Recently, four years have passed since the declaration of the state of emergency due to the Covid pandemic, the origin of confinement, a catalyst for the increase in mental health problems among children and adolescents, according to specialists. The number of minors under 18 years of age taking psychotropic drugs in Catalonia grew from 10,000 in 2019 to 12,000 in 2021 and 21,000 the following year. These are data from Joan Vegué, responsible for the Generalitat’s Mental Health and Addictions Master Plan. A sum of factors affects the situation of psychological discomfort of generation Z, those born after 2000. “If we do not help them to be competent, in the future we will have many depressed and many anxious people,” warns psychiatrist Josep Moya.
Health services are saturated, appointments can take time if they are not extremely serious cases, and pills appear as an easy formula to treat everyday ailments. Is the child and youth population excessively medicalized? “In this segment, the frustration of not meeting expectations now generates situations of discomfort, and sometimes of frank psychopathology, when we understand that the person should be able to cope with them,” Vegué introduces, implying that there is a path for psychotherapy to the detriment of the drugs.
According to this specialist, the administration of psychotropic drugs to minors is not superior to our surrounding countries. In 2022, children’s and youth mental health centers in Catalonia served nearly 84,000 people, of whom 25% take psychotropic drugs. “It is not a negligible percentage,” says Vegué: “These medications are of interest in affective disorders or TDH, but in general, the commitment of the Mental Health Master Plan is to reinforce all psychological and psychotherapeutic care so that what is not “Strictly necessary, let’s not medicalize it.” In this framework, Salut is working on obtaining data on the duration of treatments with anxiolytics and antidepressants in case excesses are detected. A therapy requires between 4 and 6 months.
Moya, president of the organizing committee of the recently held VIII Català Congress on Mental Health of Children and Adolescents, observes a tendency to elevate symptoms such as anguish or sadness to the category of disorder. “If we approach the problems of emotional or mental health discomfort solely from a pharmacological perspective, but do not help the population to acquire mental resources to face complex and adverse situations, we will have a series of citizens incapable of facing the inherent difficulties of everyday life,” he warns.
This psychiatrist defends that young people must train themselves in the family, educational and social spheres to face life’s difficulties. “A strictly biological approach leads to having more citizens with mental problems in the future. The problem is one of predominant discourse, and the predominant discourse is to treat discomfort with pills. “It is the easiest,” he argues.
Iris Pérez-Bonaventura, doctor in child psychology and author of Ansiedad: It happens to me too (B de Blok) wants to declare herself optimistic about the future of generation Z. She prefers not to comment on the level of medicalization and see the situation as a challenge : “The figures are very high but there are more and more programs to prevent and intervene in the mental health problems of young people, which are not definitive. If you have anxiety or depression now it does not mean that you will have it for life. If you find that intervention that works for you, you can move forward.”
The crisis had given signs but was triggered by the life changes (lack of outdoor activity, more use of screens) of the pandemic, experts agree. The ball, they say, has grown faster than the resources, and the solutions are multiple and complex. “We have to be able to do prevention by working with different departments: Education, Social Rights and Health,” says Vegué. Meanwhile, the straightest path, for the system and for many patients, leads to medications. “The other day an adult told me: ‘Prescribe something to me but don’t make me think,’” says a psychiatrist.
