When everything becomes too much

There is a saying that nothing is as fairly distributed as the mind: everyone thinks they have enough of it. It's the same with stress. As parents in particular, we believe that we are not getting enough of it. And yet this alone says little about how high our stress levels actually are. A condition that we refer to as a widespread disease calls for a more critical examination. Ideally, this would probably take the form of not blindly joining in the lament about the meritocracy, but at the same time opening our eyes to its victims - especially if they are children. This is the approach taken in this dossier.
It aims to explain and categorise. Burnout, some warn, has arrived in the nursery. Others say that children are not stressed, but have become effeminate. How are children faring in an age of increased efficiency and profit maximisation, flexibilisation and globalisation? We ask children and young people. And we ask those who support them on a daily basis: parents, youth workers, teachers, therapists, social researchers and crisis coaches.

High life satisfaction, sober stress balance

The «Health Behaviour in School-aged Children» (HBSC) study provides indications of the emotional well-being of schoolchildren in Switzerland. Under the auspices of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the school survey examines the health of 11 to 15-year-olds in 44 countries every four years. «Children and young people hardly ever perceive poor health as an illness,» the report states, «for them, being in poor health primarily means being emotionally and interpersonally insecure.» Therefore, the health perception of children and adolescents is a good indicator of their mental state. According to the most recent HBSC study from 2014, over 90 per cent of the 10,000 schoolchildren surveyed in Switzerland rated their health as good or excellent.

Burnout has arrived in the nursery, say some. Many children today are effeminate, say others.

They also score well in terms of life satisfaction. According to the survey, 9 out of 10 boys aged between 11 and 15 are fairly or very satisfied with their lives, while the figure for girls is between 83 and 87 per cent, depending on the age group. Their stress balance looks more sober. For example, 10 per cent of all 11-year-olds surveyed said they were regularly sad, while 15 per cent described themselves as nervous. So-called psychoaffective symptoms - often referred to as stress characteristics in the literature - include irritability, tiredness and difficulty falling asleep.

Online dossier Burnout

According to the experts, puberty can certainly bring such symptoms with it. However, if the symptoms are chronic, they are associated with an impaired sense of well-being. Symptoms are considered chronic if they are felt several times a week or every day for six months. Tiredness appears to be the most widespread symptom among Swiss children. And: with increasing age, up to a third of boys express at least two chronic, psychoaffective symptoms, with the highest figure for girls being 46 per cent.

The print is self-made

While the data from the HBSC study does not answer the question of stress factors in detail, the Juvenir 4.0 study by the Jacobs Foundation does. However, it does not focus on children, but on Swiss young people aged between 15 and 21. In the 2014 study, almost half of the 1,500 respondents said that feeling stressed and overwhelmed was part of their everyday lives. 56 per cent of young females said they were often to very often under pressure, compared to 37 per cent of males.
The most important causes of stress are school, studies and (teaching) work: 60 per cent of young people feel stressed and overwhelmed in these areas frequently to very frequently. In contrast, the much-discussed «free time» does not appear to be an issue: sport and hobbies hardly put young people under any pressure, and the same applies to social media use.

It doesn't seem to be parents, teachers or vocational trainers who overburden the next generation with their demands. In the Juvenir study, 80 per cent of those under stress stated that it was not others who put them under pressure, but themselves. Researchers cite the strong performance orientation and fear of the future of many young people as the reason for this; characteristics that have already been identified in previous surveys. Significantly, 80 per cent of young people who felt stressed were also worried about their professional future. Alain Di Gallo, Head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic at the University Psychiatric Clinics Basel, is familiar with the phenomenon. «Our education system has become more permeable,» he says, «which is a great achievement that not only offers opportunities, but can also create pressure. You can always move up a level and get even better qualifications. The downside is the threat of falling, feelings of inadequacy and gnawing self-doubt.»

Burnout in children?

