Ji'an's cousin attends a key high school in the city. During the pandemic, he witnessed a classmate commit suicide by jumping off a building, and soon after, his best friend also died suddenly, and one blow after another hit him to the bottom. It wasn't until he tore up the textbook page after page in class that the teachers realized that something was wrong, and that this student, who had always worked hard, had become severely depressed.
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After less than two years of teaching at a township high school, Chinese teacher Ji'an has already encountered two cases of students committing suicide due to depression.
Late one night last month, her class representative, Bao Jia, suddenly woke up the dormitory teacher and told her that she had taken an overdose of stomach medicine and was going to the hospital for gastric lavage. Afterwards, the dormitory manager cleaned up the scene and found out that Bao Jia had lied, and she was taking a large amount of antidepressant medication instead of stomach medicine.
As for the cause of Baojia's depression, Ji'an is not clear. She only remembered that the girl confided in her last semester that she felt that her parents were patriarchal and did not value her.
Depression is spreading like a plague among teenagers. According to the 2022 National Blue Book on Depression, 50% of people with depression are school students, and the prevalence of adolescent depression has reached 15-20%, in other words, one in five children suffers from depression.
The school was aware of the seriousness of the mental health problem, and repeatedly asked the teachers to pay attention to the psychological state of the students and communicate in a timely manner at the grade meeting, but Ji'an did not see any signs of improvement.
Facing these high school students who were thirteen or fourteen years younger than him, Ji An felt powerless like never before. She didn't understand: why did the students in the "cattle herding class" who were in their youth and had little pressure to study fall into despair?
1. Spreading depression
Ji'an didn't expect depression to spread in a township high school.
There is not much academic pressure here: both in terms of the quality of students and the rate of progression, the school is firmly at the bottom of the local market. Students don't like to learn, and teachers are not reluctant, and they basically adopt sheep-herding management. "Just focus on the top few grades, and the other children don't affect the classroom discipline." As a result, the campus atmosphere is exceptionally relaxed, and most students are "messing around".
Key high schools race against time, and students have to trot all the way to the cafeteria to eat, and students here have a "luxury" of rest time. There are 35 minutes between classes in the morning and a full hour lunch break, so you can play freely without worrying about being crowded by any classes.
On the school's playground, a few goats graze happily, and during recess, students come here to play with the goats, frolic and even roll on the grass.
When he first came to the school to teach, Ji'an was not comfortable for a while.
She has worked in a vocational education and training institution in Zhengzhou for a period of time, and the most common word she has tutored is "tired". Their summer vacation time is packed with homework and tutorial classes, "Children in big cities, the educational environment is too rolly. I think it would be much easier to go back to the countryside. ”
However, the reality is that the students in the cattle herding class, who are not under much pressure, are facing a serious psychological crisis.
As a teacher, it was difficult for Ji'an to tell which children in his class were suffering from depression.
Last semester, Xiaoxia, a student in Ji'an, drank pesticides at home. When she heard the news, her first reaction was, "This must be misinformation." ”
In Ji'an's impression, Xiaoxia's grades are mediocre, but she is cheerful and optimistic. She often came to chat with her, and occasionally complained that the food in the cafeteria was not delicious, and asked Ji'an to help her bring a hamburger. On the Monday before the accident, Xiaoxia was still talking and laughing with her classmates, discussing where to play after the exam. No one expected that she would suddenly commit suicide after arguing with her parents.
"On Wednesday, a classmate sent her a message, but she didn't reply, and by Saturday, she heard that she had been buried."
Young life evaporates like a bubble. Gian reminisced, trying to figure out some overlooked details. After thinking about it, the only suspicious thing is that when Xiaoxia sits alone in her seat, she is often in a daze.
But no one can know the answer to what is on her mind.
Depression is so insidious that by the time the teacher perceives the abnormality, the student's condition is often already quite severe.
