55.9% of young people between 15 and 29 years old who live in a situation of severe material deprivation were diagnosed with a mental health disorder in 2023 (in the case of those who do not suffer from it, 37%), and 25% claim to have resorted to al…
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55.9% of young people between 15 and 29 years old who live in a situation of severe material deprivation were diagnosed with a mental health disorder in 2023 (in the case of those who do not suffer from it, 37%), and 25% claim to have resorted to alcohol or pills to calm down. This is one of the conclusions of the study tightrope walkers The acrobatics of youth to maintain their mental health in an unequal society, presented this Thursday, in which for the first time statistical data from reports from the Reina Sofía Center of Fad Juventud, the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Eurostat and Social Security have been cross-referenced. The generators of emotional discomfort are, as reported by the young people themselves, “productivism” and high competitiveness, the accelerated pace of life or the difficulty of accessing employment in decent conditions and housing, indicates the work, prepared by the Council of the Youth of Spain – the representative body of the new generations from 14 to 30 years old, which has an annual budget of one million euros from the State – and the NGO Oxfam Intermón.
What does it mean that a person is affected by a situation of severe material deficiency? The more than a thousand young people surveyed were presented with eight situations of economic vulnerability: not being able to go on vacation for at least one week a year, not being able to maintain an adequate temperature at home, not being able to pay bills, not being able to meet expenses unforeseen events, not being able to enjoy leisure activities, not being able to buy any “whim” at any time of the month, not having a computer at home, or not being able to save—and all those who declared they were over five years old were included under on that label. 11.5% of young people in Spain claimed to be in this situation, three points above the population average (8.9%), according to the 2023 Living Conditions Survey of the INE.
“This group is being doubly hit, some already suffer from child poverty when they are children and then when they grow up they find labor market conditions that once again block their path… a prolonged situation of precariousness during the first years of working life It leaves a scar that is not recovered later, even if the economy grows,” says Raquel Checa, co-author of the report and head of Oxfam’s Zero Inequality program.
What is known as the “scar effect,” the study explains, refers to the medium and long-term consequences of having had a transition from education to poor employment, in a context of low salaries and high partiality and temporality. “The effects of a first precarious work stage are observed up to five and fifteen years later: they have worse jobs and lower salaries; some studies estimate this to be 20% lower than those members of their generation who did have quality jobs,” says the Oxfam technique. Other “scars” are late emancipation, delay in making vital decisions, the impossibility of saving for the future, lack of contributions, worse pensions and lower assets. “Periods of crisis, where youth suffer high precariousness, will leave an economic scar on a high percentage of young people who will carry over into their adult lives, since economic growth alone does not solve the problems left by crises,” Add.
It has only been three months since Cristina Rodríguez, 30, managed to leave her parents’ house to move in with her partner – they do not pay rent because he has inherited from his grandparents. The tension and disagreements, especially with her mother, over her choice of professional career—she completed a higher vocational training degree in social integration, instead of a university degree, as her parents intended—plunged her into an emotional state of sadness. , until she was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. “I’ve only been away from home for three months and now I can sleep at night, I don’t suffocate anymore,” she says. She works in a temporary center for asylum seekers in Madrid and has a permanent contract, but only on weekends and holidays, which means she earns less than 700 euros per month.
“If I had been able to leave home earlier, I wouldn’t have gotten to this point. Enduring so much at my parents’ house has destroyed my mind, both because of the conflicts with them and because of the helplessness of not being able to make my life… but economically It was not viable,” adds Cristina, who takes medication and the private practice, which she cannot leave, costs her 130 euros a month. “The family doctor recommended the private one, he admitted that they were not going to call me until after a few months.”
In June 2023, only 16.3% of people between 16 and 29 years old had been emancipated in Spain, compared to the 31.9% emancipation rate in EU countries. The average age of emancipation in Spain is 30.3 years. Furthermore, the report highlights, the partiality rate among young people, which reflects situations like Cristina’s, stood at 26.4% in 2023, fifteen percentage points higher than among the rest of the adult working population (11.32% ), and as indicated by the Active Population Survey in the first quarter of 2024, 40.1% of young people with a part-time contract stated that they would like to work more hours.
Suicidal ideation
The study analyzes the impact of the work situation on mental health and reflects that the diagnoses (reported by the young people themselves in the Fad Juventud survey analyzed) in young people who study and work at the same time was 59.4% in 2023, compared to 35.3% of those who only study. Furthermore, 49.9% of women claimed to have ever been diagnosed, compared to 41.1% of men. The work qualifies another data as “very worrying”: 60.4% of young people who claimed to live in a situation of severe material deprivation reported having had suicidal ideation at some point in 2023, compared to 36.8% of those who They were not in this situation of economic vulnerability that they acknowledged having had them.
The main reason given by young people for why they do not go to therapy is the cost (37.8%), followed by the feeling of not needing it (28.3%), and the perception that it is not such a serious problem (27.3%). The average cost of a private therapy session in Spain is 75 euros, indicates the work, and the median salary of a young person in 2023 was 1,005.21 euros net per month, so receiving two sessions of psychological therapy would mean the 15% of your monthly income.
“Our goal is to not only address the problem of mental health from a biological or chemical point of view, but to put on the table that the emotional state is also employment or housing, and that is why we are constantly asking the Ministry of Housing or to Health, more concrete actions for the benefit of young people, so that the fact of being able to live independently stops being a problem of anxiety for so many people,” says Andrea Henry, president of the Youth Council.
As the report states, clinical cases due to psychological problems registered per 100,000 inhabitants increased from 9,221 in 2011 to 56,856 in 2022, a growth of 450%, according to data from the Ministry of Health. This increase was especially pronounced in the age group of 15 to 34 years, where it went from 5,712 cases per 100,000 inhabitants to 39,408 in 2022, an increase of 590%. Coinciding with covid-19, the increase between 2019 and 2022 in this group of young population was 19.5% (in the group from 0 to 14 years old it increased by 21.2%, in the group from 35 to 64 it increased by 13. %, and for those who were 65 or older, 10.3%).
“Public health is underfunded and we call on public authorities to adopt urgent measures,” claims Raquel Checa. Its report reports on the “dispersion, scarcity and lack of updating” of the information available on public resources to address child and adolescent mental health problems contemplated in the latest White Paper on Child and Adolescent Mental Health, prepared by the General Council of Psychology in Spain, which also points out that only five autonomies (Aragón, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands) have specific resources in outpatient clinics and day hospitals. Added to this is that Spain has 5.14 psychologists per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the 18 average in the European Union and the 26 average in OECD countries.