Consumerism, virtual life and fragility in social and family relationships: contemporary brands enhance the feeling of existential emptiness of the current Brazilian youth.
As children, the biggest problems with which Laura and Anthony (fictitious names) if any were faced dilemmas: to play or sleep? Walk or ice cream? The puerility of life seemed so unshakable that generated them the illusion that that state of affairs would be forever. Difficulties, if any, were subject to the adults resolve. Later, those who saw Laura in preadolescence his 13-year-old no longer recognize the girl once healthy. It has become a mockery, since parents decided to change it to school, taking them to the place where he had studied throughout childhood. She could not elaborate the idea of changing teachers, friends. So much so that the new school, Laura began to isolate himself. With it, came to be treated as a being apart in that environment. No one spoke to him. Or was ridiculed: not forgive the evil collective that she be chubby and shy. Meanwhile, the parents ignored her suffering. The change was motivated by the fact that the new school be the same as Laura’s father had studied. If he had formed there without problems, so it must be with his daughter. The emotional problems led her to fatten up even more. At home, Laura only slept or watched TV. Retreated dramatically. Became monosyllabic. In the first year of mental health and treatment psi, barely spoke with the doctor.
In the case of Anthony, age 16 – young smart, good grades – was not he who changed schools, but friends of the gang, including a friend who was especially close. Anthony did not take long to realize that the physical distance would lose contact with her, and the ease with which she made new friends at the new school, as he discovered, it only accentuated the feeling of being abandoned. He became irritable at home, fighting for any reason – or for no reason. Succumbed to apathy so deep it had no energy to even get out of bed. Stopped going to school, where he attended the first year of high school. More than losing the school year, lost heart for life, reaching dangerously flirting with suicidal ideation. Fortunately, it did not take her out. But the fact is that teen suicides in the country are not exceptional cases. In 2011, according to the Ministry of Health, 552 young people between 10 and 19 years old shortened his life.
The cases of depression and other psychological disorders among young people only grow, mirroring the evolution of new diagnoses. If many decades of mental disorders were little known order, the ratings are now increasingly detailed. Clinical Terms – bipolarity, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), stress, anxiety, attention deficit, crisis panic, phobias – now part of the common vocabulary repertoire. But understand depression in adolescence is a complex task because, in addition to features like moodiness and sadness are innate to age, which makes the differential diagnosis, the young depressed is not necessarily apathetic: can display the opposite behavior, psychomotor agitation. Cases of Laura and Anthony only evidence the fact that the current youth are more vulnerable to emotional problems facing difficulties apparently trivial compared to previous generations: they have not been, nor will be, the only young people having to change schools or colleagues. So what changed?
Fathers & Sons
Historically, recalls psychoanalyst Voltolini Rinaldo, there is a significant milestone in this process, in the 70s to 80, when there is a strong social critique and that impacts education (institutional and family): a critique of authoritarianism, which would prevent humans to fully develop. The origin of this movement is political, Marxist slant, as a reaction to the current military dictatorship. “Education bought that idea and makes a criticism of all that is dictatorial practice within schools and, by extension, inside the homes. Politically, grows a series of rights to the protection of children and adolescents,” says Voltolini. So, that culture that had to apply the “pat” as corrective punishment on the child came to be seen as socially reprehensible. On this track, softened attitudes were repreensivas and the imposition of limits by parents.
There is much talk today in the absence of greater participation in their children’s lives as a result of job requirements that demand their careers – symptomatically, outside a nanny primarily responsible for the creation of Laura. “Often this generates guilt. To deal with this guilt, they end up being more permissive, offering things that in other circumstances, might not offer,” says psychotherapist Natércia Tiba family. There is also the aspect of today’s society, in comparison to earlier societies, is much more “ofertadora.” If a child before earning a present on birthday and one for Christmas, now earns more every weekend. “If you have everything, nothing else you love. Depends Passion of the fault. For psychoanalysis, which organizes the human being is something lacking,” explains Voltolini. Symptomatic of the harmfulness of this hyper-ventilation would be the fact that depression is much more recurring in adolescents high socioeconomic class than at low.
Another characteristic of contemporary Western culture would be to search the adults remain young, evoking the theme of eternal youth. This would establish a problem retroactive: it is the figure of the young adult who presses out of adolescence into maturity. If that adult is seeking youth, this pressure becomes meaningless. The reflection of this is the attempt, often frustrated, trying to erase the distances generational, as the liberal attitude of some adults at getting teens keep sex at home. This effort to introduce himself to children at the level of friendship turns out to be a loss of reference, so that the young understand this as helplessness, not freedom.
