Helicopter Parents' Children Have Psychological Problems in University

Helicopter Parents' Children Have Psychological Problems in University

Recent research says that children with over-interventionist parents and a strictly structured childhood suffer from serious psychological ‘explosions e in college.

“Academicly overpressive families do great harm to their children.‘ Bill Deresiewicz says in his groundbreaking manifesto Perfect Sheep: Wrong Education of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. Için For students who have spent their entire lives in a nightmare of failure, it is often the fear of failure of their parents. The cost of not succeeding (even temporarily) is not only practical, but also existential, Der writes Deresiewicz.

What Deresiewicz calls “the perfect sheep” I call it “existentially weak”. From 2006 to 2008, I worked at Stanford University with a mental health team that researched the problem of student depression and offered faculty, staff, and students ways to better understand, recognize and approach mental health problems. As a dean, I saw that what was behind closed doors was a lack of intellectual and emotional freedom - the existential weakness I was talking about. “Perfect sheep geliy was coming to my room. Generally bright and always successful, these students sat on the couch in my room trying not to show their fragility, obeying the fact that all these seemingly accomplishments were actually their poor lives.

During my years as dean, I've heard countless stories about college students who believe that they have to study science (or medicine or engineering) and who also have to play the piano, do volunteer work for Africa, and more. I talked to children who did not have the slightest interest in the items on their resumes. Some of them shrugged off their shoulders and said, im My parents know what's best for me..

For example, the father of a child threatened to divorce her mother if she did not receive education in economics. It took the child a total of seven years to complete his normally four-year education. And throughout this process, his father controlled every move of his daughter to the smallest detail. Including when he goes off campus every weekend to study at his uncle's home. One day, at the urging of his father, he interviewed one of his economics professors in his room. He forgot to tell his father about how this meeting went. When he returned to his dorm that evening, he saw his uncle, who was quite annoyed at the entrance, who had to “force arayıp him to call and inform his father. Then this student told me: orum I'm having a panic attack because of the lack of control in my life. ”But he was still studying economics. And their parents still divorced.

In 2013, the news did not pass through anxious statistics about mental health crises on university campuses. In particular, the news about the number of students receiving drug treatment for depression was not discontinued. Charlie Gofen, retired chairman of a 1,100-student private school in Chicago, sent these statistics to his colleague at another school and asked him: “Do you think parents at school would like their children to be depressed at Yale or be happy at the University of Arizona? ”His colleague replied immediately:“ My guess is that 75 percent of parents prefer to see their children depressed at Yale. The boy, in his 20s, has somehow recovered from emotional issues, but they think no one can come back and graduate from Yale. ”

Here are those statistics that Charlie Gofen talks about:

According to the survey conducted by the university advisory center managers in 2013, 95 percent of the participants said that the increase in the number of students with a significant psychological problem has become a growing problem on campuses. According to 70 percent of the participants, severe psychological problems experienced on campuses increased last year. 24.5 percent of students are receiving medication.

In 2013, the American University Health Association conducted a large-scale health survey on nearly 100,000 university students from 153 different campuses. When students were asked about their experiences in the last 12 months, the following shocking answers were obtained:

84.3 percent of students feel extremely tired because of what they have to do

60.5 percent of students feel very sad

57 percent of students feel very lonely

51.3 percent of students feel tiring anxiety

8 percent of students think seriously about suicide

The 153 schools surveyed include campuses in all states of America: including small to medium schools and the largest, including small schools of fine arts, large research universities, religious and non-religious institutions. The mental health problem isn't just about Yale (or Harvard). These grave consequences for mental health apply to children everywhere. The increase in mental health problems among university students goes back to the extreme pressures we put on children's academic achievement. However, as this happens to children who have succeeded in entering hundreds of schools at every stage, this does not prevent them from entering the most elite schools, but from some aspects of childhood.

As parents, we express our intentions. But we love our children more strongly than voicing them, and we want only the best for them. But we are defeated by security fears and the atma cover-up ’battle of a university. And perhaps our own ‘needy’ ego, our understanding of what is ‘the best tamamen for our children is completely‘ irregular ’and we may not even be aware of it. We don't want our children to have problems or hurt their feelings, but we also want to take a real risk of mental health.

You may think rightly: Yes, but do we know if the increase in mental health problems is related to overprotective and interventionist helicopter parenting? My answer to you is: Maybe we have no research to prove the cause, but there are many studies showing the relationship.

Tomorrow: Research on the Negative Effects of Helicopter Parenting on Children's University Years