Mental health of adolescents and new patterns of bullying in schools

According to a U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention report, sexual violence, suicidal thoughts and behaviours, and other mental health problems hit young people particularly hard during the pandemic. The situation for girls and LGBTQ adolescents is the worst: 30% of girls and almost half of LGBTQ adolescents had seriously considered attempting suicide, and almost 20% of girls had experienced rape or other sexual violence in the year before the fall 2021 survey.

 “Since the pandemic began,  children with mental health problems, even those as young as eight to ten years old, have been coming into the hospital’s emergency department more frequently,” – says Dr Jennifer Hoffmann of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Dr Hoffmann is one of the study’s co-authors, according to which the continued follow-up of a patient after a hospital visit by a mental health professional reduces the patient’s risk of suicide and the chances of subsequent visits to the emergency room for mental health problems.

The ways and effects of bullying and harassment on students in elementary schools are changing,  according to findings from the 2018 Iowa Youth Survey. For e.g. bullying based on sexual orientation or gender identity and sexual jokes were particularly correlated with significant feelings of anxiety and with suicide attempts. The next most powerful influences on a young person were cyberbullying and social bullying – someone being excluded or turned against by their peers.