1 in 10 Catalan minors want to die, survey says

Almost one in 10 Catalan teenagers (8.8%) want to die or fall asleep and never wake up again, as a survey from the Catalan health department reported by public broadcaster TV3 states.

The ministry surveyed around 267,000 people aged 10 to 18 and 5.9% of these confessed they frequently think about self-harming.

Respondents studied at around 2,000 different schools across Catalonia and the survey had 27 questions about the feelings of teenagers following the Covid-19 pandemic.

40% of answers confirmed coronavirus caused them fear, sadness, anger, and rage. Still to this day, 13% of respondents feel rage and 7% fear the pandemic. 

This has been the largest survey ever made regarding mental health among teenagers in Catalonia.

Mental health in nurses and women

Teenagers are not the only ones suffering from mental health in Catalonia, as over 1,300 nurses quit their jobs since 2020 when the pandemic first broke out.

The Barcelona nurses association (COIB) said back in May that 457 professionals quit in 2020, while 597 did in 2021, and 273 in the first months of this year – before Covid-19, an average of 400 nurses used to quit their job yearly, indicating a worsening trend.

Something similar happens to women, as they suffer more mental health issues compared to men, especially depression and anxiety. Data shows that 7.1% of women have been diagnosed with depression, double that of men’s metric (3.5%), according to figures registered from July 2019 to 2020 by the Spanish Institute of Statistics (INE).

There are several reasons behind the gap between these metrics. The vast majority of them are psychosocial factors but there are also gender stereotypes.