It hardly ever happens anymore that parents ask me what they should do to get their child to finally take school seriously," says child and adolescent psychiatrist Michael Schulte-Markwort. «In the past, parents were often worried that their child wouldn't amount to anything. Today, they want to know how their children can live and learn with less effort.»
Schulte-Markwort is Medical Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf and the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychosomatics at Altona Children's Hospital. In 2016, he published a highly acclaimed book. It is called «Burnout Kids. How the principle of performance overwhelms our children». The gimmicky title does not match the soft tones that the 60-year-old strikes in the interview.

Sport and hobbies hardly put young people under any pressure. This also applies to their use of social media.

«I don't like it when people exaggerate,» he says. «It's part of my job to understand children, not to talk them sick.» Schulte-Markwort emphasises that mental illness in children and adolescents has not increased over the past 30 years - with one exception, as he suspects. «I meet young people, mostly girls, who describe themselves as sad, listless, tearful and depressed . They have sleep disorders and show the full picture of depression, but on closer diagnosis they don't fit into the usual categories.» Burnout in children?
«The diagnosis didn't occur to me at first because I had assumed that it didn't occur in children, similar to dementia,» says Schulte-Markwort. «At first I thought I was dealing with particularly sensitive young people. But the more there were, the clearer it became to me that a clinical picture was shifting from the adult world to children: fatigue depression.» Schulte-Markwort prefers to use the popular term burnout to avoid misunderstandings. «The causes are different from those of «normal» depression,» he says. « Exhaustion depression is about internal and internalised performance demands. In this case, depression follows from exhaustion and not the other way round.»

Contradictory messages

His young patients are characterised by their efforts to be «good» children, says Schulte-Markwort: «Incredible self-disciplining processes have taken place.» Today's children want to be successful, «or rather: perfect», without anyone pushing them. Because they know no other way, the psychiatrist is convinced: "We live in a thoroughly economised society that spits out those who can't keep up at high speed. If you don't perform, you've lost.
Children today learn this from an early age." The family is also integrated into the principle of success, which does not allow for failures. Children are often exposed to contradictory messages. «The main thing is to be happy», they say, or «School grades aren't everything». It is not uncommon for well-intentioned attempts at reassurance to come from parents who set a fast pace themselves, complain about «lazy» unemployed people and suffer from a lack of time. «We show children that success usually entails a dubious work-life balance,» says Schulte-Markwort. «Fathers become weekend dads and mothers hardly have any time for themselves. Children have a keen sense of values and what they are actually worth to us.»
For the youth psychiatrist, blaming parents is not enough. Schulte-Markwort points to economic constraints, such as the shift from large families to small families, which creates helplessness because mothers and fathers have to manage everything on their own. The psychiatrist cites dying social norms and traditions, which may not have been beyond reproach, but at least provided guidance. «In the past, for example, there was the certainty that you would stay with your employer for life,» he says. «Today, we have temporary employment contracts and talk about the internship generation. Can inner stability develop like that?»

Inertia also causes us to burn out

We idealise the past, says Frankfurt developmental psychologist Martin Dornes(see interview). The extended family of the past did not only mean support, but also paternalism. Moreover, the world of work was no more family-friendly: «Workers suffered from monotony, heavy physical labour and long working hours. There was plenty of stress, even if it wasn't talked about as much as it is today.»
Katrin Aklin shares this opinion. She is a head teacher at the Zurich-based OPA Foundation, which helps young people with social difficulties to integrate into the labour market. «We have the feeling that the world is in a bad way because we hear about everything - even things that don't affect us,» she says. There is only one thing to do: consume more consciously. «We do the same with food: we don't stuff ourselves with everything that's available. We should do the same with information - that's also a question of discipline.»

Four out of five stressed young people say that it is not others who put them under pressure, but themselves.

Youth expert Aklin also coaches adults, who often consult her due to burnout. She is convinced that the reason for stress and excessive demands is not excessive performance requirements, «it's more a lack of motivation,» she says. Aklin goes even further: «Burnouts due to overexertion are much rarer than burnouts caused by inertia.» Aklin speaks of a passivity that affects young people and adults alike and creates a feeling of being at the mercy of others. «We lack satisfaction,» she says, «because we have sacrificed true commitment for a superficial understanding of success.»

