The article I read was about how more American teenagers are suffering from anxiety now compared to in the past. The article stated that over the past decade, anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason why college students seek counseling services. The American College Health Association found a significant increase from 50 percent in 2011, to 61 percent in 2016 of undergraduates reporting “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous school year. Along with those numbers, hospital admissions for suicidal teenages has doubled over the last decade as well, with it reaching its annual peak each year in the fall soon after students return to school. Given this data, it is concluded that they account for approximately 30 percent of total costs of mental health care, compared to 22 percent for mood disorders and 20 percent for schizophrenia. The latest data available indicates that anxiety affects 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year. Students feel pressured to succeed in school and do good, and when they feel they aren’t meeting the expectations of others (which could be their professors, family, or requirements for an extracurricular) along with expectations they set for themselves, anxiety is a common thing that comes up.
Evidence is presented that anxiety disorder is prevalent in teenagers today because of the feeling of being overwhelmed to where doing any task at hand seems impossible. It can get to a point where teenagers suffering from anxiety can develop depression and potentially contemplate or attempt suicide. A functionalist perspective on anxiety is formulated to (a) explain the origins of normative states of anxiety, (b) outline developmental pathways in the transition to developing anxiety and understanding its effects, and (c) account for the processes leading to gender-differentiated patterns of anxiety-related disorders after puberty. In this case emotions are viewed as reactions to one’s evaluation of an event and their goals. Although goals change with development, the relationship between goals and emotions do not change. An individual’s emotional response may be determined by their past experiences with the particular event, person, or object, or by their expectation of how it will turn out. So emotion influences cognition by organizing and biasing perceptions.
Teenagers suffering from anxiety wouldn’t have a direct approach on social conflict and how social life is in competition, but it could potentially put the people who suffer from anxiety on a lower tier socially compared to the people who don’t suffer from anxiety. Some of the types of anxiety such as agoraphobia (a type of anxiety disorder in which you fear and often avoid places or situations that might cause you to panic and make you feel trapped, helpless or embarrassed), panic disorder, or social anxiety affect how people react in events or towards other people which could feel as if they can’t socialize or do things like present a project. Some symptoms include feeling nervous or restless, having a sense of impending panic, sweating, trembling, trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry, and having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety. People who don’t suffer from anxiety are less likely to react in a way that people that do, which puts them in a higher tier in social conflicts.
According to symbolic interactionism, individuals go through situations based on their experiences. People view others based on what society constructs normal as. The mental illness stigma, which is one that anxiety falls under, isn’t thought of as ‘normal’ and can be seen as unconventional. Many individuals who have mental illnesses are not understood, therefore they’re mistreated by lack of understanding.
