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Mental stress among young people has risen sharply in recent years.
picture alliance / dpa
More and more young people are drawing an IV pension due to mental health problems. One expert warns that the problem will get worse in the coming years and fears the collapse of the pension system.
"This powder keg will explode in the next few years." For psychiatrist Thomas Ihde, the mental health of young people is "one of the biggest hotspots in our society".
In an interview with the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, the expert explains why support services for young people with mental health problems are still important.
The background to this is a demand from the Conference of Cantonal IV Offices (IVSK): because more and more people under the age of 25 are receiving an IV pension due to mental health problems across Switzerland, the IV offices want to limit pensions and introduce an age limit.
Anyone under the age of 30 should no longer be entitled to an IV pension, IVSK Vice President Thomas Pfiffner suggested to SRF.
Thomas Ihde counters that this is completely the wrong approach. It would be counterproductive to exert "even more pressure on young IV recipients". After all, recovery is not possible without social and financial security.
Young IV recipients would want to work in the primary labor market. Without assistance, this is hardly possible. The necessary support would have to come from the system, and the link between work integration and therapy would have to function much more closely.
"One possibility, for example," suggests Ihde in the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, "would be for those affected to receive intensive therapeutic treatment in the mornings and then try to find gainful employment in the afternoons."
However, it would be even better if any measures were taken much earlier, namely preventively with children and young people. "Severe mental illnesses start earlier and earlier," explains the psychiatrist, sometimes as early as the age of ten to 15.
At the same time, however, "in some cantons, children and adolescents wait a year for an appointment with a psychiatrist or psychotherapist."
Thomas Ihde warns that Switzerland is only "at the beginning of a huge wave". Counseling centers (see box below) are already being overwhelmed with calls. For example, requests for advice from young people with suicidal thoughts have tripled in the past five years.
"When today's young people become adults in five years' time, the IV rate will increase massively again," predicts Ihde, fearing that "the entire pension system could collapse in a few years' time."
Many young people have problems with the "extremely top-heavy world". In today's job, you have to perform mentally above all else.
Or as Thomas Ihde puts it in the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper: "We are all high-performance athletes in the area of the psyche." Performance losses are no longer an option today: In principle, "the world of work has become very intolerant".
