1 Million Thai Teens Suffer From Depression: Official

By Pravit Rojanaphruk, Senior Staff Writer

 

Middle-school students at the Parliament Museum in a 2010 file photo. Photo: Office of the Prime Minister

 

BANGKOK — Thailand may be known as the “Land of Smiles” but an estimated 1 million teenagers suffer clinical depression, many of whom are going untreated, said the nation’s chief mental health official Boonruang Trairuangworawat on Friday.

 

Boonruang, director general of the Mental Health Department, said there’s a need to address problems among Thai teens aged 10 to 19 and widen their access to mental health facilities, as depression has led to violence, school dropouts and suicide.

 

Full story:  http://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/bangkok/2017/12/24/1-million-thai-teens-suffer-depression-official/

 

-- © Copyright Khaosod English 2017-12-25

Thai teens aged 10 to 19

10, 11, 12 yr old teens?   That's depressing!

What? no App for it? nothing on Tinder, FB, tweeter and other mind numbing,

brain diminishing 'social media'  applications?....

not enough likes......I get that way too....

Not surprising, I live in a small village, and there is absolutely nothing for teenagers to do, except sit and play with their phones, and computers. It's no wonder that Thailand has a growing child obesity problem.

16 minutes ago, MrMuddle said:

Not surprising, I live in a small village, and there is absolutely nothing for teenagers to do, except sit and play with their phones, and computers. It's no wonder that Thailand has a growing child obesity problem.

I grew up out in the woods in the 1970's w/ 3 cousins around.

 

We ALWAYS found something to do.

6 minutes ago, jaywalker said:

I grew up out in the woods in the 1970's w/ 3 cousins around.

 

We ALWAYS found something to do.

back in the day, when you where out of the house, no one could each you.  miss a party and you had to wait to Monday to find out what went down, have an "enemy" and when you got home from school the hassle was over.  Nowadays everything is in your face 24/7..  the cell phone and social media have changed what is important.  Just go to a tourist attraction, everyone is facing away from the site taking a selfie.  Young people are lost without social validation constantly.

48 minutes ago, jaywalker said:

I grew up out in the woods in the 1970's w/ 3 cousins around.

 

We ALWAYS found something to do.

Ditto and agreed...but you missed his point. This is 2017, kids getting screwed up from anti-social media.

 

1 minute ago, coulson said:

Ditto and agreed...but you missed his point. This is 2017, kids getting screwed up from anti-social media.

 

Yeah it sucks.

 

Wish I had a solution, but I don't, other than parents being friends (which sometimes means tough love) to their kids and leading by example.

46 minutes ago, greatwhitenorth said:

back in the day, when you where out of the house, no one could each you.  miss a party and you had to wait to Monday to find out what went down, have an "enemy" and when you got home from school the hassle was over.  Nowadays everything is in your face 24/7..  the cell phone and social media have changed what is important.  Just go to a tourist attraction, everyone is facing away from the site taking a selfie.  Young people are lost without social validation constantly.

I recall when my company sent me my first Blackberry. I thought it was slicker than snot, till the company 8,000 miles away started trying to micro-manage everything I did.

 

I have shunned smartphones every since. I despise and detest the damned things...but that's just me.

2 hours ago, webfact said:

1 Million Thai Teens Suffer From Depression: Official

...and another 2 Million are fighting the symptoms with drugs.

I've noticed that very few people here have hobbies and a lot of children don't seem to have to do house chores. These small things (hobbies, chores) help to keep us and our minds occupied and give our lives a little more meaning or purpose. 

 

10 minutes ago, djayz said:

I've noticed that very few people here have hobbies and a lot of children don't seem to have to do house chores. These small things (hobbies, chores) help to keep us and our minds occupied and give our lives a little more meaning or purpose. 

 

Sports are helpful as well. 

2 hours ago, ezzra said:

What? no App for it? nothing on Tinder, FB, tweeter and other mind numbing,

brain diminishing 'social media'  applications?....

funny you should say that . . . .

 

 

12 minutes ago, Oziex1 said:

Sports are helpful as well. 

Joining a gang is cooler for wayward teens.

1 hour ago, jaywalker said:

I recall when my company sent me my first Blackberry. I thought it was slicker than snot, till the company 8,000 miles away started trying to micro-manage everything I did.

 

I have shunned smartphones every since. I despise and detest the damned things...but that's just me.

The time will definitely come when people will deeply regret having willingly surrendered so much information about themselves and compromising their privacy

 

Facebook Is 'Ripping Apart' Society, Former Executive Warns

 

http://fortune.com/2017/12/12/chamath-palihapitiya-facebook-society/

Take away the iphones

Thai teens aged 10 to 19

 

since when have 10, 11 and 12 year olds been teenagers? if a 'journalist' and sub ed can even get this right how can you trust anything else in the article? more pathetic amateurish writing.

1 hour ago, Oziex1 said:

Sports are helpful as well. 

True. I completely forgot to add sports. Good one! ?

Edited December 25, 20178 yr by djayz

Viewing the world from the doorstep of our rural village, given the sad state of the education system and the prognosis for future earning opportunities out here <rice farming and construction>, yeah, a whole lot of the kids, primarily male teenagers, turn to yaba, smart phones, and motorcycles and simply attempt to escape. 
Any family with more than a few baht to rub together send their kids to school in Lamphun city.  And I've watched as a few of these kids have grown and actually are now in University.  But those kids are a real minority.  And a number of kids follow their in the parent's footsteps if they have small businesses, and some of those kids are doing pretty well too.  So yeah, I can understand the depression.  Pretty bleak future ahead for a lot of these kids.  And unfortunately, unlike in the West during my generation, kids aren't taught the value of work and how to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  But, that doesn't seem to be anything unique to Thailand in this day and age.

