A survey in Hong Kong found that about 36 percent of secondary school students have moderate or above moderate symptoms of depression, and nearly 10 percent are considered very serious. More than half of the secondary school students had symptoms of anxiety, and about 56 percent of the students had symptoms of stress to varying degrees.
The “Mental Wellness Service for Children and Youth“ of the Baptist Oi Kwan Social Service conducted a survey on the mental health of all secondary school students in Hong Kong from October 2021 to June 2022. A total of 1,192 questionnaires were returned. The survey found that the respondents’ psychological stress came from dissatisfaction with their daily lives, of which ”getting along with family” had the greatest impact.
The survey also shows that the overall relationship between the interviewed students and their parents was below acceptable levels. More than 70 percent of the respondents think they have a poor relationship with their fathers, and more than 60 percent of them believed that they had a poor relationship with their mothers.
The analysis pointed out that if parents blame their children for their own problems, it will have the greatest negative impact on their children’s mental health. It is suggested that parents should avoid aggressive behaviors such as yelling or scolding, so as to prevent their children from imitating such ineffective emotional expressions. The organization also recommends that parents should listen to their children more often and cultivate a habit of accepting different opinions. Otherwise, their children may fail to understand their parents’ communication, and mistakenly think that they are being used as targets for venting, which can be very damaging to parent-child relationships and the children’s psychological health.
For schools and students, in addition to cultivating students’ awareness of their own mental health, they can also enhance the students’ emotional management capabilities by encouraging them to be more self-supportive, and teaching them emotion management skills such as self-encouragement.
