Mental ailments led nearly 2,000 young Finns to take disability pensions last year.
According to the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, the number of depression-related sickness and disability allowance periods of 16-to-29-year-old men has increased by 91.7 per cent and of women by 159.4 per cent from 2000 to 2007.
The number of those individuals below the age of 30 who have taken disability pension on account of a mental disorder has also more than doubled over the last seven years.
Research Professor Raimo Raitasalo from the Social Insurance Institution of Finland is certain that this is not a statistical error.
”The situation is real, and it is not attributable to any single reason. In fact it seems that the social safety network that should support vulnerable young people has disintegrated”, the professor notes.
The underlying factors include insecurity among families, the performance-based education system, and cold work-life values, Raitasalo concludes.
The present under-30-year-olds have also experienced the recession period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was bound to increase insecurity and contribute to crises in families.
