All work and no play…
PL, a fifth grade student in HCM City’s District 10, was recently brought by his parents to the psychiatric hospital with a lot of symptoms: he suffered from insomnia, he lay on his bed all day and did not want to communicate with anyone, and he had headaches and nausea. L’s report card showed significant deterioration in his grades, though he was once an excellent student.
Doctors learned, talking with L’s parents, that they wanted him to pass the exams to a gifted school in the city. L has a very heavy schedule to prepare for the entrance exam. He goes to go to school both in the morning and afternoon, and then he takes extra classes and has to study at home until 10 pm every day. L has no time to watch TV or play.
After counseling, L’s parents realized that pressure they put on their child was the main reason that he felt sick.
Meanwhile, TT, a 9th grade student in HCM City’s District 2, told doctors that nightmares frequently waked him in the middle of the night. T was chronically worried and tired and he vomited right after meals. When T was brought to the hospital for a psychiatric examination, the doctors traced the boy’s mental disorder to dread of a teacher who beat students when they could not answer his question.
In H’s case, though his parents do not force the eleventh grader to study too hard, she still put pressure on herself, striving to be the top student in her class. H always got up very early and studied until late at night. Eventually she began to have regular headaches and suffer from anorexia, but H’s parents did not take her to the hospital because her parents thought these were normal phenomena. One day, H went to school to take the semester-end exams and he unexpectedly disappeared. H was found wandering the next day by the police, but she did not recognize any one. It took her a long time to return to normal.
Incidence of mental disorders increases in exam season
Doctor Ngo Xuan Diep of Nhi Dong 2 Hospital (a pediatric facility in HCMC) still keeps many pictures drawn by M, 14. M always illustrated fights between dragons and people. Remarkably, the people in his pictures did not have enough fingers, eyes or ears.
Diep said that the pictures revealed M to be delusional, alienated and afraid.
Doctors say that one reason many young people suffer from mental illness is the overly hard pressure burdening them. That explains why the number of cases tends to increase in the exam season.
Many students tell doctors that they do not want to learn and that they are afraid of learning. Some parents only bring their children to the psychiatric hospital after the children say that they wanted to die because they may fail the exams.
Psychiatrists report that the number of cases rises in March and April, the time when students begin to prepare for year-end exams or university entrance exams.
Source: Tuoi tre
