Are young people resilient enough for times of war threat?
A large proportion of young people still rate their own mental health as moderate to very poor, a new monitor showed last week. At the same time, a report came out showing that imminent war should be seen as the biggest global risk by 2025. Are young people still up to these harsh times?
Last week, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report exposing the biggest risks and threats for 2025. According to the more than 900 experts who worked on the report, from policymakers to scientists, wars between countries will be the biggest immediate risk for next year. In addition, the spread of disinformation and increasing environmental disasters are also cited as serious threats. And all this while a large proportion of young people say they are not satisfied with their own mental health. Half of young people aged 16 to 25 describe their own mental health as moderate to very poor, according to the Health Monitor Young Adults 2024 by the GGDs and RIVM. Are young people still sufficiently equipped to face these threats? Christiaan Vinkers, psychiatrist and professor of stress and resilience at Amsterdam UMC, says it is important to see such figures in the right context.
“We can conclude that we live in stressful times, and that stressful times will come, but in general people are very resilient. I don’t want to downplay the problems that exist, because threats of war and climate issues do create stress, so we have to deal with that, but there is no reason to think that young people are not resilient to this. On the contrary, by nature they are very resilient.”
“The trend about mental health is generally very negative. You often hear that things are worse than ever, but that narrative has been around for an incredibly long time. Take the 1980s, for example, when everyone was afraid the bomb would drop. So mental problems are not new, we have been struggling with them for a long time. We simply live in a world where there is a lot of stress, so we have to make sure we take young people seriously and arm them against that.”
So mental problems have always been an issue?
“Yes, it’s just that we live in the here and now and don’t have such a good sense of history. We are quick to think that what we are going through now is worse than ever before, you can see that when you zoom in on different time periods in the past hundred and fifty years. People were always struggling with the problems of the moment, and were dealing with a society that had been under a lot of pressure before. It is not that everything used to be fine and now everything is only getting worse. Yes, there are big problems, but we need to approach them in such a way that it is not at the expense of mental health. By continuing to repeat the narrative that the world is going down, you run the risk of only fuelling mental problems further, because you don’t offer any perspective.”
So does that dominant narrative of impending war risks have such a negative effect on the mental state of young people?
“Yes, definitely. Threat of war causes more stress across the Netherlands on average, but young people are even more sensitive to it because they are looking to their future. The environment you live in has a big influence on how you experience stress. This is about problems like war and climate, but also about how you yourself live. Do you belong, do you feel connected to society, or do you live in poverty? It is too simple to look only at threats of war. Factors like your childhood, your genes and social relationships all affect how you experience the world.”
“So it’s not the case that young people’s resilience has suddenly become less now. People really haven’t turned into snowflakes in a few generations who can’t stand anything anymore. You often hear that young people are more spoilt than ever and can’t take anything anymore, but at the same time we are constantly told that the world is on fire. No wonder young people are affected by that.”
So young people are told about those threats and risks too much?
“I think we do talk too much about the negative sides of the world and the “epidemic” of mental health problems. If you want young people to become resilient and arm themselves you will have to give them perspective. We note that there are problems, but then what is the solution direction? Repeating again and again that things are going in the wrong direction and are getting worse than ever will only cause more stress. The numbers are nuanced, we are really not going to fall into the abyss. We need to ensure that stress does not become crippling, but is turned into action to reduce stress. We can do that while being mindful of the real mental problems young people have.”
So should media deal with this issue differently?
“If we look at the Health Monitor figures, we see that all the figures have improved compared to three years ago. The percentage of young people who are happy went up, and the number of young people who feel limited by mental health problems went down. So the message could be: “Yes, there are challenges, but at least things are not getting worse and they even seem to be getting a little better”, but that is not how it is put. It makes sense that negative news attracts attention, and of course there is some truth in that frame, but we shouldn’t start parroting each other and just being negative. That doesn’t make young people any happier.”
