The mental health problems of primary and secondary school students suddenly broke out. At a time when education is becoming more and more serious, teenagers have become the first victims of utilitarian education ideas. The incidence of mental disorders such as anxiety and depression is gradually increasing, and the amount of psychological counselling is also increasing. The psychological problems that have nowhere to be solved are constantly causing tragedies.

To solve children’s problems, we must first understand their ideas. On August 16, at the recent ongoing China Foundation · 2021 Harvard AUSCR Sino-US Student Leadership Summit, Xu Kaiwen, the founder of Confucian psychology, a doctor of clinical psychology and a psychiatrist, brought his research and views on the current psychological problems of teenagers through a video link.

In his speech, Professor Kevin Xu analysed the psychological struggle that children experienced under the values of alienation, and provided some directions for the participants of education in terms of mental health and values.

Nowadays, the mental health problems of teenagers are highlighted

Mental health problems are spreading to primary and secondary schools. I think that after the epidemic, we are experiencing the changes of a great era, whether it is international relations or various institutional changes, such as the recent reform of various education policies.

Since the resumption of school after the epidemic last year, mental health problems in primary and secondary schools have suddenly broken out, becoming very serious, and many extreme incidents have occurred.

In this regard, the Ministry of Education and the National Health Commission have also attached great importance to it and issued a series of policy documents to strengthen the mental health work of primary and secondary schools.

Professor Zheng Yi’s team at Beijing Anding Hospital also published a study on the Epidemiological Survey of Mental Disorders in Chinese Children and Adolescents. The data shows that 17.5% of teenagers suffer from a certain mental disorder within a year.

So, why are these problems highlighted?

By 2005, the prevalence of anxiety disorder was 13% in China and 18.1% in the United States;

The prevalence of depression is 6% in China and 9.5% in the United States;

If you look at the lifetime prevalence rate, the United States will account for 50%.

Therefore, in this era, we are becoming more and more materialistic, but the prevalence of mental disorders is increasing.

More than a year ago, I did a survey of “bless culture” on social networks on the Internet, and received feedback from 2,371 college students. It can be seen that the proportion of feeling very confused, confused, depressed and depressed is very high, lonely, powerless, frustrated, anxious, these are very close to the feeling of “death”, and then the proportion of “very sad” and “comparatively sad” exceeds 20%. Therefore, words from “mourning culture” to “lying flat” and “Buddhist” are very popular.

The source of this “mourning” is academic and work pressure, peer competition, interpersonal relationships, etc., so stress is a very important reason.

A similar situation was found in the survey of primary and secondary school students. The national mental health research conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences on psychology found that 26.4% of primary and secondary school students have depression. This is similar to the results of my own survey in public schools and international schools.

Hollow heart disease: mental disorder caused by lack of values

Six years ago, I gave a speech on “Time Hollow Heart Disease and Anxiety Economics”. Anxiety economics says that in this world, there is nothing better than anxiety and fear.

In this year’s overwhelming online education advertisement, there is an advertising slogan that impressed me very much – “Come, we will cultivate your children. If you don’t come, we will cultivate your children’s competitors!” This is naked intimidation. These profit-seeking capitals are frantically pursuing profits, and monopoly is one of the reasons for the internal volume and theatre effect of education.

Under such circumstances, I have observed that both primary and secondary school students and college students may have hollow heart disease. I also call it “mental disorder caused by lack of values”. It has several main manifestations:

Depressed

Most people with symptoms of heart disease have depressive symptoms. Therefore, depression is often diagnosed by psychiatrists. Now the incidence of depression is as high as 26.4%, which is a particularly terrible thing. Think about it, suppose there are 40 people in a class, of which more than 10 will reach the level of pathological depression.

In fact, whether it is an international school or a public school, the better the so-called good school is, the higher the proportion, and the effect of taking medicine is not very good. What’s the reason? Because children’s problems are not at the biological level.

Lonely

Then today’s teenagers have a strong sense of loneliness and meaninglessness, and feel that life is worthless and meaningful. More than half of the people who came to me to consult were children and teenagers, especially middle school students. They sat on the sofa and said that life had no value and meaning, had no sense of anything, and nothing could make them happy.

So many delicious, fun, beautiful and happy things in the world can’t impress them. They feel that they have no connection with the world. They feel that the world is dispensable and they are dispensable, so it is easy to give up themselves easily.

It’s not so much because depression triggers this feeling, but it’s better to say that it causes depression.

Self-deprivation

Behind this sense of loneliness is the problem of self-identification that has not been solved for a long time, and the lack of positive values to support their lives.

Who am I? What kind of person should I be? Where do I come from? Where are you going? What is the value and meaning of human beings?

In adolescence, this kind of confusion is still very common, because self-development itself includes the problem of self-identity and self-identity, which I don’t think is pathological. But the problem is that this situation may last for a long time or even last a lifetime in these children, causing great trouble to people.

