4 Things We All Need to Learn About Mental Health
Younger adults have this whole ‘talking about feelings thing’ down
It’s been a rough few weeks for mental health. As if the constant threat of disease wasn’t enough of a mindfuck, our new social-distancing lifestyle is causing what TIME magazine recently called “an emotional pandemic” of anxiety and fear.
But just as younger adults seem to sometimes fare better against Covid-19, they may also be better equipped, mentally and emotionally, to weather this pandemic. From the Great Recession to our toxic political landscape, people who came of age during our most recent national crises have developed our own way of thinking about mental health — one that people of any age can adopt to make it through the weeks to come. Here are four of our survival strategies.
1. Redefine “healthy”
The wellness boom of the past several years has been fueled largely by millennials, perhaps in part because their health is declining faster than that of previous generations. A survey by Blue Cross Blue Shield found that as they age, millennials are experiencing higher rates of hypertension and high cholesterol, along with depression and hyperactivity, than Gen Xers.
And the gig-economy workforce, which skews younger (one report found that adults under 34 are more likely to be gig workers than any other age group), can exacerbate mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and burnout while at the same time offering only spotty health insurance.
To deal with these stressors, younger generations tend to look at health more holistically than older generations, relying on techniques like mindfulness, meditation, and careful nutrition (even avocado toast, which has evolved into shorthand for youthful indulgence, is high in vitamins and minerals) to stay in physical and mental shape. “While Millennials want support for traditional things like physical activity and nutrition, they also want support across all aspects of health [including] emotional/mental health, adequate sleep and positive family relationships,” according to a report by Welltok, a software company that serves the health care industry. Other market research shows that Gen Z has a similarly expansive definition of what…