Disorganized

People claim that young adults ages 16-25 suffer from a sense of invincibility. They do anything they want, not realizing or caring about the long-term consequences, seeking only the short-term high or adrenaline rush and worrying about any problems that come later. Young people haven’t seen enough of life or experienced enough death and hard times to realize the true implications of their actions. In some situations, this is certainly true. After all, to every stereotype, there has to be a grain of truth or it never would have been created and attributed in the first place. However, I also know for a fact that much risk taking for a good many young adults is not simply because of the adrenaline high, but because of something much larger and much scarier.

Young adults often have problems dealing with life issues that come up because many have never had to worry about anything more than keeping their parents happy and keeping their grades up. A few have to deal with things like their parents’ divorce or deaths in their family. When real life hits, however, many young adults are unprepared to deal with what is coming to them. For the first time in their lives, many young adults are on their own with only their peers to help them discover ways of fixing life’s problems. Unfortunately, those peers are dealing with their own problems and often have similar or worse solutions for dealing with them. In steps the “reckless behavior.”

Mental disorders affect an estimated 1/4 of the population in any given year and approximately 8 million of those cases are depression. Depression affects approximately 10-15% of children and adolescents ages 14-25.


*Note: I am in no way, shape or form happy with this post. It’s disorganized, has many grammatical issues, and includes few of the thoughts I meant to include. Unfortunately, my inspiration left me for the night and I must give up on it. Hopefully I will someday be able to come back to this and re-write and re-master it.

6/1/2010

© 2007-2010 Jacob Tauer
This information is not to be used in any form, online or off, without the express permission of the author