You will have seen these days the barbarism, the mob and the violence at the Daddy Yankee concert at the National Stadium. Or the classic between the U and the UC, which had to be suspended. You will remember that for months after the outbreak teenagers and young people persevered with a useless, criminal and destructive violence of goods that belong to us all, such as the Violeta Parra Museum, several churches and heritage houses, etc. They destroyed the premises of small merchants, killing the illusion and livelihood of many simple families. Have you noticed that in the most violent assaults and lockdowns the protagonists are children and adolescents? In short, there are many examples and I do not want to stigmatize anyone, but ask myself: What can be happening underneath all this that we still do not see well?
By the way, the causes are many, among others the accumulated social unrest of a very important sector of the citizenry, whose solution is just beginning to be addressed. The abuses, the injustice, the feeling of unworthiness in very essential and everyday matters of life. All this causes those who experience it a lot of anger and frustration. They are violence of society that in turn provokes a violent reaction in the people affected. That anger and irritation explode with aggression and violence everywhere, in everyday life.
In this regard, peace and security are the fruit of justice. This simple and clear recipe has been repeated for at least twenty-eight centuries. Isaiah, a statesman, orator, and great poet, called “the father of the prophets,” wrote the best letters of the Old Testament. He insists on the idea that peace is the fruit of justice. That is, without justice there will be no peace or security. In Chile, the one who repeated it the most was Father Hurtado, convinced that social charity – which he also promoted – is just a patch that does not solve the underlying problem of social injustice, but the most unbearable urgencies of the poorest of the poor. That is why Father Hurtado also promoted trade unionism and many other social initiatives and reforms that had an effect on greater social justice.
Another probable cause of violence is its high promotion and dissemination through all social networks as a way of resolving conflicts. For many young people, being aggressive and violent gives them prestige in their environment and therefore they exercise, record and disseminate it, causing desires for imitation. Social networks are widely used instruments to provoke emotions such as anger, anger, scandal. Fake news in general is made for that. They cause an immediate emotional reaction that we fail to filter rationally. These types of messages provoke violent reactions and multiply through the networks much faster, sometimes 10 times faster than other types of messages.
I don’t have a specialized opinion and this is just an opinion column. But another hypothesis of probable cause of violence of children, adolescents and young people in Chile I think is the very high rates of mental disorders in them. A few days ago in my column “The suffering of our children and young people” I summarized data on their mental health. In 2017 they had a prevalence of mental disorders of 38%, 4 out of 10 children, equivalent to more than one and a half million children, adolescents and young people with severe distress or depression, etc. During the pandemic that percentage increased significantly. The global average is only 14%, or 1 in 7. Chile triples the world average! Suicide is the second leading cause of death for adolescents in the country. In 2019, 31% of them reported having tried cocaine before the age of 15; and 61% had tried the pasta base at the same age.
I also pointed out my unskilled opinion on some causes of such disorders. Children, adolescents and young people feel very lonely, unloved and listened to; poorly valued for being as they are. They have low self-esteem and little tolerance for frustration. They receive little support in the family. Their parents are generally absent or busy, overwhelmed with their work and long commutes. Adults do not convey to children and adolescents a meaning or meaning to their lives. The crisis of the worldviews that helped us to understand the world, to give us an ethics and values for which to fight have been fading, and the nihilism that empties existence is devouring us like a dense and dark haze.
The digital communication they use all day is short, without depth, inauthentic, less substantial. To nor having face-to-face contact does not develop empathy, you do not see that body language that is subtle but very expressive in any conversation. Social media actually shows masks rather, not faces or hearts. They represent more desires than realities. Two lines and a meme fail to convey an emotion well. Children and teenagers may have 1500 “friends” on their social networks, but they actually have two, one or none of them really.
In their poor mental health there is a lot of internalization that makes them “swallow” their loneliness, their anxiety and depression. They silence her. But also the mental disorder can have an externalizing pathway, that is, it is expressed outward. For no apparent reason, irritability arises, the lack of control of impulses and emotions, the inability to follow the rules, aggressiveness and a lot of violence.
These symptoms of poor child and adolescent mental health were already very high in Chile before the pandemic and during it they rose. We see them with surprise and we do not see that there is an apparent cause of their aggressiveness, because in reality the real cause and the procession of Calvary goes inside their minds. It is a disease, a disorder that even they do not know they are suffering from and do not control. It is quite possible that even they do not fully understand the reason for their own irritated, aggressive and violent actions.
A very distinguished Chilean psychiatrist pointed out that, in his opinion, poor mental health and stress are a consequence of insecurity and violence. By the way, he is obviously absolutely right. But I think this is a back-and-forth road. Violence and aggression are also a consequence of poor mental health. Which is egg and which hen? Both are reciprocal causes and effects. Direct control of violence has not worked very well for us, and we are controlling an effect, not the cause. Let us focus more energetically on solving the enormous mental health problems in Chile as well.
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The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
