ONCE

Attention Should be Paid to the Psychological Problems of Younger Generation in China

By Howie Woo, May 13, 2008

Recently, more and more Chinese people suffer various psychological problems such as anxiety and depression. As a result, suicide becomes a serious problem affecting a large amount of people aged between 15 and 35. According to the news in last month, a famous young model named Tanjin commit suicide by jumping out of the window of her apartment at night. The police officer attributed the cause of this event to a severe depression of that girl. Otherwise, the psychological problems also lead to many physical diseases that they could appear in different generations, for example high blood pressure, cancer, and coronary heart disease. Such problems also possibly make young guys to addict to drugs and smoking.

The reasons for the emergence of psychological problems are complicated. Although all the countries in the world have faced a similar threat of psychological problems, the threat in China has its special characters.

First of all, excessive concerns of material gain have contributed to the increasing anxiety and depression among the younger generation in China. It is widely accepted that china as a developing country is experiencing the fastest speed of development. However, due to a lack of effective management, the progressions among different areas are not equal. The gap between rich people and poor people becomes larger. Under this circumstance, young people could not avoid comparison of life conditions between them and others, and then they have to face more pressure produced by the concerning of material gain.

In addition, the extreme competition of the job market makes a large amount of pressure to the younger generation. The population of China has passed 1.3 billion and almost 60 percent of it concentrates in a few developed cities along the coast. The increasing rate of labor force is higher than that of the demand of the market. Therefore, the young people have faced unprecedented competition and always feel lost about the occupation and social relationship.

Finally, defective education and experience of the younger generation are also responsible for the appearance of psychological problems. Due to the huge figure of population, Chinese government has adopted a mandatory policy of birth regulation, allowing each family has only one child. Associating with the fact that Chinese families pay more attention to the connection between parents and children, Chinese kids are all doted upon their parents or grandparents. The adults are too easy to say “yes” when their kids require something. Thus, the young generation progressively concerns what they want only rather than what they have to sacrifice. When they leave their family to live alone or graduate from school to take part in the society, they will consequently be confused about the fact that everything they want is hard to obtain. Then, it is not difficult to find the reason why lots of young people feel depressive of their independent lives.

According to the above-mentioned situations, it is time for our nation to consider the psychological problems as a serious threat and find solutions to prevent it become worse. In my point of view, our society needs to establish a system to help the youth to solve various problems in their lives. This system should be constructed by three aspects and every part of this system correlate with each others simultaneously.

In the first place, the education plays an important role in the treatment of psychological disease. The education not only includes studies at school of our kids, but also everything the child could learn form their parents. Parents and teachers are responsible to teach the youth about right attitude of worth, accurate opinion of life, and clear awareness of duty. During the growth of kids, they should learn to pay more attention to love others, build healthy relationship, and comprehend the psychology of themselves rather than to get a higher score or earn more money. It is also a good method to establish psychology lessons in the curriculums of high school and university to let the student know what happened in their mind and what could they do when meeting unfamiliar problems.

In the second place, psychological consultation centers should be established in the hospitals, on the internet, and in communities. The experts in this centers do research and survey about the psychological problems among youth, answer questions from the youth when they meet particular problems, and help them to fight with the depression and anxiety. The experts could also publish the present psychological situation of youth and make an alert when each psychological illness nearly breaking out regularly.

Finally, a right and healthy cultural circumstance is also very important. The areas including television, news paper, magazine, fiction and so on should understand their conscience clearly and implement their responsibility directly. They have duty to produce an atmosphere around our society fulfilling with love, sympathy, warm-heart, passion, persistence, and simplicity. They are also responsible to let people know what is true and keep fighting with all of the evil things.

To sum up, healing with the psychological illness of us is a challenge. It needs the efforts and sacrifices of everybody. For the future of us and for the beautiful life, it is time for us to do something which is glorious and worthy.