In recent years, psychiatric hospitals have suddenly been filled with small children.
A mother broke the news on the Internet that her son is in his second year of high school, and 29 of the 50 students in the class are taking antidepressants.
These children are so stressed that they can't sleep at night and can't get up during the day, and they often borrow hot water to drink medicine."
At six or seven o'clock in the morning, the front of the Children's Psychiatric Department of the Sixth Hospital of Peking University was full of parents waiting for the number to be called.
Psychiatrists are busy, and they say that in recent years, there have been a lot of children and adolescents who have seen a mental illness.
In the past, there were very few problems with children, and there were not many children with 20 beds in one ward, and there were not many children who were seriously ill.
Now the number of wards has increased to 60 beds, and with the addition of special needs wards, there are about 100 beds in total, but the supply is still in short supply.
This phenomenon is not only in Beijing, but also in many child and adolescent psychiatric departments across the country.
So why is this happening?
It's as if mental illness is getting closer and closer to our children.
Dr. Baizao Chen of the psychiatric department took in an 18-year-old girl who was admitted to the hospital on the eve of the college entrance examination for suicide.
In her grandmother's description, Chen Baizao learned that the girl's name was Xiaolu, and she had always been a very well-behaved and sensible child.
But when the doctors examined her body, they found that the area covered by the girl's clothes was covered with various scars.
She has been self-harming for two or three years.
Grandma leaned on the head of the bed with a haggard face, she never expected that her granddaughter, who got along day and night, would swallow all the pills in the medicine box.
"I suddenly felt like a stranger to my child."
Many people say that the college entrance examination is a fate-changing event, but Chen Baizao feels that Xiaolu is just taking advantage of this important exam to say goodbye to her past.
When Xiaolu came to the psychiatric department, it was May 9, 2016, after she picked up a life from the emergency department, she was handed over to Chen Baizao and became a "depressed patient".
She was curled up in bed that day, on a drip in her right hand. Xiaolu is very thin, and the veins under the skin are clearly visible, no matter what examination Chen Baizao gives her, she is very cooperative.
Her eyes are very large and bright, her eyelashes are long, and her eyes are innocent and distressing."
If it weren't for the scar on Xiaolu's body, Chen Baizao wouldn't have been able to see her abnormality.
* When I helped her wipe her wounds with iodophor, I found that some had turned white, some were slightly infected, and some had just scabbed over and looked like new.
It's not the first time Xiaolu has self-harmed, which is a very serious signal, and if she doesn't handle it well, she will probably not be able to think about it again.
At this time, Xiaolu's grandmother sat on the side and trembled, and the old man should still be immersed in the fear of her granddaughter taking medicine and committing suicide.
But about the reason for this suicide, Xiaolu has always refused to say.
The hospital is located in the heart of the city, and the psychiatric department's three-story building is located in a corner, and there is a sense of forgotten loneliness.
Xiaolu was admitted to the psychiatric ward, actively cooperated with all the **, and greeted other patients politely, her sensibility made people wonder, is this child really "abnormal"?
Chen Baizao said: "Even the patients in the ward feel that we have "arrested" the wrong person".
The eldest sister next door kept asking, "Why did the child come here when he was so well-behaved"?
In fact, in my opinion, being well-behaved on the surface is the way for this kind of people to survive."
Experienced Dr. Chen has seen many children like Xiaolu, who seem to be well-behaved and sensible, but they are extremely insecure inside.
He heard from Xiaolu's grandmother that Xiaolu's parents divorced very early, and her granddaughter was raised by her. When Xiaolu was in the second year of junior high school, her grandfather also passed away, and they were the only ones left in the family to depend on each other.
My granddaughter has never been worried about since she was a child, and her grades in Xi are particularly good."
However, when she graduated from junior high school, her grandmother heard that technical schools were a good choice for ordinary children, so she took it upon herself to let her granddaughter go directly to the "3+2 Vocational and Technical School".
She felt that although her granddaughter's grades were good, she couldn't get into a prestigious university, so it was better to learn a technology and get a college diploma and work two years earlier.
