The teenager who atrociously murdered his Spanish teacher in the middle of class was not, it seems, the victim of mental disorders serious enough to exclude his criminal responsibility. But he was followed by a psychiatrist for “mental disorders”. Because it was natural that we focus on the tragic fate of this professor, it seems to me that we have not sufficiently noted this fact: the mental health of adolescents is deteriorating in France in a very worrying way.
Since at least 2020, Public Health France has constantly sounded the alarm. The numbers of visits to the emergency room for “mood disorders, suicidal gestures and ideas” continue to increase. In question, in particular, the effects of a sanitary confinement very badly experienced by adolescents. This weakening had been observed during the release from confinement, but it continues to have its effects. Whether the teenager from Saint-Jean-de-Luz saw his condition deteriorate due to this confinement, we do not know. Simply, cases of distress, harassment, loneliness, teenage suicide, not to mention cases of self-harm or self-inflicted suffering like this recent “scar” fad broadcast by TikTok are now sufficiently in the news. so that it is important to finally hear the calls of psychiatrists, Public Health France (which reacted with a vigorous campaign) or the Defender of Rights.
Containment is not the only cause. Specialists indicate that anxiety disorders and their cohort of consequences are also largely due to all that our society and its current events carry with them deeply anxiety-provoking for adolescents.
And this is where perhaps we should still start to wonder about the crazy complacency that has now set in with all the apocalyptic thoughts. To talk about the world around us, we use a vocabulary that gives pride of place to catastrophist emphasis. The “Third World War”, the “end of plenty”, the climatic “point of no return”, “eternal pollution”, and all sorts of terms that look pretty in speeches and newspaper headlines, but whose actual reality still needs to be verified, produce psychological explosions whose resonance seems totally indifferent to the actors of the public debate.
Youth, one. theme absent from the debates
It is all the more indifferent to them since the very theme of youth has long since deserted this debate. Admittedly, France remains a very generous nation in terms of family policy, education, support for employment, etc. But, paradoxically, these more or less marked paths seem to make any concern of a more political nature unnecessary for the future of this youth. We saw it clearly during the confrontation at the Agricultural Show between the young man from Last Renovation and the President of the Republic: any exchange seemed impossible between a young man all in his millennial anguish and a president trying to rationalize the disaster. .
In the same way, one wonders how a teenager feels in a society that has focused for so many months on pensions. We laughed abundantly, on social networks, these very young people seriously regretting the questioning of their future, but how not to see that an entire generation is paralyzed by this debate, presented by the arsonists on duty as a kind of condemnation in prison (“two years closed”)?
Pity for the youth of France
There is worse. At the very moment when the pension reform was being debated, a citizens’ assembly believed in its soul and conscience that euthanasia should henceforth enter into the French legislative arsenal… and be naturally open to children and adolescents. How grateful we are to these citizens for being concerned about the future of young people in this way. The promises of inclusivity and sex education brandished by the Minister of National Education cannot compete with this chemical eschatology.
And then, soon, we will see the new Universal National Service, which should take a more militarized form and introduce elements of climate awareness. We do not envy this youth who will scrutinize the thermometer feverishly in his brand new trellis.
To the politicians, to the media, to all the actors of the public debate, it is important to launch this appeal: pity for the youth of France.