16-25 YEARS OLD

‘Social media exert their own pressures and foster the habit of incessantly comparing with others’

TRIGGERS Developmentally, what’s happening from the late teens into early adulthood is a move away from family, British clinical psychologist Alex Fowke says. With independence comes the fear of rejection and humiliation.

Relationships – or the lack of them – cause immense stress, not least because these are busy years in terms of shaping identity.

All this at a time when you might find yourself, as a student or in a first job, living away from home with strangers for the first time.

Financial worries are also common, although they’re usually mentioned less often than relationship and academic pressures.

At exam time and during university the atmosphere can foster a tendency towards perfectionism and the setting of impossible targets, often resulting in young people berating themselves.

Social media exert their own pressures and foster the habit of incessantly comparing with others – what Fowke describes as compare and despair.

In addition, family stressors – divorcing parents, for instance – are common. Thompson advises parents to resist the temptation to look to their older children for support.

HOW TO REBOOT If identity or legacy issues are causing stress, Fowke recommends doing some work on your values: ask yourself what you’d like people to say about you at your retirement party. Retiring might be a long way off, but Fowke says legacy worries are common at this age, possibly because young people are asked to make major life choices.

Thinking about the bigger picture helps to adjust expectations. “Sometimes our task is to reconcile the stuff we do for fun with the stuff that just needs to be done,” he says.

For those about to embark on university life, find resources to help. Student unions are a good starting point, and many universities offer counselling to help with perfectionism, exam pressure and other mental health challenges.

“Mindfulness-based treatment helps to shift the focus away from catastrophic thought spirals,” Fowke says. Social anxiety can be confronted with gradual exposure – go for coffee and listen to the types of conversations other people have, for example.

If the anxiety is more serious, consider therapy, British GP Dominique Thompson says. Some people might need medication. “Which is no problem because it works really well.”