This is the case with Ninghang, a student in Ji'an. She has a gentle personality, never contradicts the teacher, and is one of the few good seedlings in the class who are expected to sprint for undergraduate. Last semester, because she read novels in math class and was distracted in English class, she was criticized by the teacher one after another. It wasn't a big deal, but in the middle of the class, the English teacher noticed that she had cut out one of her hands to blood.
The English teacher was frightened and strongly asked the school's psychologist to intervene in counseling. After a few tutorings, Ning Hang improved slightly, but not long after, after being criticized by the geography teacher, she forcibly poked her palm with a compass, and the whole book was bleeding.
"In the past, the old teachers of the school would wonder if they were deliberately threatening the teacher. But in the past two years, the children's psychological problems have become more and more serious, and the old teachers have also changed their thinking and realized that the children are indeed sick. ”
Students having snowball fights on a snowy day
When a child in a class suffers from depression, self-harm, or suicide, it is like a boulder falling into the water, causing a huge wave in the hearts of other children.
Ji'an's cousin attends a key high school in the city. During the pandemic, he witnessed a classmate commit suicide by jumping off a building, and soon after, his best friend also died suddenly, and one blow after another hit him to the bottom. It wasn't until he tore up the textbook page after page in class that the teachers realized that something was wrong, and that this student, who had always worked hard, had become severely depressed.
A similar phenomenon has emerged in the classes taught in Ji'an.
After Bao Jia, the representative of her class, was suspended from school due to depression, some students in the class who seemed to have a cheerful personality also showed depression tendencies, and one student even applied for withdrawal from school and stopped going to school. Perhaps it was because of the transmission of negative emotions, which is not contagious, that depression affected Ji'an's class.
Comparing his own growth trajectory with that of his students, Ji'an couldn't figure out why they had a psychological crisis.
"Most of them were born around 2008, and compared with the post-90s generation like me, their families are much wealthier. Parents are relatively young, attach importance to education and companionship, and do not let their children become left-behind children. ”
But why, these children still feel that the world is not worth it?
Second, bury the root of the disease
In the psychological counseling room, there are only two people, Sha Tang and a psychologist, who are undergoing psychoanalytic treatment.
Prior to this, Shatang had experienced three suicides.
This is a conversation that changed the mind of Shatang. The psychiatrist asks, "How do you feel when you hear that someone has committed suicide?" Sha Tang thought about it for a while, and the answer he gave was: "I envy him because he is very brave and can choose his own life." ”
And the reaction of ordinary people is often regret and heartache. The psychiatrist compared the two answers, and Sha Tang found that there was a huge discrepancy between his own cognition and that of others.
In the eyes of former teachers and classmates, Shatang is a child who "will never be depressed".
She is a typical three-good student: her academic performance is among the best, she often wins the first place in her grade, not only in piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, but also in table tennis and badminton. She is also the captain of the Young Pioneers, an outstanding class cadre and the president of the student union.
But my parents feel that Sand Sugar is always a big step away from being excellent. A full score in the exam is just a normal performance, and once you fail, you will be beaten with a stick, "There is no praise, only criticism." ”
Sand sugar to take medicine
As early as the second grade of primary school, Sha Tang began to have symptoms of stomach pain, but her mother thought that she was deliberately pretending to be sick to deceive her and scolded her. That was the first time she had suicidal thoughts, and she stood by the balcony window, "I don't know how long, and then my mom came in." She asked me what I was doing, and I said I wanted to jump off the building, and she said, you can jump if you like, and I don't care if you want to die."
Sha Tang felt that the children who had wandered on the roof may not understand the weight of life and death, but at that moment, life was an unbearable weight.
Depression is a chronic disease, and without relevant knowledge, it is easy to ignore the body's distress signals – such as headaches, chest tightness, palpitations, gastrointestinal discomfort, insomnia and other somatic symptoms.
In elementary school and junior high school, Sha Tang has been tormented by unexplained stomach pain, she has had gastroscopy and CT checks, but she has never been able to find the cause, and can only rely on Chinese medicine three times a day to recuperate.
By the time she reached high school, her symptoms suddenly worsened.
