Nowadays it is such a conspicuous fact that young people feel more anxious and lonelier than ever before. Anxiety and Loneliness have been the universal mental problems for young people all over the world.
In China, we can see that many young people search for the key words ‘anxiety’ and ‘loneliness’ on social platform such as Zhihu ,which is the Chinese version of Quora. People have a heated discussion about anxiety and loneliness on Internet by sharing their respective experience and efficient relaxing methods. As Zhihu has been the most popular Q&A social platform in China and the majority of users of it are young people ,I will discuss about anxiety and loneliness basing on some objective data from Zhihu. By searching for the key word ’anxiety’ in Zhihu, we can see that there are 8067 questions related to it. By searching ‘loneliness’,it shows that there 18,017 questions related to this key word and more than 121,210 followers keep paying attention to this topic. These data reveals the modern mental problems among young people, which deserves attaching more importance to.
Anxiety and loneliness are not the exclusive mental problems for Chinese young people but for those around the world. Research shows that In 2009, 4% of youth (12 to 19 years) and 5.8% of young adults (20 to 29 years) in Canada were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. From the time of this research we can see that anxiety is not a new problem occur in recent years but many years ago, but the problem become more serious these years.
There are some main causes for anxiety in modern society. First of all, the stress at work. Young people are always concerned about their salary and promotion at work. One one hand, they want to tackle the problems perfectly in order to get promoted. On the other hand, they need to keep learning so as to stay competitive among colleagues. Secondly, the stress from school. Young people especially for those who are preparing for College Entrance Examination always attach importance to marks, which causes serious pressure towards studying and examinations. Many of Chinese students believe that their future are closely connected with the College Entrance Examination so they treat it seriously. Thirdly, stress in personal relationship also causes anxiety. Many young people are not psychologically mature enough to handle various difficulties in relationship with family, friends and lovers. They are so sensitive that can easily get hurt, which can lead to anxiety.
Mental problem like anxiety and loneliness are not new problems that occur in recent years. However, as the fast development of global finance, basic living problems are solved in many countries. It is high time that people pay more attention to mental problems instead of ignoring them.
Reference
- Martha Butler& Melissa Pang, Current Issues in Mental Health in Canada: Child and Youth Mental Health, Publication no. 2014-13, Parliamentary Information and Research Service, Library of Parliament, Ottawa, 5 March 2014.
- eMedicineHealth.com.Causes of Anxiety.[online] Available at:
- https://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/causes-anxiety
- webmd.com. (2017)What are anxiety disorders? [online] Available at:
- https://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/anxiety-disorders [Accessed 12 June 2017]