Johanna Beringer, Niterói (RJ), now 19 years diagnoses of ADD and hyperactivity followed the depression
Omnipotence in flight
With all this, the juvenile survival instinct in order to adapt to new circumstances and problems that cross your path, it seems to be getting weaker. Hence the behavior – albeit perhaps unconsciously – to victimize. The origin is linked to the notion of omnipotence that brings young childhood: the child can easily cause your wishes are met. When this screen disappears during adolescence, there is the reality check that the “real life” is quite different. The need for a commitment to some kind of activity may lead young people to apathy, as if the expectations placed on them by a performance by results, rather than encouraging them, intimidate them. The very banality in the use of psychotropic drugs – not only in the age group of young people, but people in general – has to do with this convenience. Why stay in a depressed state, if a remedy can (supposedly) solve the problem? Opta is the easy way, without investigating the problem in a broader perspective.
Experts are divided on the use of antidepressants in young age because, during adolescence, most often are not cases of endogenous depression (depression innate, caused by thyroid dysfunction), but reactive to any episode (disagreement with parents, breakup, bullying, etc.).. In this case, you need to wait a while for your teen make emotional digestion of what happened and thus conclude whether there is a need to medicate, because the differentiation stage of a “normal” sadness to a pathological picture is quite tenuous. It is worth noting that saved the appropriate specifics of each prescription, antidepressants generally bequeath apathy as a significant side effect, besides the low libido.
Also the effect can be “rebound”, or prove contrary to expectations, due to a non assimilation by the organism. Voltolini remember that there are several cases in the United States against the producer of Prozac (psychotropic most famous market), because there were people who took it, deepened the depression and committed suicide. The psychiatrist and psychotherapist Tito Paes de Barros Filho, in turn, says he did not leave just because of medicating the youth of any patient. “A first depressive episode untreated usually emits residual symptoms,” he explains. The main one would be the anhedonia, characterized by loss of pleasure in things that normally excite the person. Anyway, the consensus is that, as a first step in a case of deviance sharp, seek to aid in psychotherapy – from there, set up forwarding or not a medication.
Virtual Shadows
Another element of modernity that can not be ignored when analyzing the transformation of the young is the impact of the Internet in everyday life. Voltolini considers that for a shy, the web can be a way to start a contact that, otherwise, he could not. For him, that the era of social networking stimulates more would be a “spectacle of yourself.” Psychoanalysis discusses what has already been baptized as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. As noted psychoanalyst Contardo Calligaris in a column in the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the “narcissistic” in the case, would not the guy in love with his own image, but uses it to obtain the approval of the other. The person assigns itself an unreasonable importance in search of admiration. The disorder can occur as a reaction to those who had self-esteem shaken (a rejection of love, for example), so that people start to project an idealized image of herself. It would be a mask that deep, camouflages the true feeling of not liking.
The anonymity with which the young can access the internet certain types of content and information is also potentially dangerous for the development of frameworks for social phobia or inappropriate behavior. There was the case of a teenager Gaucho in 2006 Gageiro Vinicius Marques, who committed suicide at home, and planned in detail step by step how to accomplish the goal. To this end, propped up on anonymous sites that speak on the topic – many of which evoke romantic ideas about death. Vinicius, who used the pseudonym on the Internet Yoñlu, even announced on the forums of which participated in the date and time that would kill – without being deterred to it – as in “real life”, pretended to parents that there was a normality.
The pain of existence
history of depression or suicide in the family tree must also be observed, depending on the perspective of a legacy inherited the problem. Moreover, the fact that adolescence is a period of great changes in the body, with hormonal and neurological impacts, highlights the possibility of depression appears linked to anxiety – the so-called commodities – that make unpredictable behavior. It may be the case with bipolar depression, in which a person is preceded by a phase of acceleration of the psyche – it shows a behavior of high excitement – until he became listless and without energy. Therefore, the symptoms for the same problems may be opposites in similar cases: gain or loss of weight / appetite, insomnia or excessive sleeping, etc..
