Friday, March 29

9% of Catalan adolescents express a desire to die, according to a survey by the Generalitat


Every day, 8.8% of Catalan adolescents feel like dying or would like to “go to sleep and never wake up”. These are the preliminary results of a survey carried out by the Departments of Health and Education and which TV3 advanced this Sundayduring a Newsletter published by boys and girls on the occasion of International Children’s Day.

The year that broke the mental health of children and adolescents

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The document, to which elDiario.es has had access, is brief and summarizes some of the responses of the 267,000 participating students between the ages of 9 and 18. One of the objectives of the study is to evaluate the evolution of the discomfort and fears of young Catalans after the pandemic and confinement. Sent to 2,670 educational centers, this survey is the largest survey that has been carried out to date on adolescent mental health in Catalonia.




Some of the data that stands out is that four out of ten adolescents felt fear, sadness, anger or rage during the pandemic. But what worries those responsible for the survey is that half of them still feel that way today. Instead, only half claim to feel happiness today.

From this combination of feelings, it is resolved that 12% of young Catalans have been suffering from significant emotional discomfort, at least since the pandemic. All of this ends up leading to 8.8% having recurrent suicidal thoughts and 5.9% having thought about hurting or injuring themselves voluntarily.




“This does not mean that they have suicidal thoughts that are likely to come true, because children and adolescents of training age do not have the concept of death that we adults have,” explains Magda Casamitjana, director of the National Mental Health Pact, in statements to TV3. But it is clear that they express desperation and a lack of solutions and we must be vigilantAdd.

Given Casamitjana’s call to be aware of the needs of youth, the survey also asked about where young people find emotional support. Although three quarters of them say that their friends are their source of help, only 36% believe that their tutors at school are.




The will of the Generalitat is that these data not only serve to set off the alarms of the need for accompaniment of young people, but also to be a way of beginning to be aware of youth. For this reason, when the definitive results are obtained, a personalized report will be sent to each participating center that will be “an X-ray of the emotional state of the students in each center.”



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