Taking a stand, enduring discomfort, standing up for yourself, even without the prospect of reward - all of this is unpopular today because it is exhausting. «We prefer to go where everyone applauds,» says Aklin, «and set an example for the young.» However, this passivity doesn't work when it comes to raising children. Parenting means taking a stand, being a role model, offering a source of friction. «Many parents avoid friction,» says Aklin, «because it means work. But it is an important prerequisite for developing self-esteem. We develop skills through confrontation.»
Not only at school, but also around her own three children, she observes how children are taught to be comfortable. People prefer to provide children with everything instead of letting them do it themselves. «It stands to reason that this leads to a lower stress threshold,» says Aklin. In any case, young people should not expect understanding, neither at school nor on the labour market. There, too, there is a lack of willingness to engage seriously with children. As a result, those who don't untie the knot on their own will fall by the wayside.

Frenzied standstill

Young people with a patchy track record or gaps in their CVs are finding it increasingly difficult, says Aklin: «Employers would prefer to have young people ready-made. Hiring a young person who you still have to take under your wing a little, but who has development potential, is out of the question for most of them. It means too much effort.» What is missing are adults who really want to accompany young people - with heart, steadfastness and the necessary perseverance. Paradoxically, Aklin believes that it is this lack of dedication, life on the back burner, that burns us out: «We hoard our energy in order to use it to chase after the next best advantage. That doesn't create satisfaction, but restlessness.» Youth worker Daniele Gasparini calls the phenomenon «raging stagnation». In the so-called meritocracy, achievement largely means tactically weighing up options that are almost impossible to keep track of.

Don't constantly make school a topic of discussion, even if things aren't going well for your child.

The «multi-option culture», says Gasparini, is stressful, especially for young people. However, the youth expert knows that some are much less stressed by its temptations: «These are the ones who have dedicated their attention to a specific thing. » Young people who, to use the metaphor, are passionate about something. Of course, their commitment doesn't always meet the expectations of their parents. «In our neighbourhood, for example, the sprayers are among the luckiest,» says Salome Gasparini, who coordinates youth work in a Zurich lakeside community together with her father Daniele.
«Although graffiti art is sometimes illegal, it is obviously meaningful: it requires dedication and cohesion as a group. » In this way, the peer group gives its members strength and satisfaction, making them less susceptible to background noise. This also applies to fan culture in sport, «and in the past also in music», says Salome Gasparini, «but these subcultures have largely died out». Father and daughter Gasparini are convinced that identifying with a movement or cause is an effective protective mechanism against stress and burnout. The only problem is that most young people no longer want to put in the effort for something. «They're holding up a mirror to us,» say the youth workers, «we adults don't have any visions either.»

Which way?

Yes: we ourselves are drifting on the sea of possibilities. The question arises as to what should serve as our compass. We have questioned norms and values that were both a corset and a guide to such an extent that most of them have lost their validity. You can find this frightening or liberating. What does it mean for our children? «Every generation is faced with new, previously unknown challenges,» says youth psychiatrist Alain Di Gallo. «However, the speed and frequency of change have certainly increased in the last decade, and with it the risk of insecurity and identity crises.»
However, Di Gallo believes that the fact that such stress symptoms and possibly even associated mental disorders are on the rise among young people is an assumption that we should certainly scrutinise critically: «Adolescence is a life span of upheaval, opening up and crises and has always been associated with fears about the future. » How can we help children to overcome them? «I think the most important thing is to show confidence in their development, encourage their strengths and support them in their weaknesses,» says Di Gallo. «This also includes setting boundaries. Learning is not always fun. It requires perseverance and sacrifice.»

About the author:

The pictures for this dossier were taken by Zurich photographer Daniel Auf der Mauer. The 38-year-old regularly photographs reports and portraits for international publications such as «The New York Times» and «Der Spiegel». All the young people featured in the dossier have consented to the publication of the text and images.

Read more:

• 14-year-old Yara is doing everything she can to get into grammar school. The secondary school pupil is afraid that her future prospects will dwindle otherwise.

• When prolonged stress becomes excessive, the soul burns out: Causes, symptoms and how to find a way out of the crisis.