In the technical school, Xiaolu's grades were outstanding, she won the first place in all her homework, and she never missed the scholarship every year.
Grandma had a proud expression on her face when she said this, but as soon as she finished speaking, she choked up:
I really didn't expect that my granddaughter, who helped me work every week and took a scholarship to buy me a blood pressure monitor, would actually use a knife to self-harm
On May 16, Xiaolu was hospitalized for a week, and she looked a little excited.
In the afternoon, when Chen Baizao was on rounds, Xiaolu took her hand and said eagerly, "Sister, can you let me out of the hospital?"The college entrance examination is coming soon."
Chen Baizao naturally disagreed. The mentally ill person can't concentrate on Xi at all, even if she goes back to school, it is a waste of time, and maybe the college entrance examination will stimulate her again.
Who knew that in Xiaolu's explanation next, Chen Baizao understood the reasons behind the scars.
The following is Xiaolu's own statement:
Actually, I enjoyed going to college, but I didn't want to disappoint my grandmother, so I went to a technical school after graduating from junior high school, and it was really scary.
My classmates often fight in public, and they will flock to Internet cafes every day after school, and few of them have collapsed to learn their skills.
In order not to be influenced by them, I often hid in bed with the curtain drawn and read, but they always laughed at me and said that I was secretly doing something unseemly.
Before I came here, someone put soapy water in my drink, and everyone seemed to hate me.
The other day, when I was sharpening colored pencils, an idea popped into me: what would it be like to scratch myself with a knife?
I really scratched, blood dripping down my arm and it hurt, but for some reason, somewhere in my heart was particularly comfortable."
Xiaolu spoke in a very small voice, but when she said "self-harm" and "blood", Chen Baizao clearly felt her pleasure.
The reason for all this is that Xiaolu did not choose what she loved, and "an exam, a school" became the culprit who hurt her.
Parents are always careful to choose a future for their children that they "think" is secure, but they don't expect to push their children into the abyss.
Two days ago, psychologist He Lingfeng released a **, he said:
"The thing I regret the most is that I did my best to send my daughter to the best elementary school in the district, and since then I have understood why the psychiatric department is full of young children."
When I was in the first grade, the teacher organized the whole class to conduct a "Chinese character dictation" test, and He Lingfeng's daughter scored 97 points.
After seeing the exam paper, he kept praising his daughter: "You just went to elementary school, and you scored 97 points before you started to learn, and you only got 3 words wrong, which is amazing"!
As a result, the teacher called ** that night and asked him what he thought of his daughter's grades. He Lingfeng said that he was very satisfied and thanked the teacher in **.
Who knew that the teacher was furious when he heard this:
How do you become a parent, there are 17 children in our class with 100 points, and the rest are all 99, not even 98 points, but your child has scored 97 points"!
He was stunned by the teacher at the time, but you can imagine how the child spends his time in school.
But at that time, He Lingfeng was busy making money, and he didn't have time to think too much, he thought that his daughter's grades couldn't keep up, it must be that the parents didn't take care of it, so He Lingfeng tried every means to ask for a tutor for his daughter, staring at the child to learn Xi until the early hours of the morning.
Later, when my daughter went to junior high school, she had the courage to tell her father everything she had experienced.
It turned out that in a key school, because of her poor grades, her daughter has been suppressed, insulted, and caught in the whirlpool of campus bullying.
"My daughter told me that when she was in the fourth grade, she often felt the urge to jump out of the bus."
These things have scared He Lingfeng until now, and he feels that his biggest mistake is to send his daughter to the best primary school in the district.
Do you still remember the provincial key middle school "Chengdu 49 Middle School" jumped to his death?
In the eyes of the teacher, he has excellent grades in Xi, is confident and sunny, and is a very cheerful boy.
But in the eyes of his classmates, his emotions were extremely unstable, and some classmates even saw him scratch his arm with a knife, saying "I don't want to live anymore" and "end it quickly" while paddling.
This seemingly "perfect" child is actually vulnerable.