In her sophomore year of high school, Sha Tang's memory and concentration suddenly declined, and she "obviously felt that she had become stupid, but she couldn't find any reason", and her grades plummeted. She began to have a sweet craving, and she had to eat more than 20 candies a day, otherwise she would be extremely anxious. Even if it is so abnormal, Shatang has never thought of it in the direction of mental illness.
In addition, she does not want to treat her friends as emotional trash cans, and will only confide in her diary when she encounters troubles, and everyone thinks that she is sunny and confident, and will not associate her with depression.
The most common word of encouragement from teachers is, "When you go to college, you'll be easy." "When I arrived at college, Sha Sugar, who was relieved of the pressure, suddenly broke out into depression, "Many college students who suffer from depression have already planted the root of the disease when they were teenagers. It's just that I was focused on studying in high school, and I didn't have time to pay attention to mental health, and when I was suddenly idle in college, the problems hidden in my heart suddenly surfaced. ”
She had insomnia all night and tears for no apparent reason, and it was only then that she realized she had a psychological problem. The inner depression reached the limit, and the ineffective treatment failed to control the condition, so Shatang committed suicide by swallowing medicine and was sent to the hospital.
During the hospitalization of Sand Sugar
Later, his condition was uncontrollable, and after several tosses, Sha Tang was admitted to the Shanghai Psychiatric Hospital. During her treatment, she participated in an academic research experiment.
Subjects were divided into two groups, depressed patients who had self-injurious behavior, and normal mental health individuals, and each was tested for pain tolerance. Infrared light was used to burn sensitive nerves on the inside of the wrist, and subjects were asked to record their mood.
"Generally, when it reaches level 7.8, the pain is like a pinprick on the needle, and normal people can only tolerate it up to level 17 at most, and every time they burn, their mood will deteriorate significantly. However, people who have experienced self-harm can endure to level 20 during the experiment, and their hands are hot and smoking, but their mood will improve. ”
When psychological pain cannot be vented, depressed people will swing a knife at their own body. Pain stimulates endorphin secretion, relieves pain, and also produces a sense of pleasure, in the words of Sha Tang, self-harm is "happy".
She even asked the doctor to burn a few more places during the experiment, "Pain is addictive." ”
3. Who can be relied on
After seven years of antidepressant treatment, Shatang has become "half an expert in depression", and many patients will come to her to exchange precautions for seeing a doctor and taking medicine. Many of them are teenagers who are still studying, and the most common question they ask is, how much does it cost to see a doctor, and can they go by themselves?
When faced with depression, these children are as isolated as Sha Sugar once was.
According to the findings of the 2022 National Blue Book on Depression, 46% of students with depression have not sought any help. The first time Shatang saw a psychiatrist, she also went alone. Even though she was in the same city as her parents, she didn't tell them about it.
Children with depression often have a sick home behind them. According to Blue Book data, 69.57% of children are depressed due to family relationships. Whether parents pay attention to it, whether they can pay attention to it in time, and whether they are willing to make changes will affect the direction of their child's condition.
In townships and towns, some parents still tend to lag behind.
After Ning Hang self-harmed in the class, the head teacher suggested that her parents take her to the hospital for treatment, but Ning Hang's parents refused to nod, "Our child is not sick, she is just a little extreme." Similar voices include: "This child is hypocritical" and "She is deliberately pretending to be sick and does not want to go to school".
Parents' concerns are understandable.
The college entrance examination is a crucial battle in life, if the child is diagnosed with depression and takes a leave of absence, he may encounter many difficulties in returning to school, such as not being able to keep up with everyone's learning progress and resisting interpersonal communication. Rather than take a leave of absence, they would rather bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing happened to survive the three years of high school.
What's more, in remote towns, people often equate depression with mental illness, and the stigma is strong.
Dragage's parents are one of them. After taking medicine in the dormitory, Pamarel committed suicide and was taken to the hospital for gastric lavage. The teachers speculated that she would have to recuperate at home for at least a month, but two days later, Bao Jia was sent back to school by her parents.
