The serious impact of children’s mental health problems

The serious impact of children's mental health problems is by no means as simple as the current loss of emotional control and rebelliousness. It will directly affect the three core dimensions of physiological development process, social function construction, and lifelong development path. It may even form a hidden impact of intergenerational transmission, bringing long-term costs to individuals and families far beyond expectations.

I have worked in child psychology outpatient clinics for 6 years, and I have met too many parents whose first words when they came in were, "Our child has had a tantrum recently, and it will be over in a couple of days." By the time they actually got the diagnosis, most of them were already more than half a year late. The first symptoms that often appear are the somatization symptoms that people tend to ignore. The 12-year-old girl who was admitted last week has lost one-third of her hair for three consecutive months. She has been checked by the dermatology and endocrinology departments and found nothing wrong. When she came to me for evaluation, she found out that she was suffering from moderate anxiety. The little girl grabbed my sleeve and whispered, "Auntie, am I going to be bald?" I was so worried at that time. Research from the school of developmental psychology has long confirmed that childhood is a key window for neurodevelopment and endocrine system maturation. Long-term emotional stress will change the stress response pattern of the HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). It will not only cause immediate symptoms such as tics, headaches, and sleep disorders, but will even increase the probability of high blood pressure and autoimmune diseases in adulthood. You see, the so-called "bad mood" has actually hurt the body.

Do you think it’s just your body that suffers? What is more subtle is the interference with the child's socialization process. There used to be a third-grade boy who was originally the class monitor. When his parents were getting divorced, he started winking frequently and biting his nails. The teacher said he couldn't concentrate in class, and his parents scolded him for "pretending to be weird". When they found out that he didn't even want to go to school, he hadn't spoken to his classmates for half a year. The views of the social systems school are actually very practical: children's social skills, rule awareness, and empathy are all developed through interactions with peers and teachers from the age of 6 to 12. If you avoid social interaction at this stage due to anxiety, depression, etc., it is equivalent to missing the "practice stage" of socialization. It will take several times the effort to make up for it later, and many people will not even be able to make up for it in their lifetime. There are two voices on the Internet that are very loud now. One is that "children are used to depression." The other is that children who are a little depressed will directly label them as "depressed" and want to take medicine and be hospitalized immediately. In fact, both of them go to extremes: the former ignores the sensitivity of children's psychology. Many adults think that the contradiction of "not being a big deal" is a big deal for children who have not yet matured their cognition. ； The latter's excessive labeling will cause psychological implications for children, solidifying temporary emotional problems into the self-perception of "I am a patient", which will instead cause secondary harm.

I visited an 18-year-old visitor last year. When he was in the fifth grade of elementary school, he was slapped by his teacher in public for answering a question wrong. At that time, his parents thought, "The teacher is doing it for your own good," so they didn't take it seriously. As a result, he stuttered whenever he spoke in public. He took the college entrance examination for two consecutive years, and his hands shook so much that he couldn't hold the pen every time he entered the examination room. In the end, he had to go to a junior college. He himself told me, "I know that no one will hit me now, but I just can't control my fear." You see, psychological wrinkles that were not dealt with well in childhood will hurt you at every critical point in your life. What’s even more worrying is that many people don’t realize that this impact will be passed on to the next generation: before, there was a mother who had not received any psychological intervention because she was bullied at school when she was a child. Now, if her child is touched by a child in kindergarten, she becomes extremely nervous. She repeatedly tells the child, “If someone touches you, hit him back.” As a result, the child is now extremely sensitive. He cries when other children come near, and even dare not go to the community playground. This kind of intergenerational trauma often takes two or three generations to slowly smooth over.

To be honest, every time I see a doctor, I want to grab the parents’ sleeves and chat a few more words: Don’t always focus on the child’s grades and physical examination reports, but check more to see if they are willing to talk to you about school when they get home, if they suddenly don’t like to go out, and if they always say that they are tired and boring. Children's psychology is like a seedling that has just sprouted. You dry it for two days and it seems to be alive after watering it. But in fact, the roots have been damaged, and whether it can grow taller or bear fruit has long been compromised. After all, being able to grow up healthy and calm is more important than anything else.