I have conducted primary research on youth, how they see mental health, do they believe that it is still a taboo subject and how fearful they are of asking for help. Seeing how youth responded, made me think about how adults would respond. Are they more aware of the problem or less aware. Are they supportive of the youth in their families or are they a part of the problem. I decided to do some research of that to back up my primary research.
Firstly I wanted to look at some data on how adults are doing with mental health. In the US, there are 42 million adults suffering from anxiety, which means 18.1% of the American population suffers from it (National Alliance on Mental Illness, n.d.). I have taken the data from this organization and created a graph to show in millions, how many American adults are suffering with mental illness.
This graph illustrates that anxiety and depression are two big problems among American adults. What is interesting is that adults are less likely to get help from mental health services than teenagers. According to National Alliance on Mental Illness (n.d.) 50% of youth (ages between 8 and 15) state that they did not receive help from mental health services, when 60% of adults state the same.
Adults see mental health problems differently and often make their children feel like their problems aren't valid. Children with a mental health diagnosis are most likely to be self-stigmatizing if their parents tend to conceal their diagnosis or act negatively towards their children's capability of controlling their symptoms (Taylor, 2013). If parents are approaching the problems negatively, it is obvious that the children will also have a negative attitude towards the problem and they will not want to speak up about them. This stigmatizing also exist outside of the family environment. In a study conducted by Fritz (2007, cited in Taylor, 2013), where over a thousand participants have participated, 30% of parents stated that they would not want their child to be friends with a child with depression and 25% of parents would not want to live next door to a child with depression. This data sounds completely ridiculous, but somehow there are people who think that way. When a child lives in a family where that sort of attitude is shared, there is a high chance, that they will not share that they are struggling. This creates a vicious cycle - parents are stigmatizing their children and then the children grow up to be the same as their parents. It is commonly known that children repeat what they hear at home and if they constantly hear that mental health problems are invalid or they are something shameful, they will live believing in that. It is scary how much power, the parents have over their children and how much they can change their mindsets. I think this is why the parents need to be educated. The studies have shown that children report lower level of self-stigma if parents are optimistic about the child's diagnosis (Moses, 2010 cited in Taylor, 2013). The parental support is visibly important in getting the child the help they need.
I think this research made me think about the issue more. It helped me see a way I can address this in my poster designs. I think it would be good if the posters themselves were addressed at the parents to break the cycle and the stigma. It is really important to keep people educated.
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You've found out some fascinating information through this secondary research. Maybe talk in a later post about how you want your project to be as much about education on your subject (which it clearly is) and how you are treating the subject in terms of sensitivity.
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