Finnish Essay

The problems Finnish youngsters encounter in their lives

Finland is among other Nordic nations a welfare state where nobody is left without basic necessities like food, home and health care. Unemployed and students receive benefits that will provide a good quality life even though they don’t receive any other income. In many surveys and studies Finland scores high in such areas as happiness (Finland was the second in the recent World happiness report by United Nations) and education (Finland’s level of education is the highest in the world according to UN’s human development index). You would think that Finland is a perfect place to grow up and study but that is not the whole truth.
Many youngsters are not feeling well in Finland. There is a vast amount of social problems especially related to social exclusion that are bothering many young people. My purpose is not to claim most of Finnish youngsters are having problems in their lives but there is a big minority that has. This can be seen for example in the suicide rates. Especially under 24 year old males are in risk. Their suicide rate is two times as much as in other Nordic countries. Also girls’ situation is worrying. According to WHO in 2006 Finnish girls between the age of 14-24 committed the second most suicides in the world. During past few years Finland has also confronted several school shooting incidents in which the murderer has killed several students or teachers and finally killed himself. The murderer has in all cases been male and under 24 years old.
Because the statistics are so worrying we need to stop for a moment and ponder about the reasons behind youngsters’ ill-being. What makes the life of a young person so terrible that she or he is willing to kill him or herself or in the worst cases also many other people around them? As I have mentioned many of the problems are social.
Finland is a country of low population density. This has its pros and cons. Because of low population we have lots of beautiful nature and low pollution. However nowadays because of urbanization, less and less people are living on more distant areas from big cities. Especially young people are keen to go into growing cities full of opportunities. This causes decrease in the population that hits especially the age group of young adults in more distant communities. Communities become smaller and young people start to have problems because of their social network is quite small. Often they become socially excluded from the society. Usually there is also lots of unemployment in such areas. Finland’s unemployment rate for young adults is as high as 17%.
In very small communities the level of tolerance towards people with some different features from the majority is low. For example different sexual or ethnic minorities often face bullying and social exclusion in school communities. The discrimination can however occur because of any feature, be it personality or the way of speech. These individuals are in risk of depression and in the long term these problems can escalate, if not dealt with, in the form of suicides or murders. I don’t argue this is happens all of the time but even one suicide is too much.
So how can we make a change? I think the focus in dealing with these problems should be in social education. Many young adults especially males are not capable of discussing about their problems even if they had severe mental problems like depression. In dealing with this issue the school system has
very important role. In Finland we have school psychologists, curators and nurses in many schools whose job is to help youngster with their problems, mental and physical. However the focus is often in trying to control the symptoms with anti-depressants that do not actually work well, rather than dealing with the causes of depression and ill being. In the future it would be essential that schools would offer real help to the students.