External recognition

Then, in the case of self-deprivation, children can only see their own value from the affirmation of others, so they desperately pursue the affirmation of others. How can it be recognised? It is to be the person that others want you to be.

Who is the other person? It’s parents and teachers. The teacher wants him to be a good student, and he will be a good student, maintain good interpersonal relationships, and make everyone like himself. But it’s very tiring to live like this, because living in the settings given by others is not what you want, but also to please everyone.

Fear of being evaluated

After seeking external recognition for a long time, after being evaluated every day (examination results, ranking), there will be a fear of being evaluated.

In the spring semester of about 2016, I had a group consultation with some students who I thought had the characteristics of a heart disease. These students who are excellent in all aspects said: Please don’t praise me and affirm me. “You can be sure of me now. Next time you may deny me. We hate being judged.”

For children, is it cool to be evaluated from childhood to adulter, take exams everywhere, and take the first place all the way? No. Do you know what is more difficult than the first place in the exam? It is the first place in the exam every time.

Therefore, every time after getting good grades in the exam, the child’s fear is stronger, because a good ranking is too easy to lose. In the end, learning is associated with anxiety and fear, so that it is disgusting to learning.

Suicidal tendencies

I once knew a student from an international school. His goal was to be admitted to the rattan school in the United States. When he was in the third year of high school in the international school, he was always the first in the class. Then one day, his mother contacted me and said that he had left. With the knowledge he learned at school, she injected herself with poison and ended her life. Before that, he learned 4:30 every day and collapsed. Finally, he didn’t want to continue this kind of life.

Therefore, our current education has directly led to increasing pressure on students, and we have also deviated more and more from the essence of education, leading to serious psychological problems for children.

Self-denial and disgust

Trump in the United States is a particularly extreme example. People jokingly call him the king of understanding. He praises himself in front of the world every day and is very narcissistic. Psychiatrists in the United States have diagnosed him as a narcissistic personality. But in a sense, if a person likes himself, he is more humane.

So when I first came into contact with some cases, I felt strange, because those children were golden in my eyes, with too many advantages and beautiful things, but they hated themselves, even to the extent that they were going to commit suicide.

It can be seen that these practical successes cannot bring self-affirmation with good grades and good popularity. Why is this? After further communication with them, I realised that it was actually because they felt that they had been doing something worthless and meaningful.

Do we think it doesn’t make sense to win the first place in the exam and win the gold medal in the International Olympic Games? But they don’t think so. What they think is that I’m not enough to get 90 points in the exam. I have to get 95 points, preferably 100 points. But for these 10 points, they may spend 10 times more time doing exam-oriented exercises. However, they also know in their hearts that the matter of improving the score itself is meaningless. It is just to improve the score. When they are admitted to the so-called famous school, they have to learn, which is a utilitarian idea.

Under these logics, teenagers now have a long history of depression, and some have started in primary school. Moreover, not only is it insensitive or ineffective for biological therapy, but the effect of traditional psychotherapy is also poor.

Understand the obstacles and misunderstandings of contemporary teenagers

Therefore, the more self-reflection children are, the more painful they will feel. Because many problems are not at the biological or psychological level, but at the social and educational level.

So, can education or social problems be solved by medicalisation? If the child has a hollow heart disease, he can go to the doctor and take medicine to cure it? Seeing a doctor and taking medicine can only solve a little problem, such as improving sleep and mood in the short term.

Just like when the haze is serious, the fundamental problem cannot be solved by respiratory medicine alone without controlling the haze. If the fundamental problems of education and society are not solved, they are all tickling, so the country’s introduction of overcapitalisation of off-campus counselling is a moral policy to solve the current mental health problems of teenagers, and I support it very much.

Then why do teenagers have frequent psychological crises? One of the reasons is that the modernisation process itself is constantly changing the norms of society, and China has completed the modernisation process of Western countries for more than 100 years in just 40 years, and the drastic changes can be imagined.

1. Diversity of values

I have a friend who is a university professor and doctoral supervisor. My child is in the third year of junior high school and refuses to go to school. My parents are very anxious and come to me. He said that today’s children really can’t understand that these professors and doctoral supervisors have simple minds.

I told him, in fact, I think your son makes sense. We are all post-70s. Our values in school are very simple, that is, born under the red flag, born under the red flag, five lectures, four beautiful and three loves, and learn from Lei Feng’s good example. My own idol is Premier Zhou. The value and meaning of life that I agree with is to study for the rise of China.

But today’s teenagers live in a world with diversified values. Especially with the Internet, they can be exposed to all kinds of knowledge and become very precocious. It’s not physiologically precocious, but psychologically.

They may start reading the works of famous philosophers such as Schopenhauer in junior high school. Therefore, their values are diversified, which means choice and comparison. Our children work harder than our generation and need more value guidance.

2. Generational differences between parents and children

I also met a high school student who wanted to commit suicide, and her parents were very anxious to bring her here. I asked them, what is happiness?

