Last year I touched base on the increase in the number of teenagers suffering from anxiety disorders around the world in general and in our part of the world specifically.
And the escalation in social expectations and peer pressure were the two major reasons behind this phenomenon.
So this week I found that young people’s increasing reliance on social media and the open opportunities to access information online was fuelling increased rates of depression.
According to the World Health Organisation, the UAE has the highest regional level of depression, at 5.1 per cent of the population.
The Emirates also ranks highly for anxiety in the WHO’s tables, with 4.1pc of people admitting to a problem.
Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting more than 300 million people and although rarer in children it is becoming more evident in adolescents.
What I find alarming though is that a person dies by suicide about every 11.9 minutes in the US, making it the second leading cause of death in young people.
About 25m Americans suffer from depression each year and more than 50pc of all people who die by suicide suffer from major depression.
Two years ago, there were 444,016 cases of depression reported at primary health centres in the UAE, while 354,199 people sought help for anxiety.
Fewer than 4pc of young children are said to have depression, but that figure leaps closer to 20pc in teenagers, with the stress of school life and social media to blame.
"When there are different cultures working and living together like in Dubai, that can create stressful environments, particularly in young people,” says psychiatrist Dr Rasha Bassim.
“Social media affects a young person’s ability to study or concentrate in class. Parents cannot control what their children are exposed to online.
Although children need freedom to explore, it is a challenge to keep them safe. Young people share things online and they are exposed to violent, aggressive and bloody scenes, which was not always the case.
“Exposure to unregulated Internet content is having a knock-on effect on the mental health of young people,” says Dr Bassim,.
She says parents need to take control of what their children are watching.
I do agree with Dr Bassim that some children today lack the basic skills of social interaction.
But is depression on the increase or do we just talk about it more these days? Are people more willing to admit and talk about depression today than the yesteryears? Or are people more stressed out in general?
American author Rick Cormier reckons our relationships and community ties are weaker than before and that we have become more focused on goals such as money, fame and image.
“Our expectations are too high, probably because of the emphasis on “you can be anything you want to be” and highly positive self-views,” he says.
People who thrive in loving relationships don’t typically feel depressed. Depression is symptomatic of feeling isolated and cut off.
“In our drive to live the good life, we typically isolate ourselves from relationships that might nourish us. Intimate and loving relations have become somewhat marginalised and have lost value in our very hurried lives,” says Cormier.
“Our frenetic pace of life sees one day blur into another, until life begins to lose its meaning. We don’t have time to nurture our loved ones or ourselves and we lose our vision of a well-spent life. In fact, the problem is that we don’t know how to live well.”
Sadly ... he is right!