#5 - MindBites - Addressing the Mental Health Crisis Among Young Adults

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Ready, let's do this.

I'm going to talk about a study which I heard on Chris Williamson's podcast Modern Wisdom. He talks with Jordan Peterson.

A study conducted at Harvard Harvard Graduate School of Education, and it was. I'll read the stats up first and we'll talk a bit about it. I'm on 709 young adults aged between 18 and 25. 34% showed that they are lonely and 44% feeling that they don't matter to others. 51% suffer from anxiety due to achievement pressure, 58% lack meaning or purpose in life and 50% so one and two are uncertain about their life direction and don't know what they want to do going forward in the future. And at this point of time as well, which is pretty, pretty scary because being a young adult in today's day and age is.

just see me speak up. I'm going through it. You've kind of gone through it, I think nice that we sort of have that.

I'm kind of. At the same, I relate to a lot of these, the loneliness, especially what I'm doing, working for myself. It's a lonely place. Achievement pressure I completely relate to. I just want to be the best version of myself, not for anyone else, but more for me, lacking a meaning or purpose. I felt like that for a while, especially coming to the end of uni, before we started doing this and I started doing that.

It's like when you don't know what you want to do or your purposes. That is frightening. That's actually one of the worst. I think that's what is the cause of a lot of my anxiety. Was that what?

are you?

going to say on that?

Well, as mad as those numbers are, 34% seems high. I thought it would be a lot higher than that. I thought it would be a lot higher than that, and maybe also there's a part of this that if I was interviewed in the street or on a campus I probably wouldn't admit to being lonely. So I think that 34% is probably a little bit higher than that. So there's sort of subject to those numbers. I think they're probably a lot higher than maybe what you would think. And the 51% achievement pressure there's no doubt about that. I'm not surprised by that at all.

The very alarming ones are nearly 60% of people lacking purpose or meaning and again, as sad as it sounds, I think it's a sad indictment of the situation that we're in with people, especially young people. Is that maybe not even young people as well? Older people as well? There is a severe lack of purpose. And I'm nearly 30, I'm nearly 10 years old than you, and yet I wake up and days and I'm like what am I doing? I have the direction isn't there at the minute and it peaks and troughs, just like you do. And especially after uni, I think it's so much harder because you come out of union you're like what now? There isn't anything, unless you want to be a surgeon and you get straight into working for a hospital. Those things are few and far between, but even those people, some of them, are directionless and it's just the stress and it comes down to a multitude of things which I know we'll get into, but those stats are alarming for sure.

Especially when it comes to money as well. I think that's the thing which messes a lot of people up is you come out of uni. Some people go to uni, some people don't, but if you do come out of uni, you automatically end up with 40 grand in the hole straight away and then some.

Yeah, and then it just gets bigger and bigger in that causes of shed load of anxiety, because what I was reading here is says they compared it to teens, so like 14 to 17 or 13 to 17 sorry, almost double in young adults. So young adults report significant, significantly higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to teens, which is 36% versus 18 for anxiety and 29% versus 15 for depression.

So nearly double which is clearly going on when you leave school and you're going to university. I guess that could be like sort of becoming independent in a way, because that's hard. You know, when you go from a structured environment to arguably going out most nights, not having any structure, you don't actually have to attend the lectures.

You shouldn't have lectures.

If you're watching this and you're, you're at uni but you don't actually have to do. I couldn't have in that sort of routine and structure that you get school and the support that can just completely drops off when you get to get she none Apart from my family.

I think. I think it's two fold for those that do go to university and the numbers are going down. For those that are the numbers I don't think have ever been lower in terms of going to university post COVID, and that's with the emergence of opportunities that are outside university. People can't afford to go to university. That's a huge thing, is the money strain of it and the need and the pressure to go to university isn't maybe what it once was, where you can be hired without having gone to university, can get an apprenticeship, etc. So for those that didn't go to university or don't want to go to university, believe school at 16 or, if you're lucky enough to go to school, like you and I, were towards 18. I think because you're spoon. Third, all the information you're, you have a structured timetable of when you go to classes, when you finish school, etc.

