by Dr. Jay D. Valdez
There’s been an alarming decline in our children’s mental health. It was a trend before the pandemic, but the pandemic magnified it due to its disruption of everyday life.
Children were isolated at home, social gatherings were prohibited, mental health services were either paused or limited, and people lost their jobs, leading to increased tension and stress in the family.
But what led to this problem in the first place? It starts with family.
Parents help shape the formation of a child’s personality and well-being. Pediatric psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott termed the phrase “good enough parenting.” It means parenting doesn’t need to be perfect, but rather responsive to the child’s needs.
However, factors such as divorce, marital problems, physical and mental disability, drug abuse, physical and emotional abuse, and poverty all have detrimental effects on parenting.
The strongest predictor of a child growing up to become a happy, satisfied, and functioning adult is their parents’ ability to rear their child in a safe, supportive environment.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicated that divorce and separation are the most common reported events that increase the incidence of anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children aged 6-17 years old.
Parents are the primary caregivers during a child’s formative years, and a developing child’s brain is primed to receive and internalize information from their environment.
Factors cited above impede the child’s formation of a healthy sense of self. Poverty makes it difficult for parents to provide basic needs such as food, water, shelter, human touch and interaction, which are needed to cultivate a child’s emotional, mental, and physical well-being.
In the abuse of alcohol and drugs, feeding the addiction becomes the parent’s priority, leading to dysfunctional child-parent dynamics, child neglect, and abuse.
Likewise, a parent with a mental or physical disability will not have the capacity to appropriately respond and raise a child, much less mitigate childhood challenges.
One such challenge is the impact of the internet and the media.
Numerous studies suggest that low self-esteem, poor body image, eating disorders, depression, and anxiety have been directly linked to the amount of time children and young adults spend on the internet.
Furthermore, elementary school children have been using it for many years. They are the most vulnerable because their brains aren’t fully developed, and it is linked to poor self-control. The majority of information in the media and what is portrayed as what’s popular, desired, and beautiful on the internet is vastly inaccurate.
Children and teens, especially girls, use this information as the standard by which they compare themselves, and because these standards aren’t realistic, they begin to believe that they fall short of what is desirable and beautiful. They make negative judgments about themselves, devalue themselves, devalue their culture and family of origin, and feel inadequate.
This also leads to a snowball effect, and they start catastrophizing or believing their life and circumstances are worse than they really are. They see and interpret their world through catastrophic lenses and assume others see them the same way.
They engage in confirmation bias, meaning they’ll only believe information that supports their beliefs and ignore the rest, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy or behaving in ways that align with their biases.
Social media is a serious issue because it’s embedded everywhere and is impossible to escape. Other problems include internet addiction, online gaming addiction, cyberbullying, sleep deprivation, musculoskeletal problems, and social isolation.
While there are advantages and disadvantages of the internet and social media, the same is true for social policy, which some argue also contributes to the mental health decline in our youth.
Social policies are programs created by the government to improve the welfare of its people. Opposing views assert that these policies have led the country further from its traditional beliefs and family values.
These polices include issues around gender equality, LGBTQ rights, secularization, and minimization of religion, and emphasis on social and political growth through economy and trade rather than on social and community resources.
In the current political and social climate, it’s difficult to predict whether our country is on the right path.
Regardless, it might help children if wanna be parents were required to attend a class on parenting and factors that affect healthy childhood development – just a thought.
JAY D. VALDEZ is a psychologist who practices in Waipahu. He works with adults suffering from anxiety, depression, relationship problems, and trauma; he also does marital counseling.
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