A senior psychologist said that more than half of the children she has come into contact with depression in recent years are from key schools, and most of them are children with excellent academic Xi and cheerful personalities.
Parents try their best to think that as long as they tiptoe to entrust their children to prestigious schools, they can get a better future, but they ignore that behind the sun, there must be shadows.
When entering key schools, children will face three demons: a decline in rankings, a more rigorous and stressful Xi environment, and a huge psychological gap.
One mountain after another, crushing one innocent child after another.
They fell into depression, and tried to save themselves in depression, but before they could fully climb out, they fell into a shadow from which they could not escape.
There is a set of data in the 2022 National Blue Book on Depression that has hit the hearts of countless Chinese parents:
According to statistics, people under the age of 18 with depression already account for 30% of the population of depression28%, of which 50% are school students.
It is said that "depression" is scary, but it is getting closer and closer to our children.
Some time ago, the college entrance examination, the children began to be anxious again, and a mother couldn't stand it, so she silently posted a circle of friends:
"For the college entrance examination, take health and bet on tomorrow, this kind of education is nothing more than the biggest failure"!
After posting, this circle of friends stayed on the homepage for 3 minutes, and was deleted by the mother again.
Because she is afraid of influencing other candidates, and she is also afraid that other parents will see the "joke".
In response to this situation, in recent years, many hospitals have set up "outpatient clinics with difficulty in learning Xi", which are available in hospitals in Shanghai, Nanjing, Changsha, Wuhan, Tianjin and other places, and almost all of them are "difficult to find".
Xi The "Outpatient Clinic" is named after the most easily known complaint of parents "difficulty in learning Xi", which is like a bundle of threads on a string, gently pulling, pulling out the sadness and helplessness behind each family.
There is a very common phenomenon among parents who bring their children to see a doctor: everyone is very worried about their children's psychological problems, and at the same time they are expecting their children to "learn Xi is not difficult".
A father who was almost devastated by his child's "boredom with school" said:
"Who doesn't want their children to grow up healthy and happy, but the social involution is so serious, and if you don't work hard, your child will be eliminated, what will he do in the future?”
suddenly remembered a documentary "The Starting Line", in which there is a 7-year-old girl named Tang Xiaoyan.
In order not to let her lose at the starting line, her mother arranged various interest classes such as ukulele, dance, and Spanish in her spare time.
As a mother, she hopes that her child will live well, but she ignores the tiredness on her little face.
Under great psychological pressure, one by one innocent and lively children became "strange" and could only rush into the psychiatric hospital in the end.
It's the parents who are ridiculous, and it's the involution environment that is hateful.
Sometimes when we think about it, we brought our children into this world in the first place, just hoping that they would grow up healthy and happy.
But now?Parents are always attaching more and more expectations to their children.
There is nothing wrong with wishing for a child to become a Chan, but for children, the most precious thing is not grades and money, but the freedom, happiness and growth that we all yearn for as adults.
Xiaohan in "Voice of a Teenager" went to school in a key junior high school at the beginning, and it didn't take long for her mother to transfer her to a bilingual school with easy management.
Why?
Because the school didn't let the child read extracurricular books before, and Xiaohan's mother knew that her daughter was a very rich child who liked to create and read, so she decisively fulfilled the child.
Xiao Han, who transferred to the new school, not only did not decline in his academic Xi grades, but also became a "little writer" in the school.
Don't let your child live as a slave to the score at a young age.
It's not that parents should apply for which school they think is good, if it's really for the good of their children, they should let go of the concept of "self-thought" and find a school that is really suitable for their children.
Fortunately, with the help of Chen Baizao, grandma understood Xiaolu's thoughts, and with the help of medical staff and teachers, she successfully passed the college entrance examination and became a doctor.
Xiaolu said: "The best day is when I do a set of Huanggang test papers in a day in a mental hospital."
A person's childhood is very short, and so is adolescence, and they should bloom like flowers at the age of flowers.
The road of life is slow, not only achievements, but also poetry and distance.