Hyperactivity
The Niterói Johanna Beringer, now 19, embodies well the case of commodities. She says that since very little, went to school determined to be quiet, paying attention in class. “I remember how straight I’d get upset with myself for not getting” account. The need was felt to move out of control. Accustomed to seeing people somewhat dumbfounded before its financial power, such as when they began dancing in a bus almost full. Even at home, alone, sometimes leaping catch yourself till you drop. At school, lived being sent to the board, because he kept in his wallet and talked too much, and loud. When he could stay in the room, was distracted with anything. In a math class, a colleague whispered to him on the collar of the teacher, which seemed made of cockroaches. To Johanna, class was over there, “I began to imagine all the trinkets that have to do with insects.” The day I made the National Secondary Education Examination (Enem), to see the neighboring row of eating chocolate, rambled, “is what she eats every day, why is lean?”. Almost half the race left blank.
Johanna always suspected to have some kind of problem, which was confirmed after going to the neurologist: was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and hyperactivity. The surprise was that even at diagnosis was found also that it was depressed, it would be a comorbid ADD’s, or a disorder etiologically associated. Since then, Johanna has to question whether extraversion, which always characterized, would be forced by hyperactivity and therefore a mask to try to hide what they really feel. “Is it to try to cover up this lack of something I do not know what it is? Will is for people to accept me? Is it for attention? Do not know,” she says, in an effort of self-analysis. Says she always felt the need to make people laugh, but also is frequently taken by paradoxical feeling of wanting to avoid these social exchanges, “to tell my problems and make the person tell hers. I wonder why I have to do it”. But she concludes, “if I do, I’ll be alone.”
Unexpected loneliness
Already paulistana Thais Bohn, now a post-adolescent of 23 years, saw their school performance drop when in high school to be affected by existential questions. She had always been
sociable and outgoing. Everything began to change when he traveled to the Pantanal (MT) on a tour of the college, he spent a lot of time alone, “the middle of nowhere.” The episode has exacerbated the fear of loneliness. “You know that saying ‘empty head, devil’s workshop?’ My head is like this: when it is empty, it is a source for bad thoughts,” sets. Although she has never lost a close friend or relative, questions about the meaning of life or what happens after death began to torment her. The crying spells have become frequent. His personality changed. If in 8th grade Thais became valedictorian, she says, to remember that, no longer recognizes. “After this phase – and today I can not see why not as phase started – it got worse, turned completely else,” she says. “I loved going to the club, the bar, the mall, and nowadays do not do anything.”
Tolerance and routing
is natural that the school’s role becomes evident on the issues teenagers, since much of the life of the young, especially the middle class grows inside her. But the school can not seem to keep up with this changing profile of contemporary youth, today much more complex. For Marina Nunes, professor of educational guidance of Holy Cross College, St. Paul, is the assumption of teaching the prospect of heterogeneity in the classroom. Therefore, the teacher’s role is to make a first accommodating a student who presents any clear deviance. “It is an understanding of the case, to have a higher tolerance eventually. But this tolerance can not make you miss the dynamics of class,” he explains. The referral of students to the sphere of other professionals when necessary, has to do with a sense of aloofness or indifference teacher, pedagogue Silvana Leporace advocates, college Dante Alighieri, also in Sao Paulo. Not only because the teacher does not fit any diagnosis speculate about the student who is in trouble. “Sometimes the student demand a larger work, individual assistance.”
It’s healthy closest approach between teachers and parents of students in specific situations, but sparingly, so that there is a confusion of roles: the teacher may feel pressured – and at school is his, not the parents, the definition how should give up the relationships and procedures. That does not negate the premise that training and retraining of teachers of high school need to be rethought in order to go beyond curricular credentials. If in teacher education all children a grounding on the psychology and the child’s universe is contemplated, the same does not happen with a high school teacher who often is an expert when it comes to teaching and technical knowledge your area, but do not know the particulars of teenage head. Often these subsidies on youth development must be pursued in a self-taught, as compensation for the shortcomings of institutional training. It is also the teacher’s role of caring relationships in the classroom to avoid situations of exclusion: pay attention to how students are organized into groups, so that no one is segregated.
More: if we live in a consumerist society and hedonistic, pleasure-oriented and focused on the present, also reading the school as a space for social legitimacy comes into question. Voltolini remember that the heart of education is to direct for the future: learning is not for immediate gratification. Hence the common posture of young people in order to claim the only utility, not social, school knowledge. Is this treadmill the questions that arise from an aspiring medicine, for example, the need to study history or geography. In recent interviews, Thor Batista, 20, son of businessman Eike Batista, said to have read a single book in his life – exactly the autobiography of Eike.
