Adolescence and mental health distress: professional perspectives from the educational and healthcare fields

Abstract

In recent years, various indicators of mental health status, as well as academic, political and media discourse, have warned of an increase in distress, with particular emphasis on the adolescent population. This has encouraged involvement and intervention from various areas related to the lives of this population group. Therefore, this study explores the discourse of professionals in the educational and health fields on mental health in adolescence, in the context of what has been termed a ‘mental health crisis.’ To this end, a qualitative study with an explanatory-interpretative approach was carried out, using 10 semi-structured interviews with teachers, psychology professionals, psychiatrists, social workers in mental health centres and doctors. The results showed heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory discourses on the conceptualisation of mental health, where perspectives that recognise social and structural determinants coexist with individualising practices focused on clinical intervention. A more alarmist and interventionist view is observed in the educational field. Overall, this study calls for the need to broaden the analytical frameworks used to interpret adolescent malaise and questions the tendency to explain it primarily in terms of crises and mental disorders, opening the door to more complex, contextualised and less medicalised approaches to research and intervention.