No. And in general, it is completely normal. Fear, stress and anxiety are “significant and transient negative emotions”, especially in adolescence. Spread the word. And that we finally stop demonizing them. Thirteen researchers sound the alarm.
“When anxiety gnaws at young people”, “worrying rates of anxiety symptoms”: according to many headlines since the pandemic, the majority of young people are doing badly, very badly. However, this is false, retort 13 Quebec researchers, including many luminaries in mental health, in an open letter published today in the Debates section. And asserting it has its share of pernicious dangers.
The letter entitled “Young people’s anxiety: let’s stop scaring the public”, signed among others by Sonia Lupien, director of the Center for Studies on Human Stress, denounces a lot of “biased data” circulating in the media in terms of anxiety in young people in particular, and anxiety in general.
PHOTO CATHERINE LEFEBVRE, THE PRESS
Sonia Lupien, director of the Center for Studies on Human Stress, instigator of the open letter “Anxiety of young people: let’s stop scaring the public”
It must be said that, just last week, yet another study confirmed that “more than half of young Quebec women experience anxiety or depression”.
“Although we are aware that the pandemic may have affected the mental health of some, 50% of young people who suffer from anxiety is a lot,” retort the researchers in their letter. It is therefore important to ask whether these extraordinary claims […] may come from misinterpretations. »
According to the signatories, it would rather be between 20 and 25% of young people who would be struggling with anxiety problems, or half as many.
Why such a discrepancy in the numbers? The letter lists a series of precautions to be taken when analyzing this data: has the portrait been obtained many times, is only the young people who are not doing well felt challenged and have responded, the anxiety reported is it “normative” or really “pathological”?
Talking so negatively about anxiety in the public sphere may make young people fearful of experiencing anxiety, which is often manageable, healthy and normal for the majority of them.
Excerpt from the letter “Youth anxiety: stop scaring the public”, signed by 13 mental health researchers
“We all get very anxious, or very stressed, and that’s completely normal, but that’s why it’s pathological!” says Réal Labelle, signatory and full professor in the psychology department. from UQAM, also a researcher at the Center for Research and Intervention on Suicide. There are evenings when I am quite depressed, he illustrates, but I am not depressed at all! »
This alarmist discourse is also counterproductive, continue the signatories. “We are stressing young people by dint of constantly talking about the negative effects of stress”, adds Sonia Lupien, director of the Center for Studies on Human Stress at the Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal and instigator of the letter. That’s not how we’re going to help them. »
How to help them, exactly? By recalling what anxiety is, and above all normal anxiety. Basically, yes, “it is completely normal to be anxious before an exam”, she recalls, lamenting the extent to which the ambient discourse “pathologizes the normal”.
In doing so, we also risk drowning out the real cases, she laments. “The little one who really suffers from anxiety in his room, we are going to lose him, because there will be no more room for him in the wards. […] By dint of scaring, we’re not going anywhere! »
Note that the researchers do not deny the existence of pathological issues. “Of course there are cases [pathologiques] : when it reduces people’s quality of life. But this is not the case for more than 50% of young people. »