At the same time that emergency room visits for children in psychiatric crisis are surging, a recent medical paper studying these ER visits suggests “behavior health equity” as a prognosis for the “bottlenecks and backlogs of patients in need of emergency care.”
The paper, released by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and three other medical organizations, defines this “health equity” solution as “the right to access quality health care for all populations regardless of the individual’s race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or geographical location. This includes access to prevention, treatment, and recovery services for mental and substance use disorders.”
In typical form, the media are disinterested in digging into the root cause of the symptoms that seem to be on the rise.
We are expected to pretend there are no obvious causes linked to this trend or the cause for further acceleration after 2019. It couldn’t be the confluence of “eco-anxiety” born from apocalyptic environmentalism, mindless scrolling on social media in spite of its ties to anxiety and depression and clear pushing of videos encouraging eating disorders and suicide, censored speech and uninvited speakers to indulge the protection of “safe spaces,” trend-breaking gender confusion in parallel with usurpation of parents’ rights, or the overall erosion of normalcy in society.
It’s a mystery.
Yet the staggering numbers we are seeing of unhappy, not-fully-functioning teens are likely only a preview of what is to come with Gen Alpha.
Make Way for Gen Alpha
The generation after Gen Z, these babies and young kids of the pandemic, spent their formative years in a highly abnormal society. This was the generation that was raised under the thumb of Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization, which simplified and suppressed the world into a zero-sum game: either you die of Covid, or you don’t.
This youngest generation observed all new forms of unkind, unusual, and unsocial societal behaviors. They were warned to be wary of other kids in the classroom at a time when one of the most important inputs to their learning and development was play. They lost valuable time in a classroom as teachers unions put on bizarre dances in attempts to extend remote learning. This generation experienced far less physical touch and lost out on the baseline opportunities to develop face perception for emotional connection and understanding.
With the already extra-fragile attitudes of Gen Z, the new paranoias and stressors imposed on Gen Alpha were not quelled simply when the masks came off. We are left to wonder: Are we doomed to a generation of socially stunted bubble babies?
What is clear is that the enduring consequences of Covid-era decisions on this youngest generation’s mental and emotional fitness are only starting to bubble to the surface. Pediatric speech disorder diagnosis is more than double pre-pandemic levels. Math and reading scores have dropped to the lowest in decades. Scientific understanding of the irreversible effects of social isolation on the prefrontal cortex has been hushed away.
Even so, it would be nice to believe it isn’t too late to change course. Better paths are always available, one must simply acknowledge straying off course.
But it would seem that governments across the world today, the U.S. sadly being no exception to the trend, are fixated on a path that purports “equity” and “fairness,” but in fact promises further instability, less individual autonomy, and more government control. People who are rich — happiness-rich, ideas-rich, energy-rich, food-rich — those people are difficult to control.
But if you are food-poor, energy-poor, and — arguably the most important of all resources — happiness-poor, what is left to support you from falling?
The mind is the last bastion of human freedom.
We need to be more than wary of these trends. We must stop them or else prepare for a generation of emotionally frail, communicatively inept, unfree disconsolates.
Arynne Wexler is a blue state refugee enjoying her freedom in South Florida.
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