3 hours ago, jaywalker said:

I grew up out in the woods in the 1970's w/ 3 cousins around.

 

We ALWAYS found something to do.

 I know what you mean.  A phone was something attached to the kitchen wall or on a desk.  There was no Internet.  Kids went outside to play.  I spent a lot of time in the woods with friends, fishing, building forts, playing games, and as a teenager I had paper routes, washed cars, painted houses, worked at a grocery store.  I was always busy. At night I'd read - books - made of paper.

2 hours ago, jaywalker said:

I recall when my company sent me my first Blackberry. I thought it was slicker than snot, till the company 8,000 miles away started trying to micro-manage everything I did.

 

I have shunned smartphones every since. I despise and detest the damned things...but that's just me.

In our company we called Blackberry phones 'Crackberries' and the people who used them 'Crackberry Addicts.'  Any project meeting I headed up basically started with telling people to shelve their 'crack.'  These people had the attention spans of gnats.

 

I never wanted one of those, and considering I was in IT services support, I lived with a cell phone.  After I retired I ditched the phone.  I didn't get a smart phone until last year.  I don't use it for anything but as a phone, a camera, a Thai-English translator, and occasionally I'll use the map function.  Other than that, it's home in on the table.  Good place for it.
Regarding kids in this generation.  <head shake>  Mummy gives them a phone to play with to keep them quiet.  So the next generation will end up being a bunch of near-sighted, 5G Zombies.  No wonder they're depressed.

Edited December 25, 20178 yr by connda

17 minutes ago, connda said:

 I know what you mean.  A phone was something attached to the kitchen wall or on a desk.  There was no Internet.  Kids went outside to play.  I spent a lot of time in the woods with friends, fishing, building forts, playing games, and as a teenager I had paper routes, washed cars, painted houses, worked at a grocery store.  I was always busy. At night I'd read - books - made of paper.

I got addicted to reading books young also.

 

I've loved them every since.

 

I recall my Dad getting angry with the phone company and he ripped the phone off the wall and tossed it in the back yard.

 

I think it was about a year before we ever had a phone again.

When i was a kid in the 50's there were no telephones in our house or any of our neighbours.  On the odd occasion one needed a phone they walked to the nearest phone box two streets away, i think my family probably used the phone box once or twice a year.   Adults wrote letters to each other, even to family members who lived on the other side of the same town and at least one family letter arrived every week.  We kids had nature all around us to play with, in my case Folkestone Warren with all its wild beauty and the North Downs, an amazing playground.   In the Summer we camped out in the woods and had midnight feasts of fried sausages, onions and baked beans and in the morning woke early to watch the Deer grazing in the woods.  We had a whole array of Sports Facilities at School and were encouraged to use them and participate in annual Sports Day and competitions against other School's.  There were no obese children in my life as a child; indeed, we were lucky to have just about enough to eat at home and supplemented our meals with what nature provided by eating Blackberries, Rasberry's, Goozgogs, Apples and Pears, anything that grew wild or we could scrump.

 

At home we had our own Libraries of books bought for us at Birthdays and Christmas , our weekly delivered Comics and our Hobbies like Model Railways, collecting Dinky Toys and building Airfix Kits of Aircraft to hang from our bedroom ceiling.   If someone had offered me some gadget that made phone calls i very much doubt i would have been interested as there was nobody i knew who had a phone to call, if you wanted to see your mates you went and knocked on their door !    I think today's kids have mainly boring lives attached to what they think is the exciting world of Social Media, which is proving to be the most damaging influence ever invented.

 

Merry Christmas Everyone.......

The young people in other countries suffer from this as well.

They have trouble dealing with reality.

Someday somehow they will have to deal with it and hopefully they

will be able to.

 

I see too many young children with cell phones and think that is what is changing

them and making them forget to be children and even young teens. They are

depressed by TV as well. It is not only Thailand but in many countries. The modern

world is changing everyone. Sad really. Merry Christmas.

Geezer

5 hours ago, MrMuddle said:

Not surprising, I live in a small village, and there is absolutely nothing for teenagers to do, except sit and play with their phones, and computers. It's no wonder that Thailand has a growing child obesity problem.

Before there were phones and computers there was even less for kids to do. That's when you make your own amusement. things like trees, old bike wheels etc became toys. Why don't you show the kids in your village how to make a gocart. In fact they can check it out on their phones.

 

The best treatment for depression is healthy food and daily exercise.  I guess that many teens all over the world are lacking both.

Edited December 25, 20178 yr by Xonax

5 hours ago, MrMuddle said:

Not surprising, I live in a small village, and there is absolutely nothing for teenagers to do, except sit and play with their phones, and computers. It's no wonder that Thailand has a growing child obesity problem.

Yeah heaven forbid  they get off their lazy <deleted> and do some physical work to give their  life  some meaning.

1 Million Thai Teens Suffer From Depression: Official

 

If ever there was an example of fake news, this is surely it. No credible evidence is given in support of this startling headline, based on an "official" claim, guaranteed to give millions of parents sleepless nights.

 

According to the article: While the estimated 1 million teenagers are believed to suffer from depression, 2 million more are at risk, Boonruang said. That would make for upward of 3 million among a population of 8 million teens.

 

No facts or even a reliable source is quoted from the Mental Health Ministry to back up these official "estimates" and "beliefs" - or the shocking assertion that more than a third a third of all Thai teens suffer clinical depression or risk becoming victims.

 

If the public and its representatives in government are to take what may well be a serious mental crisis among Thai teens seriously,  we need to be given facts, not scaremongering flim-flam.

 

Edited December 25, 20178 yr by Krataiboy