Sir, – I refer to your article "Almost half of young adults suffering from mental health issues during pandemic" (News, March 26th).
The tone of this article perfectly captured the issues facing young people today. Particularly young people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds.
While some commentators wish to celebrate young people’s resilience during the pandemic, this invalidates and erases the experience of vulnerable young people.
Environmental risk factors in mental health are causative. We often discuss environmental risk in the narrative around young people’s mental health but rarely action them. Young people’s coping skills are not equivalent to adults (this is well-established in the research literature), therefore they suffer disproportionately.
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Simply celebrating young people’s coping rather than acknowledging the disproportionate loss, pain and suffering they are facing will do them an injustice.
Statutory mental health services, struggling to cope with demand pre-Covid, are facing even greater unmet demand from those young people with serious mental health problems. Celebration creates a false narrative when policy action to tackle the determinants of poor mental health is needed.
How about wellbeing focused educational reform and a robust plan to tackle serious levels of youth unemployment? Current levels of youth unemployment will scar the health and economic wellbeing of the current generation of youth transitioning to the workplace for decades to come.
We need to focus less on semantics of labelling differences between mental wellbeing, mental health and mental illness, as they lie on a continuum (again this is well established by research). Young people need action, not words.
Covid-19 has victimised us all. To claim otherwise is not to validate young peoples lived experience during this time – which is of disproportionate pain, suffering and loss. – Yours, etc,
Dr EMMET POWER,
Health Research Board
Clinical Research Fellow
in Youth Mental Health,
Department of Psychiatry,
The Royal College
of Surgeons in Ireland.
RCSI Smurfit Building.
Beaumont Hospital,
Dublin 9.
Sir, – I concur with Dr Emma Farrell that media reporting on young people during this time "should acknowledge and celebrate a generation that continues to adapt and persevere in the face of unprecedented challenges" (Letters, March 30th).
As someone who works in a secondary school, for the past year I have admired the resilience shown by our young students who have had so much taken away from them at a critical juncture in their life journey. The positivity, creativity and good humour they have continually demonstrated have been truly inspirational. We can all learn a valuable lesson from our students. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN O’HARA,
School Chaplain,
Carrowmore,
Sligo.