When you leave school it's on your own, it's off your own back. You have to go and cheat. You find those things yourself, like finding a local sport to join or finding a job. Those things are hard to do and you're not used to doing them. So I think there's that as well. I think it's the responsibility of having to make decisions for yourself which you've not done before. There's a big part of that and I think coming back to it is the financial strain that people are under is even outside of the debts you accumulate having finished university is life is unbelievably expensive and the disparity between like I don't know renting a house and income like so far away from each other that no one can afford to ever buy their own house until like way into their 40s and 50s like it's mad how little people can afford now. So A lot of it does come back to unfortunately. Come back to the financial side of things, unfortunately. So yeah, is that?

Yeah, I guess I was watching Theo Vaughn and Dana White and Dana White saying how money is just a ticket for making memories and I was a bit like yeah, kind of easy to say when you have like.

Many millions.

I can. I agree to him to an extent, but then, like majority of people out there, are just trying to get money to live like, not to make a memory and.

More to do that you had average salary like a graduate job is like nuts when you look at the overall thing, assuming if you're paying back student loans, you know debts, whatever you have going on, also trying to live. You're also trying to make memories, make new friends. I can see why, like mental health problems, at this point it's just so high, especially like a lot of the highest suicide rates are in older people, so people who've gone through being a young adult but a lot of problems in terms of mental health, depression, anxiety, wise, not suicide rates are young adults. I think that From teen to adult is incredibly hard and that's something I'm going through at the moment. From your lessons of you know, going through 18 to 25, what was some of the most like important ones, because when I spoke to my brother he was like it's almost like this sort of maturity, like clicks in your head.

It was hard to explain. It's just like someone's just turned the tap on and you think differently about things, the way you act, the way you view things in life. What was it like going past that 25 point or the point in the 30? Now?

Yeah, I wouldn't want to, for anyone listening or watching this is to put a number on it, because if you reach 25, when you think, what hasn't happened to me yet? Everyone matures very differently and I think people reach a certain point in their life, whether it be through trauma or through relationship breakdown or through changing job. Or is your reach a point in your life and it could be 25, it could be 30, it could be 40 where it will just click for you and you'll think that you not that you've made it, but you'll come up to the side and you think that you've sort of turned a corner slightly. And for me it was probably, maybe even up to about a year or two ago, where I was speaking more about my mental health journey and getting to grips of where that come from, whether it be the whole trauma of what happened to me growing up, so to speak, is that for me made a huge difference. And once I'd come to terms with that, I was able to sort of be more accepting of my life and taking grip on things and they're going to be wrong.

I'm still learning, and even by the nearly 30 now, mate, so I'm not nowhere near the finished product in terms of my mental sort of journey, but in terms of, yeah, it is really really tough. So for anyone that says they've made it and they've achieved it, they really haven't like and you know, you have to look a long way into the future before I'm there. I'm there but I'm sort of I'm accepting of the fact that I'm a working progress do you think media coverage as a whole?

so you know, like seeing all these things on social media, like these idiots. Sorry for swearing these idiots who are like yeah, I'm 23 and I just you know, bought this Lamborghini in Dubai and it's just like I think that messes with a lot of people.

I think these people are idiots. But I think media coverage as a whole, you know, loads of these things, you see, are just messing with people's heads and I think it's actually quite scary because a lot of young adults, like it's almost been like the cool thing to just, you know, these people lease out a car and they're like, yeah, if you want to be like me and you want to, you know, do this. It's like me. Like I think that's actually messing with a lot of people's people's heads.

No, I agree, I think. I think sorry to cut across you I think social media in general gives, particularly in young adults, who maybe haven't got that sort of broader idea of what the real world looks like, particularly through COVID, where a lot of young teenagers have lost a lot of those really important years of their life where a lot of their social structure is really implemented into them, like kids between the age of 12 and 14, when they were at home doing home schooling. Those were really important years and when they reached to 14, 16, they've missed a lot of their time. So the them on social media. Now they have a real warped view and really unrealistic standards that are set by social media.

