Some months of April pass unnoticed. Not this year. Twenty years since he took his own life; I was pregnant, vulnerable. The fetus too. Everything is tattooed in my mind, my senses, even the weather, the wind factor, a tornado that went off with the roof, my father. I inherited suicide and sometimes the sirens come to haunt me at the turn of spring. I hate April for that, for the false hope it arouses, the “suicide season” (the worst being May). And as a relative of a badly crossed ghost, I have two to three times more risk of taking action. I take buds very seriously.
For 20 years, that is to say that I have been interested in mental “health”, as if my life depended on it. For personal reasons — trying to stop the transmission of scars — I was already digging into this vein that seems to have appeared on the public health radar during the pandemic.
In this newspaper, in January: “Between 2019 and 2021, claims for mental health-related drugs increased by 24% among those aged 30 and under. »
And this in February: more than half of young Quebec women in secondary and higher education show symptoms of anxiety and depression, according to a large study that focused on 18,000 young people aged 12 to 25; 52% to 56% are affected! Unfortunately, behind these numbers, there are thousands of first names. And families in despair.
A mother of a 20-year-old, whom I will call Christophe, told me this week all the diagnoses – sometimes contradictory – received for her son since high school. This young man with high intellectual potential, eco-anxious, and who also suffers from social anxiety, hospitalized twice in adult psychiatry, finally withdrew into his cave after dropping out of school after secondary five, finding his place nowhere. and not seeing the need for it, sarcastic in front of our suicidal climate-wise society.
The mother, who works in the community, writes to me: “We raise our children with certain values which, in the end, make them suffer in this time of shnoutte… How could I not transmit to him the taste for living? ? »
Lots of madness, that’s the most divine sense
For who knows how to see
And common sense — the blackest madness.
This is the majority view
Which prevails, as in everything, in this matter.
Agree — and you are sane,
Deviate — you become dangerous on the spot
And chained directly.
Between the two ears
My grandfather Alban, two of whose children committed suicide during his lifetime, often repeated to me: “It’s morale that counts, my little one. “Three years ago, my son saved a 16-year-old friend from suicide; he sent the police to where he was while holding him on the phone, late at night.
Christophe’s mother talks about young people around her; daughter of a friend, 22 years old, in depression, another 14 years old, anxious, hospitalized with suicidal thoughts, another 16 years old, dropping out of school and depression. We are talking about young people from privileged backgrounds, with parents, pampered in principle. In these pages, last week, the Dr Gilles Julien, social pediatrician, told the case of an eight-year-old child who was on his third suicide attempt…
“The world into which children are born today might as well have been designed to promote the disruption of cognitive functions and emotional self-regulation. Everything I observe tells me that we are witnessing a radical change in the mental well-being of children,” writes the famous Canadian doctor Gabor Maté. In his last essay, he criticizes the diagnostic model, because it does not solve the causes of multiple origins. The title of his book: The Myth of Normal. Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. In other words, the myth of normality; trauma, disease and healing in a toxic culture. It would be thrilling if it weren’t so heartbreaking. Waves of youth suicide are hitting the Western world with full force, reports Dr.r Mate (bit.ly/3KNOa8B).
First sentence of the book: “In one of the most health-obsessed societies, all is not well. “And we are less and less well, statistics in support. Children today face an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. But they also face a worrying rise in anxiety and various diagnoses, including ADHD and even self-harm…
Far be it from me to summarize a 500-page essay on mental health that I have been devouring for a week and which makes an admirable synthesis of our era dominated by a capitalist system which has shaped social structures through unhealthy competition, our materialistic culture and its way of thinking about happiness, under prescription, while showing off its successes on social networks. This is not me saying it.
As a social pediatrician, I see many children exposed to toxic stresses and life traumas that alter their brains from a young age, thus putting them at risk of finding themselves on the street at 18 (well before, in some cases)
toxic world
The Dr Mate is not against drugs. But he knows that these are only caps on underlying suffering. The body-mind medicine to which he subscribes is interested in the whole social context, in the origins of traumas – often transgenerational – and in the whole of the society in which we live. He meets for the needs of his book many psychiatrists, psychologists, researchers and neuroscientists who have studied the biology of the brain. The Dr Mate, an addictions and trauma specialist (Order of Canada, 2018), has ADHD himself, as do his three children. He links this diagnosis to childhood and parental stress. He even wrote a book called Scattered Minds (The scattered mind) on ADHD (which I also bought).
“My problem with the usual approach is not that doctors give drugs; only, too often, that’s all they do. Also trained in psychotherapy (he had Prince Harry speak in public recently when his memoir came out Spare), he has successfully helped many addiction patients in ayahuasca healing ceremonies in Peru. This kind of doc that explores all available avenues.
And this capital phrase: “We infuse into the normalized myth that we, each of us, are simply individuals striving to achieve personal goals. The more we define ourselves this way, the more we drift away from the vital aspects we need to be healthy. »
Who said “no one is an island”?
Need help ?
If you are thinking of suicide or worried about a loved one, workers are available at all times at 1 866 APPELLE (1 866 277-3553), by text (535353)or by chat at suicide.ca.
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