The head teacher was afraid that she would repeat the mistakes of the past, so she did not dare to let Bao Jia live in the school dormitory anymore, and persuaded her parents to rent a room near the school to accompany her. But they refused to nod their heads, insisting that Bao Jia just had a stomach problem and had taken stomach medicine by mistake. The school and teachers were helpless, until Dragages could not bear the academic pressure, so they chose to suspend their studies.
Parents who are willing to take their children to the hospital for examination may also be delayed due to lack of relevant knowledge to hang up in the wrong department. Every time I see a child suffering from depression asking for help on social platforms, Sha Tang will leave a message in the comment area to remind: "Go to psychiatric treatment, don't go to the psychiatric department." ”
This is the lesson that Shatang almost bought back with his life.
"Psychologists are more good at psychological counseling, and psychiatrists are more specialized in medicine after graduating from clinical medicine. If you are out of love and depressed, you can consult a psychologist, but if you have somatization symptoms, you should go to a psychiatrist for medication. ”
Sha Tang attempted suicide for the first time, was sent to a psychiatric department, and was forced to undergo painful electroshock therapy every day, and instead of improving, his condition became more and more serious. "Electroconvulsive therapy is more effective for bipolar disorder, but I have major depression and it doesn't really work much for me. Coupled with the wrong medicine prescribed by the doctor, the condition has been delayed. ”
It wasn't until she was hospitalized in Shanghai that the doctor adjusted her medication to control her condition, "This is a test of the doctor's pharmacological expertise, and she has to go to the right department at the beginning." ”
Anti-depression is a long road, children cannot walk the whole journey alone, parents, teachers, friends are important companions and supporters. But what can schools and teachers do?
The Special Action Plan for Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving Student Mental Health in the New Era (2023-2025) issued in 2023 clearly states that by 2025, the proportion of schools equipped with full-time (part-time) mental health education teachers should reach 95%, and the proportion of family education guidance service sites carrying out mental health education should reach 60%.
Ji'an's township middle school also has a mental health counseling room. Every semester, the school will invite psychologists to give lectures on psychological science and organize teachers and students to study. But the effect is not ideal, and the children would rather bury their heads in the novels than look up and listen to the lectures. Even if you are really troubled, you rarely seek help from a psychologist.
"They worry that what they say in the counseling room will reach the ears of the class teacher."
Ji An is a Chinese teacher, and compared with other subjects, Chinese attaches more importance to emotion and expression, and her classroom atmosphere is also more relaxed and lively, such as introducing the author's life, and she will deliberately intersperse some interesting short stories. Perhaps because of this, many students will regard her as a close friend and confidant.
Feng Ling, another representative of her Chinese class, dropped out of school last semester because of depression, did not continue to study, and went south to an electronics factory in Guangdong. Before leaving, she sent a long WeChat message to Ji'an:
"I hate subjects that I can't learn, I hate relationships in school, I hate that I have to study hard but still only have more than 200 points. I don't know what's the point of me staying. Many people say that no matter how good or bad the university is, a university is better than a high school, but I found that there is no shortage of college students in the country. ”
WeChat from students
Ji'an couldn't answer Feng Ling's confusion, and neither could the school.
To be sure, the atmosphere in this township middle school is already relaxed in the exam-oriented education system, "Our school has only more than 600 people, and we are relatively more energetic in management. If you encounter a child with depression, the school will try to help you as much as possible and will not immediately suspend school. ”
In the more brutal competition in the county and city key middle schools, students who develop symptoms of depression are immediately discouraged, just like Ji'an's cousin. The depressed student went home, but everyone knew that the problem was not solved.
After Bao Jia's suicide attempt, Ji'an wrote a message to comfort the children: "Life is still a long way, walk slowly, don't panic." Feng Ling, who has not been in touch for a long time, commented on the circle of friends: "Now I know that ten thousand books are not easy to read, and it is not easy to travel thousands of miles." ”
Out of the cage of education, the children's confusion has not disappeared.