakes into pieces so that when the attack comes in your absence, the child is already armed and prepared to stand the snakes.
A child is nothing more than potential; that is, he could be anything but he is not everything.
Overprotectiveness makes young people shrink and depressed.
It makes them weak, and weak people are a problem to society.
The frustration in overprotectiveness of young people unravels its minute intricacies when the youngster finally encounter the real world full of malevolence and realizes that all that he has been brought up to believe are illusions and do not exist in the real world.
Then, the frustration begins!!!!
3. The adverse effects of social media.
social media has been very instrumental in our lives and the development of our businesses and society exponentially.
However, social media has also affected the young ones immensely in egregious ways.
Averagely, young people between the ages of 11 and 25 spends about 10 hours a day on social media platforms – according to statistics.
Excess use of social media has contributed huge negative effects on the mental health statistics of the younger generation.
This virtual reality has created in young people the quest for delusional prominence.
This pursuit, makes young people indulge in destructive comparison of themselves to the next person, creating insecurity in one.
Young people have turned themselves into products in this virtual reality traded by the social currency ( likes, comments, and shares).
We as young people, quantify in terms of value and social acceptance, the number of likes, comments and shares one gets per post on these platforms.
So when one doesn’t get enough of them, one begins to feel insecure about him or herself and over time, anxiety and depression set in.
FOMO ( Fear Of Missing Out) also create social anxiety in young people and destroy self-confidence.
Many young people hide behind these social media platforms and then lie to their inner-self and their sub-personality about who they are and how society approves of them and accepts them.
The feelings known as dopamine these platforms produce are additive like that of cocaine.
Because of this, young people fail to create deep meaningful relationships for their mental health and in life and are unable to develop the coping mechanism to deal with pressure, rejection and anxiety. ( key influencers of mental health disorder )
The algorithms of these platforms are intentionally developed to make young people in some parts of the world unproductive.
Ask me How?
In China, their version of Tiktok does not reward influencers who produce soft pornographic content and dancing videos. It rewards individuals producing scientific experiment contents, innovative manufacturing ideas and so forth.
Their system and algorithms are built to reward what China wants her youth to be doing in the future.
And if you’re a student and you are below 14 years, the moment you open the app, you only get access to scientific experiments, educational videos, and innovative ideas you can practice in the house.
Their version of Titok also has an opening and closing times for such young people with frequent intentional breaks for these youngsters so that they don’t become addicted to the platform.
But in Ghana and Africa, the algorithm rather rewards influencers producing soft-pornographic content.
And such influence rise to popularity and gets the attention of national media stations.
Since we reward what we want to see more of, our young people then get lured into that and when they fail to succeed at that, they become insecure and mentally tortured.
4. Lack of purpose.
Lack of purpose in one’s life leaves the person destitute.
The existential flexibility of life has in it an evolutionary chain of having a meaningful life.
The chain begins with adopting responsibilities, setting goals and finally developing for oneself a life purpose.
Most young people are mentally unhealthy because they have no life purpose. Having a purpose, however, begins with adopting responsibilities.
Youngsters today, live on a pseudo pleasure Island and live a responsibility-free life.
With time, this decision makes them feel empty and see life as meaningless and not worth living for.
They begin to lose hope and self-belief.
As said by Dr Jordan B. Peterson, a clinical psychologist
“ the meaning one makes out of life is directly proportional to the weight of responsibilities one is willing to carry”
Even the nihilistic people believe this.
This situation young people put themselves through affects their mental health because it is said that “ the greatest burden to ever carry is to have nothing to carry”.
Such emptiness pushes them to look for fulfilment from the wrong directions which threatens peace and order in society.
The outermost result is the indulgence in self-destructive acts and habits.
At this extreme, one gets bitter and spiteful even when people try to make them better. Then depression engulfs one’s life.
True happiness comes from progress, one gets happy when one gradually move towards the attainment of a set goal. Which by the way involves taking on responsibilities.
And as Nietzsche puts it:
“ every great man is an actor of his own ideal”
Having a purpose in life as a young person persuades you to create your fictional ideal person and then you go after such ideal imagery.
However, this comes with a great responsibility which creates meaning for your life.
Clinical psychologists have discovered that an overwhelming proportion of people with mental disorders traces the emergence of such predicament to having no responsibility to bear in the first place.
Stress doesn’t come from being super productive but, stress comes from being pseudo productive.
Have a purpose and adopt responsibilities, and you will become mentally healthy.
In summary, as a result of mental health disorders among young people:
* The suicide rate has increased
* Young people fail to achieve their full potential
* Young people fail to make a meaningful contribution to their various societies
* Young people are unproductive at their workplace
However, this issue can be solved. But in our attempt to reverse this problem:
* There should be a constructive restructuring of the modern society
* We have to help young people discover their purpose and pursue them
* Social media platforms should be reviewed and regulated by the appropriate state authorities and other stakeholders
* Parents have to be careful of how they bring up their children
* Young people should be motivated and inspired to take on responsibilities
It is, therefore, our collective responsibility to help curtail issues of mental health disorders on individuals and society as a whole.
We all have vital roles to play to ensure that these problems are being attended to properly to bring happiness and joy into the lives of individuals and families.
To ensure peace and rapid development in our various societies, we have to solve the issue of mental health among young people.
One cannot build sustainable generational wealth and a better life for posterity without making sure that the very people one is building all these for are mentally healthy.
Let us all help make life better for posterity.