Digital Students, teachers analog
is not by chance that the school is the stage of formal education in Brazil more problematic. A study released by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) earlier this year showed that the dropout rate of high school in the richest states border 50%, in the Northern states, exceeds 60%. Both no consensus on the fact that the current school no longer meets the requirements of most young high school there in one (attempt to) ongoing reform: a series of new guidelines were approved earlier this year by the Ministry of Education (MEC ), contemplating a greater curricular autonomy and interdisciplinarity as ways of seeking a school more attractive and motivating. Mozart Neves Ramos, director of the Board of Basic Education’s National Education Council (CNE), which participated in drafting the proposal, summarizes the problem: “We have a 19th century school, the teacher of the 20th century and the 21st century student. This the trilogy is that we have to solve. “
Experts, however, refute the idea that any inadequacies in the school’s young have a direct relationship with the pedagogical model. The assumption of education, after all, needs to be preserved: the teacher transmitting a cultural legacy that will metabolize the student to turn into something else in the future. There are fears that the recurrence of animated features, lessons and performing other innovations in an attempt to tune with the reality of modern youth, compromising the depth of teaching. The challenge is to find solutions so that the student can maintain a sustained focus in class. It is known that patients suffering from attention deficit, as Johanna, have to do more than the average. On the other hand, tend to have a keen sense more creative. Both she excelled in classes that required most dynamic activities, such as video, script, audiovisual. Today, she is in university college of communication. Sitting in the front row and record the lessons.
New guidelines
More than the model, the school would need to rethink priorities, according to Bohn Thais. For her adolescence is a difficult phase, which requires a type of tracking “like when people come back from war.” “How many lessons I had sex education, where we took a banana to put a condom!” Quips. It was the very initiative that could help at school, with teachers, counselors, to relieve their depressive episodes. “If I were a person who did not speak, could not have. Advice I think this should not happen only in exceptional cases.” Thais suggests that school of channels available to listen to the young, perhaps with a team of psychologists, to a greater support. But think the problem is not so much of institutional education, but familiar. “I do not understand how a father and mother who feel ok take the child of 7 or 8 years because nutritionist is chubby, but do not take a therapist. Maybe the problem is not only in food,” he speculates. Time: Laura, the girl’s opening, recovered. You lean. Scene from the film Norwegian Wood, which gave life to the book by Haruki Murakami.
A place in the world of teen angst representations in literature
Many so-called “novel of formation” which are premised monitor growth and consequent social development (and emotional) of their young characters, have become classics of world literature. Two of them deserve mention for the way he managed to capture the essence of youthful sensibility: The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger American, and Norwegian Wood, the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. The second, released in 1987, became quite compared to the first, published in 1951. In common narratives that develop from the perspective of its protagonists, both high school students who live in boarding school. But the similarities stop there. If the work of Salinger’s character Holden Caufield-narrator is a teenager depressive tendencies – not for nothing was he always associated with losers (defeated) in American culture – the book by Murakami Toru Watanabe’s character fakes his reluctance exploring the premise ” rise and fall. ” The pessimism of The Catcher in the Rye mirrors the situation of his character: to take notice of their disapproval at school, Caufield wanders through the city, delaying the return home, for fear the reaction of their parents. The sense of displacement is accentuated by the way he tries to mask his cowardice and lack of ambition blaming others: his eyes are all cretins, except for the little sister Phoebe. Norwegian Wood, in turn, tests the ability of Toru not to succumb to the tragedies around. After his best friend is killed, he ends up approaching Naoko, the girlfriend of former suicidal. With it, it makes a sort of “pact veiled” to overcome the grief and move on. Between school obligations, affaires and torments, Toru gropes in the dark his initiation into adulthood, leaving many with bruises – but only strengthen your personality. Manual controversial Experts recede in definitions of diagnoses for psychiatric area guide.
Controversies in the process of reissuing the most influential reference book of psychiatry worldwide continue. In May, the medical review panel’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), went back over the two proposals that would help expand the number of people diagnosed with mental psychotic or depressive. The experts concluded that the “attenuated psychosis syndrome”, whose goal is to identify people at risk of developing psychosis, and “Mixed anxiety and depressive disorder,” a hybrid of the two problems, are not supported by scientific evidence. They also adjusted its proposed definition of depression to reduce the fear that normal sadness of people – due to experiences like the loss of a loved one, job or marriage – not be confused with a mental disorder. The fifth edition of the DSM, which acts as a guide to coverage and treatment of psychiatric illnesses by health plans, remains under review until the end of the year and should be released in May 2013.
