“What adolescents really need are tools to be able to face problems or situations related to their own lives,” he tells this newspaper. Benedicto Crespo-Facorrodirector of the Psychiatry Clinical Management Unit at the Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville. The expert chats with NOTICIAS DE GIPUZKOA within the framework of the XVII National Congress of Psychiatry that is being held until this Saturday at the Kursaal Conference Center in Donostia.
Is mental health in a critical situation?
I would not use the adjective criticism. Yes, we should be concerned about knowing how mental health is and how we can improve needs. And it is true that the evaluation of the situation tells us that there is an increase in demand from the population, which requires us to respond. Not a critical situation, but it is a turning point.
Added to the prevalence of mental disorders is the crisis in Primary Care and the lack of professionals. Is a perfect storm brewing?
In Health it is never enough and we are always facing the perfect storm. It is true that the population has begun to assume that mental problems are health problems, and as such they must be addressed within health systems. In that sense, the resources were adapted to a reality from another time that does not correspond to the current level of demand, so today they are not sufficient, neither in quantity nor quality.
Almost three out of every ten inhabitants suffer from some mental health disorder. Worrying?
It should concern us, because if it worries us it concerns us. But we should not make the mistake of talking about an increase in the demand for mental health in general. It is necessary to detail the groups and ages in which we are seeing this increase in needs in a more marked way.
“We come from a time in which adequate attention has not been paid to the child and youth population”
And what sector of the population requires the most attention in this regard?
Minors, the child and youth population. We come from a time in which adequate attention has not been paid to them, and we are seeing how the demand is growing.
Is it a generation with less resilience than other population segments?
41% of adolescents say they have had, or believe they have had, a mental health problem in the last year. A third of those teens had not talked to anyone about these problems, and more than half had not asked for help. These data collected in the latest opinion barometer of children and adolescents, prepared by Unicef, are worrying. They show us a high volume of youth population with mental problems that goes unnoticed, silent.
More tools for young people
And they are the future of our society.
Without a doubt, and another aspect must also be taken into account. Almost 70% of mental disorders begin before the age of 24. That is to say, the x-ray is the following: we have a high volume of cases, a sector in which everything is brewing, but there is little capacity to intervene to the extent that it is a silent population segment.
Overprotected generation? Is there a lack of communication in the family? Why is there a high volume of youth population with mental problems that goes unnoticed?
This is a complex problem. There is no single cause. A holistic reading of all the factors involved is needed. Resilience has been mentioned in this interview, but what adolescents really need are tools so that they can face problems or situations related to their own lives. If we look for external solutions we will make them more dependent. More work is needed in the school environment, in the family, and also on a personal level.
“A third of adolescents do not talk to anyone about their mental health problems”
Is social media causing serious mental health problems in teenagers?
Networks are part of our culture, and their advantages are undeniable, but you have to know how to make good use of them. Obviously, without control, neither in use nor in content, the effects can be very negative in people in full emotional development, in the full maturation of their nervous system and in their relationship process with the world. There are network contents that cannot be adequately integrated by these immature bodies and brains, in the biological and emotional sense. There are adolescents who may suffer from stressors and face situations that they cannot manage emotionally, with a clear impact that can lead to a possible risk of mental pathology in the future.
‘MenteScopia’: promotion of mental health with scientific rigor
One of the keys is prevention. What does it contribute in that sense? ‘MindScopia’is the project you are immersed in?
MindScopy is a multimedia project to promote mental health that is committed to education and the dissemination of scientific content through social networks aimed at an adolescent audience. It is coordinated and managed by CIBERSAM, the Mental Health Network Biomedical Research Center, of which I am principal investigator. Everything is done with absolute scientific rigor. We flee from any moral assessment, from any ideology. We look for researchers who, due to their professional careers, we consider have an authoritative opinion.
And what does the initiative materialize?
In disseminating information about mental health in an adapted way, using the communication channels of young people but with the maximum medical and scientific rigor. My daughters’ generation does not follow traditional media, but it is necessary to reach them because the future is in their hands. If we want to educate and train this sector of the population in mental health, it is necessary to manage the social networks they use, and we do so through Instagram – with about 10,000 followers – and TikTok, with about 6,000. We also use Twitter, Twitch, and we podcast. We are enriching the material adapted to the format. When I saw the first TikTok video talking about bullying, I initially said to myself: There is an error here, that music by Quevedo. But no, there was no mistake. Either we adapt the message to attract young people, or they leave. We have learned all this over time.
“There are 21 million videos on TikTok under the hashtag mental health. But who gives a seal of quality to what is said?”
What content are you giving more importance to?
This is the fourth edition and we have been addressing different topics. We start by talking about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), the bases of schizophrenia. We later added other content, such as Eating Disorder (ED), addictions and loss of emotional well-being. Now we want to introduce material on self-help and self-management. In this last case, it is important to point out that we are referring to problems that are not diseases themselves, but rather that loss of well-being that is often the preamble to a possible mental illness.
Between emotional discomfort and disorder
Is it necessary to differentiate emotional distress and psychiatric disorder?
It is a key issue. It is necessary to establish a line between biographical situations of daily life that cause us discomfort. A line that separates it from the disease itself. To do this, it is necessary to provide adolescents with tools that allow them to face these situations so that they do not have to go to the emergency room at the first opportunity, or need a drug or a psychologist.
And that line is not well defined?
That line that differentiates emotional discomfort from psychiatric disorder is a bit blurred by society. We are seeing that mental health services are saturated with emotional well-being problems and not so much mental health.
“In this society the dividing line between emotional discomfort and psychiatric disorder is a bit blurred”
Whether one side of the line or the other, it is still a problem for the patient.
Of course. It is understandable and understandable. There may be those who say: “yes, the diffuse line is very good, but I feel bad, I am suffering.” Of course it is understandable, but to improve and alleviate this suffering in many cases it is not necessary to go to a health system. In that sense, more and more young people are aware of mental health, and it is from that point of view that our project wants to help. We want to help minors, and also the educational environment and families to prevent mental health problems among all.
Are young people not emotionally educated?
It is a very pertinent question, and together with it we can consider a second reason for reflection. What quality of information is reaching them? Today the information on mental health is brutal, around 21 million videos on TikTok under the hashtag mental health. But who accredits what is said there and who gives it a seal of quality? In that sense, at CIBERSAM we have wanted to give quality to the opinions through the project MindScopy.