At the same time vulnerable on a personal level but also particularly sensitive to their environment, adolescents can develop mental disorders. Sponsor of the Foundation for Medical Research (FRM), Clotilde Courau intends to raise public awareness of mental illnesses and their prevention.
While the World Health Organization (WHO) points out that one in five children or adolescents in the world suffers from a disease of this type, CNEWS met the actress to understand what factors could influence them and the path of their pathologies.
Why do mental illnesses often occur during adolescence?
Clotilde Courau: The formation of the brain during adolescence is very precious, since between the ages of 15 and 25, the brain is changing. After puberty is also a period of our life when we are most likely to develop a mental illness such as depression, bipolarity, schizophrenia…
Do addictions play a role in the development of these diseases?
Addictions of course, but not only. For example, the first love shock is just as powerful or the personal history and its possible traumas. All play a fundamental role in the onset of depression, manic depression or OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Social and family stresses as well as addictions have consequences on psychiatric disorders.
It is a moment that is both delicate and violent, for the parents as well as for the teenager concerned.Clotilde Courau
What advice can you give to parents?
Adolescence is a very special moment, since the being is in formation, with the impulsiveness, aggressiveness or even the search for limits that characterize it. It is a moment that is both delicate and violent, for the parents as well as for the teenager concerned. It is especially difficult to know what is due to adolescence and what could be a warning sign of a more serious disease. Hence the necessary role of prevention for both parents and adolescents. If the young person begins to live out of step, that is to say more at night than during the day, to drop out of his studies, to shut himself up in himself, to no longer be able to discuss either with his friends or with his family or to break up, it is necessary to know that these last behaviors are due to adolescence, but at a given moment it can be signs which must invite to consult.
Are there institutions or organizations to support or answer the questions of young people who wish to be supported?
First, I invite you to seek advice from your general practitioner, but there is also Fil santé jeunes that you can contact free of charge, an information service for 12-25 year olds. You can also get information from public hospitals, such as Sainte-Anne or Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris. Specialists can also act as mediators between the adolescent and his or her parents.
What would you like to contribute to research in this area?
It is common knowledge that a researcher will sometimes spend more time finding funding than devoting himself to research. However, research is fundamental for diseases of all kinds. If research is sufficiently advanced, we can be in the prevention and avoid serious diseases. For example, the question of breast cancer prevention is no longer raised today. But when we talk about psychiatric illness, we are still only at the stage where we have to make the general public understand that it is an illness, it does not depend on the will of the person. You don’t go into a depression because you don’t have enough willpower. Depression is a disease. Unfortunately, psychiatric illnesses are still assimilated to the idea that the individual’s will plays a role. We are therefore still dealing with so-called shameful or taboo diseases, and therefore too little information about them. In addition, there is still very little prevention among young people.
If you had any advice for a teenager who feels that his life is slipping away from him?
I would say to this teenager that adolescence is a complicated time. But how great it is that he realizes that he is worried about his health, that this instinct which is his is already extremely positive. And that he will find solutions that exist. What happens is not due to his will, he is not in failure. Quite the contrary. He has the tools to be able to build his life and he is right to want to build it. He is affected by an illness, I repeat it is not his will that is called into question. To this adolescent, I would therefore say to him: it is not your weakness that is called into question. And you’re going to heal and you’re going to be fine. You will build your life and you will see that it is wonderful to live. Life is beautiful !
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