Shin (14), a middle school student in Daegu has been addicted to gaming for years. He stayed up all night in his room playing games. He was always late for school, and his friends teased him, calling a “game otaku(maniac)”. Shin blamed himself for being “someone unnecessary.” Late last year, he was diagnosed with severe depression and tried to be admitted to a psychiatric ward at a university hospital, but there were no vacancies, and he was only admitted this month.
“The 30 closed wards at Severance Hospital, which used to house adult schizophrenia patients, are now filled with teens and 20s,” Shin Yee-jin, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Severance Hospital, said on Jan. 29. “Most of them have become so depressed that they have attempted self-harm and suicide.”
The number of teens and 20s suffering from depression, self-harm and other mental illnesses is on the rise. According to the National Health Insurance Corporation, there were 13,303 psychiatric hospitalizations for teens and 20s in 2017, or 14.6% of all patients. But last year, the number rose to 16,819 (22.2%), an increase of nearly 10 percentage points in five years.
I work pretty much a 40 hour week hybrid. I go in to the office about 3 days a week with about a 1.5 hour round trip commute. I’m usually home just after my youngest gets home from school and at the same time my oldest gets home. So we’re pretty much all home at the same time. Wife is a stay at home mom by choice, but did just start college. I think it’s more that she literally thinks there isn’t anything else for them to do. Both my kids are on the spectrum, both boys. 15 yr old is high functioning and a straight A student, but literally sits on his computer watching youtube or playing games from the moment he gets home from school until about 8-9 at night, then gets off his PC to watch youtube on his phone for like another 30-60 minutes. My youngest is 9 and lower functioning, has outbursts (stomps, throws things, breaks things) when he doesn’t get his way, and hoarding issues. The good thing is that my youngest tends to get bored with screens more than my oldest and will somewhat self regulate in that department. I’m more concerned about my oldest because he could live a completely normal life, but when his screen time is like 5-6 hours on school days and like 12-14 hours on non-school days, it’s concerning. He has no friends in or out of school. We’ve tried to help him along in that department, he even had some phone numbers of other kids in some of his classes, but will never talk to them. If they’d text him, he’d give 1 or 2 word responses and that’s the end. Even had some girls crush on him, but no reaction. Youtube is that kid’s life and even though he is so smart, I have a feeling he’s going to throw his talents away because he’d rather just sit in front of Youtube. We can offer to do things together or go out to do things and they both would rather just sit there.