These parents, who are post-60s, have become university professors all the way through small-town questioners. They feel that happiness is to eat and wear warm clothes. My daughter is anxious as soon as she hears it, because she has never had the experience of not having enough food or warm clothes. For her, happiness is that her parents can talk to her with equals and respect, and she has a certain decision on her life.

Not to mention the difference between the two generations, even one generation will have a gap. For example, I am a fan of a certain game and a fan of a kind of book. There are also differences in values between subculture circles.

3. The evaluation system is extremely simple.

Although our cultural environment is diverse, the evaluation system for students is only grades, which is ridiculous. I think if there is an evaluation standard for education, the most important thing to evaluate is Lide Cultivating People.

From a psychological point of view, a person’s attitude comes first, followed by skills and knowledge. But in the current evaluation system, you don’t even have to have skills, only knowledge. You don’t need to be good at doing experiments, as long as you do well in the exam.

Therefore, when grades become the only criterion for evaluating children, in order to strive for this good grades, children’s pressure will become greater and greater, and their ability to fight against risks will become weaker and weaker. Children will become the ultimate bearer of the pressure of the whole society, and there will inevitably be no problems.

4. Utilitarian education

In the West, the origin of hollow disease is closely related to economic development. In the 1960s and 1970s, the social and economic development of Europe and the United States became rich in material life, but the soul was lost. Under the ideology of materialism and consumerism, everything can be bought and sold, but people have lost their spiritual beliefs.

Well, in China, another important factor for hollow disease is capitalisation and utilitarian education. Scores and promotion rates have become indicators of education GDP, and will be converted into economic income. When schools and institutions become famous, they can charge high school selection fees and replacement fees, and then become an industry. In this way, the cultivation of people and the education of values are ignored, resulting in the intensification of hollow disease.

The reason why we now say that many children have become delicate egoists is because of delicate egoistic parents and teachers. This kind of thought can be seen from some slogans, such as “improve one point, kill thousands of people”, treating other students as enemies, and learning becomes the source of crisis. What an absurd value.

Prevention is better than cure

What kind of education concept do we need?

Finally, I want to talk about a solution.

First, I think human beings always need a kind of wisdom to know what wealth means.

I know a Swiss friend who has a great influence on my concept of education. At that time, she came to visit China, and we all happened to be studying for a doctorate. I asked her what the research was. She said it was a branch of an ancient Latin that was lost in the Middle Ages.

I asked her, Switzerland is not a big country to learn such a remote field. What can I do after graduation? After all, this major doesn’t sound very useful.

She told me that there is only one job position in Switzerland related to her major, that is, her mentor’s job. But as long as her tutor does not retire, she can only be a tutor’s teaching assistant and a temporary worker.

I continued to ask, so how can you be willing to do a job that can’t make money? At least you have to ensure your basic life, right? She said that because she likes this major.

Then I also realised that Switzerland is very rich, and citizens are basically not short of money. And money also gives us more freedom of choice, which is the meaning of wealth.

For example, in our post-70s generation, I have accumulated a little wealth now. What is the way I express my love for my daughter? It’s not for her to buy any car and house, but for her to learn whatever she wants. Even if this major doesn’t make much money, as long as she likes it.

Therefore, the material basis is to give us more freedom of choice, so that we can learn with a non-utilitarian attitude and choose from the perspective of our own interests, values and meanings. Going to college is not to find a high-paying job, and going to a famous university is not about entering the four major universities.

Therefore, in addition to biology and psychology, people also need to have spiritual pursuits. The better people are, the less they may be satisfied with material or money.

The second is to return to the original heart and conscience.

My doctoral thesis is a research in prison. Some provoking criminals will be imprisoned in a single cell. They will open their mouths and stretch out their hands, but no one will talk to him. A week was okay, but after two weeks, the person collapsed, and the guarantee and self-criticism were written.

However, there are many revolutionary fighters in history who can withstand this kind of mental torture, such as Sister Jiang, Fang Zhimin, and Nelson Mandela. I think it’s very simple why they didn’t collapse, because they have ideals and beliefs and know that they are doing something meaningful.

Therefore, ideals, beliefs and values are very important and powerful to support a person.

What do Chinese people think of their original heart and conscience? Chinese people say that conscience is an innate concept. For example, Confucius said, “The way of college is to be virtuous, to be close to the people, and to stop at the best.” Mencius said, “Be kind, righteous, polite and wise. It’s not from the outside, but I’m inherent in it. Wang Yangming made a summary and expounded, that is, knowing without thinking, knowing without learning, the so-called conscience.

So I think that when you are not satisfied with material things, you should first eat and wear enough; when you are satisfied with material things, we need to upgrade our hearts and let ourselves do something valuable and meaningful. Chinese culture emphasises the unity of nature and man. Whether we can help others, contribute to the community, the country and the nation is our meaning.

For example, if I am a scientist, then I will use my own science and technology to solve the problems that plague human beings and improve people’s living standards and happiness. Therefore, in such an anxious era, finding your own conscience can make your heart stronger and find your own happiness.