Reply to How Do We Fix The Mental Health Crisis Among Affluent Teens?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Teach kindness in schools.  Teach religion to your kids. [/quote]

I think there is something to religion being a factor here.  Religion gives people a sense of purpose and community, which helps people cope.  I think religion also emphasizes reflection- quiet time, the world and your role in it.  People seem desperate to keep their kids “busy,” as if that’s going to protect them from doing anything bad in life but at some point a person needs to have some down time and reflect.

[b]Also, upper middle class life seems more and more like a joyless slog.  I have multiple friends who are totally successful in all of the ways DCUM cares about but who are fairly miserable and need a lot of therapy.  Their lives are not particularly *hard,* they just have no resilience and every time something happens it’s the end of the world.  They expect nothing less than perfection for themselves and soon enough will put those grueling expectations on their own children.
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In short, I think these miserable kids are the product of miserable parents.[/quote]

There is some truth in what you say, but I'm going to push back on your assessment of what lives are "hard," as I also think that part of the problem is excessive focus on class in a way that discounts basic human needs and suggests that financial security makes life "easy."

I can see myself in some of the bolded paragraph and will note that as a successful person who has struggled with depression and chronic pain and fatigue as a result of a health condition, you would have no idea how "hard" my life is. Many people who lack resilience fall apart because they feel like they are already operating at a level requiring near-perfect attention and organization. They are afraid of having to to adapt to setbacks because they are already barely getting by.

[/quote]

Two things:

1.  Obviously coping with an illness makes life “hard.”  Let’s define hard as dealing with an obstacle preventing you from doing what you want or need to do in daily life.  Even past trauma can make life hard.

But you know what… coping is part of life, and I feel like there is so much effort spent on cushioning kids from any trauma they don’t actually develop those coping skills.  Poor or rich, eventually life is going to throw you a curveball and you’re going to have to deal with it AND go to work and take care of your kids and get your taxes done.  That’s just life.

Sometimes you see people on the religion forum mocking religious people for religion being a crutch… it’s ok to have a crutch.  Like what makes religion worse than other coping mechanisms if you’re not some fanatic imposing your values on others?  Like you don’t have to bear everything on yourself and it seems we don’t teach kids that at all.

2.  The friends I am talking about are close and I know what they are dealing with, and it’s stuff everybody has to deal with whether they have a lot of money or not- family trouble, parent problems, work problems, etc.

And let’s not pretend money doesn’t cushion our lives from being hard, ok?  Money does a lot of work here.  If my car needs a $500 repair, no problem.  If my kids need help with math, boom, tutor, no problem, if I’m tired and don’t want to make dinner, let’s eat out, no problem.  And I don’t even have an HHI that is “high” by DCUM standards.[/quote]

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