**Gen-Z: People born between 1997-2012**
You might have met at least one person in your life who doesn’t believe in the concept of mental health. According to them, it is a new trend, and today’s generation is getting over-sensitive and weak because they can’t handle real life. After hearing such claims, you might feel like choosing some not-so-polite words to explain to them why they’re wrong and why they are probably part of the reason why people around them might need therapy. However, we’d suggest you try using factual data to educate them, or you can confuse them with a fact overload if they are really annoying (no judgment here). Well, let’s start with debunking their claims one by one.
Claim #1: “Mental health issues did not exist before; this new generation is making up terms like anxiety, depression, and whatnot. There was no such thing in our time.”
You might be surprised to know that the earliest mentions of mental health, its importance,
and how to cure certain mental health conditions were in a book called ‘Charaka Samhita’,
which is believed to be published around the 1st century CE however, the exact time is unclear.[1] Even though the original text is believed to have been written several centuries earlier and then later annotated and refined by Acharya Charaka.[2] This included mental health issues such as insomnia, insanity, anorexia, etc.[3] So, to say that mental health is a modern concept would be factually incorrect. There are written texts in Ayurveda supporting the presence of mental health issues that date back centuries.
Claim #2: “This generation is extra sensitive and fragile to deal with normal life, so they suffer from these issues.”
We all know that a child’s environment while growing up has a huge role in how they turn out as adults. Considering the fact that in the past few years, the world has been through a pandemic, where people had to self-isolate, a lot of them lost their loved ones, became unemployed, and went through one of the most stressful times, in addition to, climate
change getting worse with every passing day, constantly living in a world filled with social media, school shootings, economies collapsing and inflation being crazy high; how do you expect people to not be affected by all this? Further, taking care of one’s mental health doesn’t only mean treating an illness; it also means taking preventative measures to avoid such conditions from occurring, practicing mindfulness, and curing disorders or managing them.[4]
Claim #3: “Mental health is a hoax. It is just a trend.”
As per Mental Health America, nearly 50 million Americans were experiencing a mental illness in 2022, excluding children experiencing disorders, people suffering from substance abuse disorder, serious suicidal thoughts, and so on.[5] And this is j
ust in the USA, according to WHO, 1 in every 8 people in the world suffers from a mental health condition.[6] This doesn’t seem to be just another trend.
So, the next time someone tries to put forth unfounded claims, you can use this information or share this article to counter and prove your point that mental health and illness are very real and not a Gen-Z trend.