Last year, 22 young people were admitted to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Reference Unit (URPI) at Santa Catalina Hospital in Salt for suicide attempts. This is five more cases than the previous year. Behind each attempt lies immense suffering and despair, both for the young people at risk of suicide and for their families, who plead for more resources so that the authorities "don't let their children die" and provide more funding for the child and adolescent mental health care system. "When it comes to budget allocations, to making a serious commitment, it's always last in line. When a teenager is in crisis, a three-month wait for a psychologist in the public health system isn't just an administrative delay. It's an eternity that can have fatal consequences," laments journalist Sònia Cebrian, the mother of a child admitted to Santa Catalina Hospital in Salt for a suicide attempt. She was there for fifteen days and was discharged this Wednesday. "Healthcare and education professionals are overwhelmed and can't keep up with everything, and families are improvising stopgap measures that only allow them to stay afloat through struggle and isolation," Cebrian adds. The testimony of Sonia, as the mother of a teenager with a mental disorder and several suicide attempts, and that of Ingrid, as a young woman suffering this ordeal, exemplify the scale of a problem that carries a high emotional and financial cost for those who experience it and which, as Sonia says, "is needed." When the solution is a loan

"I felt very different from everyone else. I felt weak at school and developed anxiety and a lot of sadness," explains Mireia, now 23, who recalls managing anxiety and depression during adolescence. "I stayed in class, didn't go out to the playground, arrived late, and didn't feel like talking to my friends. Everything seemed normal, but internally I was unwell and I became isolated," she says about the anxiety attacks that appeared when she was fourteen and which she couldn't verbalize until she was sixteen. Although anxiety and depression are socially associated with adulthood, this reality also exists among children: it is estimated that between 10% and 20% of children and adolescents may have an anxiety disorder, according to the [unclear - possibly "warning" or "warning"]. Itersia Psychotherapy Center.

One of the many lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic is the need to care for and protect the mental health of young people, as their emotional distress has increased since the outbreak of the coronavirus six years ago. Although there is growing awareness of this problem and, consequently, more public resources are being allocated to address it, the data shows that there are still issues. a high number of Catalan students who continue to sufferBetween 2024 and 2025, for example, 30.6% of students aged 16 to 22 in Catalonia had suicidal thoughts; that is, almost a third had thought about suicide, considered it, or even planned it. Furthermore, one in four (25.9%) self-harmed, and one in ten (10.6%) attempted suicide.

Almost six years after the shock of the COVID-19 lockdown, indicators of young people's mental health are beginning to show signs of improvement. While it cannot be said that the effects of the crisis are over, those now between 15 (who were children in 2020) and 29 years old report having healthier habits and behaviors, although in most cases the results are still worse than before 2019. The latest results from the FAD Foundation and Mutua Madrileña, presented this Thursday in Madrid, indicate that three out of four young people surveyed consider their health to be "good or very good," a figure slightly below the 77% reported in 2019, but above the 54% in the survey conducted immediately after the pandemic ended.

There's a generation living with their backs against the wall and their hearts racing. A generation that has grown up surrounded by screens and uncertainties, that looks to the future with a weary smile and a question on their lips: "How can we learn to live when everything seems too much?"