The Kids Are Not Alright

One class reunion; 8 parents; 7 kids suffering mental illnesses

Photo by Dev Asangbam on Unsplash

My wife and I hosted a reunion this past weekend for the eight people we attended grad school with.

Of the eight, all had kids, and seven of the eight had kids who had mental health issues — either ADHD, anxiety, or bipolar disorder.

What was supposed to be a nostalgic reuniting of old friends rapidly turned into a weekend-long therapy session, trying to figure out what was going on with this generation, and where we’d all gone wrong.

I know there were kids with anxiety and ADHD when I was a kid, but the cases seemed more of a rarity, and the symptoms seemed less debilitating.

As a parent of a child/young adult with pretty serious mental health issues, my wife and I have anguished over this a lot. What is it about today’s world that seems to be producing so much mental illness?

I wonder: are there more anxiety-causing factors in today’s radically different world? Until recent generations, time for leisure, or even to think, was a rare luxury. Pollutants like cell phones and social media were also unknown. There were no food dyes, and people expended energy through labour to survive. Is it the new world? Is it our adaptation to it?