A comment on
Amanda Mull’s Feb. 25 article in The
Atlantic online, “A New Sign That Teens Know They Aren’t Struggling Alone”;
subtitled “Their worries about mental health might have a bright side.”* The author
squeezes some conjectural good out of a Pew Research Council survey result,
that “70 percent of teens see mental health as a major struggle for their
peers.” Amanda wrote: “Even though it’s troubling that so many teens worry
about their peers’ well-being, it might also represent progress in how
Americans relate to and empathize with the mentally ill.” And, “. . . having
friends who are attuned to the commonality of mental-health struggles – such as
the ones in Pew’s new survey – can be a big first step to getting help.”
Mull’s ideas
are depressing and angering to me. In her stereotypical thinking, teens’
understanding “that they’re not struggling alone” may be a good sign, along
with its benefit of moderating the “stereotype” that teens are “cruel to one
another.”
The unsaid in
this article leaves some powerful implications or, I could say, makes some
powerful statements: That teens are set adrift in their own world with so many adult-level
troubles; that they have disease-like “mental illnesses”; and that they are
left to caretake and guard each other by observing their peers and pushing
through “stigma,” by availing themselves of governmentese information from the
social media.
Where are the
parents, kids? Where do you think your problems came from? Do you think God or
genes or your own faults fated you with depression, chronic
anxious distress, suicidal feelings? And where are the parents hiding? Long
before your children got depressed or anxious (F32.9 Depressive Disorder, Unspecified; F41.9 Anxiety, Unspecified),
they were lost or invisible in their own home. Parents, encased in the prison
of their own childhoods, their “unfinished business,” were blind to most things
but their own rationalizations, defenses, their need to be powerful. Years later, to see their children as a population
unto themselves, burdened with life distress, existential emptiness, fear of life,
is redoubled neglect and abuse of the highest order.
What a world!
Where a sociopathic narcissist has enough blind followers to make him president. Where children
are allowed to feel they are defects – because their caregivers need to forget.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.