Literature Review

My essay is a very popular subject but mental health has definitely advanced as

we all grow up and move on through our lives, so I’m really just going to compare

mental health now versus twenty years ago. I just really want to read more and more

and be able to answer “ how does mental health in kids today compare to those twenty

years ago?”

HIstory in this subject is obviously going to be huge for me due to the fact that I’m

comparing two time frames in our lifetime and trying to see how much we as people

have evolved and all the problems that have arriven throughout our lives. Most of my

sources address the problems of mental health of today and the ones twenty years ago

and that;s what I wanted so I could gather and compare as much information as

possible on the previous mental health on teens.

With the world expanding and technology improving, the first main factor and

effect of mental health in today's society is social media. With social media becoming a

thing over the last decade it causes more people to get cyber bullied and gives people

more freedom to say and do whatever they want without any real repercussions towards

them. Social media as a whole has become a very toxic place for people to be and due

to that it doesn’t really help people who are struggling with their mental health.

Another big reason is you’re seeing people who have parents who are also

struggling and get divorced which doesn’t help these kids and sometimes divorces get

very ugly. Kids can’t handle this adversity and it really hurts them, this is something that

wasn’t as common in the past but it was still a factor for those living in the earlier times.
 This next one kind of piggy backs onto the last one but neglection in kids and

teens doesn’t help. With these kids and teens having struggles in school and needing

somewhere to look and when they get home and don’t have that help. Now if it’s

younger siblings or parents that grew up in a time where highschool wasn’t hard and

they don’t really know you’re struggling. You see kids today committing suicide because

their parents would tell them they’re better off without them. Some parents just don’t

know how to parent so yelling seems to be the answer but it really isn’t.

Misconceptions come everywhere when you’re talking about mental health and

how people feel. A common area of misconception for people is that all mental health

problems stem from the highschool environment and that the actual school work itself

isn’t exhausting on these kids. Kids struggle with these workloads and I’ve come to

notice that the objective of school is terrible. School is about memorizing and forgetting

just so you can pass. We as students struggle with this because then our motivation

levels our down and we are also expected to make decisions about our future at 18

years old.

Mental health has definitely changed throughout the years and now you have

athletes speaking out on it, but the sources of these problems are a lot bigger now than

they were even ten years ago. We all have to learn and become aware of what is

happening in our society,

 America, Mental Health. “The State of Mental Health in America.” Mental Health

America, 2021, www.mhanational.org/issues/state-mental-health-america.

Harvard Health. “The Prevalence and Treatment of Mental Illness Today.” Harvard

Health, Mar. 2014, www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/the-prevalence-and-

treatment-of-mental-illness-today.

Lien, Yin-Yi, et al. “Changes in Attitudes toward Mental Illness in Healthcare

Professionals and Students.” International Journal of Environmental Research and

Public Health, MDPI, 22 Nov. 2019,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6926665/.

“Mental Health Issues Increased Significantly in Young Adults over Last Decade.”

ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 15 Mar. 2019,

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190315110908.htm.

Venters, Nick. NHS Choices, NHS, July 2019, digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-

blog/2018/the-past-present-and-future-of-innovation-in-mental-health.