Are you worried about the future? Are you sometimes irritable? Do you occasionally have trouble sleeping?
Then you could have clinical anxiety, according to at least one leading mental health influencer.
Peter Ruppert calls himself an ‘experienced growth and marketing professional’. He’s not a doctor.
Yet one of his TikTok videos, which encourages viewers to self-diagnose this serious condition, has racked up seven million views, 740,000 likes and 46,000 comments.
Ruppert’s video is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of highly questionable “self-assessment quizzes” on the youth-targeted app that claims to diagnose every mental health problem under the sun — from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to depression, mysophobia (fear of anxiety) . germs) and agoraphobia (fear of leaving the house).
Too many of my peers have called in sick to work because they were having a ‘bad mental health day,’ says Clara Gaspar
Given this frenetic climate of pathologizing mental illness, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the report on the front page of yesterday’s Mail – headlined ‘Generation Sicknote’ – warning that an epidemic of mental illness is putting thousands of young Brits back from to find a job.
According to the report from think tank the Resolution Foundation, the number of 18 to 24-year-olds who are ‘economically inactive’ for health reasons has more than doubled in the past decade, from 93,000 to 190,000.
In 2021/2022, the research found that a third of this age group were experiencing ‘symptoms of mental illness’ – including depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder, compared to a quarter at the turn of the millennium. And four in ten cited this as the main reason for not working.
I was born in 1997, making me one of the older members of ‘Gen Z’ (born approximately 1996-2012). And I have seen for myself what the report describes. Too many of my colleagues have called in sick to work because they were having a ‘bad mental health day’. Some have lobbied their bosses to implement “duvet days” – exempt for “self-care” – into the work calendar. Others have resisted the requirement to return to the office five days a week, claiming it would not be good for their ‘work-life balance’ and, worse, could affect their ‘mental wellbeing’.
Given its inevitable impact on the workplace, their colleagues and their careers, this behavior is bad enough in itself. But as Professor Matthew Goodwin wrote in these pages last week, it is also destroying the economy.
Around 481,000 young people in Britain aged 16 to 24 are currently unemployed.
Of these, 280,000 now rely on some form of unemployment benefit: 50,000 more than before the pandemic and almost twice as high as a decade ago.
Last year, 31-year-old Dragon’s Den judge Steven Bartlett – who became a millionaire at just 23 as the founder of a social media marketing agency – sparked a social media frenzy when he accused Generation Z of being ‘the least resilient generation’ to be what he had. ever seen.
As a result of this boom in mental health diagnoses, large numbers of young people are taking medications. The number of 18 to 24-year-olds taking antidepressants in Britain rose from 440,000 in 2015-2016 to 570,000 in 2021-2022 – an increase of 31 percent.
Of course, real mental health problems are serious and require appropriate treatment by professionals. And it’s true that some people are hit so hard that they can’t keep their jobs.
Yet the recent explosion of mental illness claims does little to dispel the perception that too many people my age are just work-shy, sensitive “snowflakes.”
Is an entire generation really too sad and anxious, and not sufficiently resilient to enter the labor market? Or is the problem more complicated?
Perhaps the key to this problem lies with parents, schools and universities.
Last week it was reported that the fertility rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level since 1940.
A low birth rate and parents who have fewer offspring later in life mean that many children are more spoiled than previous generations. And “helicopter parenting” doesn’t end when young people go to college, where they traditionally begin learning to live like adults.
Today’s graduates are leaving institutions that have been transformed in recent years from forums for lively debate to forums that over-protect and under-discuss their charges.
Take the claim that students at the University of Greenwich who read Dracula were given a “trigger warning” that the masterpiece contained “descriptions of spiders as well as other insects.”
Students at the University of Oxford studying Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales were told that the 600-year-old text may contain ‘racist and misogynistic views’. These young bookworms, believed to be among the smartest in the country, were urged to seek support if the substance bothered them.
Students are also increasingly protected from learning about controversial viewpoints. Last year, the University of Edinburgh canceled the screening of a film that claimed women are defined by biological sex after trans rights activists protested.
This is just one of numerous examples the Mail has reported of universities appeasing activists in a bid to avoid offence. As a result, new graduates are imbued with so-called “safetyism”: the idea that nothing should upset them.
It’s no wonder that when it comes to constructive criticism from managers or difficult conversations with colleagues, many simply lack the emotional resilience to deal with it. The same ‘safetyism’ also means that sadness and discomfort – unavoidable parts of the human condition – are becoming increasingly medicalized.
I know people my age who claim to be ‘clinically depressed’ after a breakup. Others, nervous about an important exam, have announced that they suffer from an “anxiety disorder.”
Although exams are stressful and breakups are unpleasant, the fact is that they are normal, even character-building events. Too many people have strayed far from the old adage, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The motto of this generation could be: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.’
As Peter Ruppert’s extraordinary video shows, social media is making all of this worse and worse. The average Gen Zer has had a smartphone since he or she was 13.
And in a space where ‘sharing’ is everything – which can of course be a source of support for those suffering – you don’t have to look far on TikTok to find influencers sharing their ‘menty-b’ (slang for ‘nervous breakdown’) or their ‘bed rot days’ – which they spent under their duvets for the sake of their sanity.
While millennials once worshiped the “hustler” mentality, two years ago the trend of “quiet quits” emerged on social media: doing the bare minimum at work to avoid getting fired.
The hashtag ‘trade according to your wages’ (which means that your efforts should not correspond more or less to your wages) has been viewed 180 million times. Then there’s the “lazy girl job” hashtag, under which Gen Zers brag about their low-stress, low-effort roles.
Some may wonder if it’s any wonder that so many young people can barely be bothered to work, given today’s stagnant wages, inadequate public services and sky-high rents. But leaving society is not the solution – not least because of the economic impact.
If Generation Z doesn’t return to the workplace – soon – they may find things will get much worse.