So there the stars that's in boys and girls this is across the board is they're seeing their idols right on TikTok and Instagram and they're going. Why aren't I like that? I've got hope of being like that and living in Dubai with their Lamborghini in their tax-free life and whatever you know, girls on their arm in the clubs all day. It's not realistic. There's a few people that have that and if they are having that, they're probably really deeply unhappy and they're over compensating with something else and have deep, deep, deep lying insecurities so they don't see outside of it. They only see the glam, the Lamborghini's, the flash cars and the champagne, like it's just. You know the kids are seeing that and they're going. I'll never have that, so what's the point?

yeah, and you never know, like, what this person's gone through, like, did they inherit a load of money? Did they, you know? Are they taking out huge loans? Are they in a ton of debt? You just don't know.

I mean, that's horrific, by the way, and I can't quite get my head around why that would be the case, because PTSD of an actual event, like you know, you see people in the army, they'll come back from wars and they just are. They're never the same again. But aside from that is I don't watch the news. Now I obviously don't watch it. So in the morning if I come downstairs and I make a coffee With the family, girlfriend, weather is, I won't watch the news, I won't go on my phone.

I'll, you know, I'll have the old school through Instagram or whatever else, and but I I manage that, but I won't turn on the news because there's no Such thing as good news and, as an old saying is, everything you're seeing on on in the media is negative, it's all. It's depressing and it really really is depressing. So I tell any of my friends who I know, who tell me how, obviously, what's going on in XY, and then I keep on top of it so I'm able to have conversation with my clients about it, but I won't look into it to the end of the degree that it makes me feel Miserable, because it's not me also running away from it. It's not me having my silver spoon privilege, which some people might say by not watching the news. You're unaware? No, I'm aware, because you can't avoid it, but I just don't spend my days looking at the news over and over again, the bulletins coming in from bombings, and you know this and this and this and this and this is I can't.

I can't be around it, mate, so I'm not surprised that the numbers are so high stuff like that like really, really affects me, and I had a chat with my sister about this literally today and I was. I literally don't have a clue what's going on in this Israel Castle thing, but I don't?

I literally Choose not to look at anything. I don't know what's going on either side. You know, I've had snippets and conversations but I'm like I don't want to know. Honestly, like I'm, I want to be rude, I just don't know, because stuff really affects my mood as. I think about it all day, even like sad songs. Like if I have a really sad song on just brings my mood down. Like I try not to listen to sad songs.

I try not to sad things because it really affects me, like I really absorb that stress, that that's sort of oh my gosh, can't believe this is happening, like it's like. I just just cut that out like literally.

The news is that the media, the media feed off that. The media fuel of people who are getting stressed over because it gets it's clickbait. They want people looking into it. If they're, you know, talking about something that great happened in the day, no one cares. Unfortunately, it sells. Unfortunately, it's what sells man and people. It gets people watching, gets you listening. I also have a stat for you on social media is 70%, is a 70% increase in depressive symptoms.

Those on social media, those that aren't 70%, yeah, why young adults are struggling so much, as they are the hub of this social media, like Generation, aren't they? And I guess, like you know, you come back to? We're on social media all day, all our stuff's on social media. It's it working. But for me, like the podcast, it like editing with it on social media, young, I can't escape it. Hmm everything I know, every, every one I know is on it.

My way of being able to rationalize that in my own head is that we we know that if we're reaching out to people to try and you know, not saying what here to save lives, if we, if we do, then amazing. We're there to educate young men in particular. But young men and women who are or were in our situation or have someone who knows that they are, and because we know that the people we're targeting are on social media platforms, we have to be on it. So my way of being able to rationalize being on it and reaching out to those people is because that's the I we can't write letters. Therefore, this is our way of being able to be there, for when people are struggling on social media and they come across our page or they come across a clip or an Instagram, a 10-second or one of our hour-long podcasts we do with our amazing guests is that, if they do see that it gives them a glimmer of hope, being like okay, it actually makes sense.

Yeah, massively.

Completely agree.

That's our 15 minute timer up. I hope you've learned something of value from this. You know this is a scary crisis to being. You know these young adults like myself, like you, who are going through all these problems and you know it could be financial From universities, you know, being in debt, struggling to find a house, struggling to rent, struggling to live a life, struggling to make memories. Because of that it could be due to social media, all these different things. We'd love to hear from you guys below about what your thoughts are on why young adults are struggling From the age of 18 to 25. Secondly, thank you for all the questions and topic areas you guys send in. We are trying to cover as many as possible and we've got some great chat shows lined up, but for the meantime, that's it from me.

So for me as well, and this is inside mine.