Growing up: 25 is the new 18
Choose to go, drive a car, sign contracts: at the age of 18, young people in Germany are of age - but they are not yet grown up, say psychologists. The actual maturity begins even later.
Where does the youth end, where does adulthood begin? This question is driving researchers more and more. Because the border is shifting steadily backward. "When the biological maturation is over, which is around the beginning of 20, then one can speak of an adult brain and nervous system," says Kerstin Konrad, who teaches as a professor at the RWTH Aachen Clinical Neuropsychology of childhood and adolescence. But that does not mean that the social maturation at this age is complete.
The first job, the first home, the first child, marry: Many steps of growing up, which joined the school a few generations ago, are now delayed until the fourth decade of life. "Young people today are much more likely to graduate from high school, so they are more dependent on their parents," says Konrad. "In the old days, many left school after the eighth or tenth grade and then started to work, they were self-employed."
Career is not so important
At the same time, politics in Germany is trying to accelerate the maturing of youth. Children are enrolled earlier, the school time to graduation was shortened. For young people this is not necessarily a blessing, says child and adolescent psychiatrist Gerd Lehmkuhl: Many of the 17 to 18-year-old adolescents he meets and who are currently graduating from high school have no clear idea of their future lives. "They are unsure what they want to do later," he says, "whether they want to study or what should change in their lives."
Particularly in the G8 years, when the school ends after the 12th grade, the psychiatrist increasingly observes that young people take their time after graduation. They make a social year, travel, or devote themselves to other recreational activities. He prefers to live in peace and not with pressure, he concludes. Success and career are not their primary goal, reports the physician.
Generation Perhaps, generation subjunctive - these titles describe quite well the attitude and the dilemma in which the young people are today, says the psychoanalyst and author Holger Salge. "On the one hand, the world is becoming increasingly demanding, requiring more flexibility and demanding competencies, but on the other hand, a large proportion of a whole generation does not want to grow up," Salge, a psychotherapist of late adolescents and young adults at the Sonnenberg Clinic in London, criticizes Stuttgart leads.
Time for life
Lehmkuhl, on the other hand, does not regard the prolonged youth as problematic: "Our way of life is changing, we will be older and probably longer in our professional lives, so the young people rightly have the feeling that they want to take their time for their lives."
Does accelerating the maturity of education, therefore, slow down the social maturity? Not only. "The youth is also shifting backward because the young people have much more options," says Lehmkuhl. They have countless opportunities to do things that interest them - before settling down.
The psychoanalyst Holger Salge suspects another reason: "My personal hypothesis is that the world today is more scared because it is more confusing." Parents may, therefore, be less able to part with their children, but also the children would be reluctant to leave their cuddly environment.
It could also be responsible for a change in the relationship between children and their parents, believes Lehmkuhl. "The rules of education have changed, and today children between the ages of 15 and 16 can bring their friend home to sleep," says the child and adolescent psychiatrist. In contrast to previous generations, they could live out their partnerships in their parents' home. To flee into your own four walls as soon as possible is no longer necessary.
Problem in psychotherapy
Was auch immer dahinter steht, im psychotherapeutischen Alltag ist die verlängerte Jugend ein wichtiges Thema: Die Lebensjahre bis 25 zählen zu den besonders fragilen. Etwa drei Viertel aller psychiatrischen Erkrankungen beginnen vor dem 25. Lebensjahr, auch ist die Rate der Suizidversuche bis zu diesem Alter insgesamt am höchsten. Trotzdem würden gerade die Spätjugendlichen hierzulande schlecht versorgt, sagt Konrad. "Für eine Behandlung bei Kinder- und Jugendtherapeuten sind sie rechtlich gesehen zu alt, aber sie passen auch noch nicht richtig in die Erwachsenenversorgung."
In the UK psychologists have now solved this problem. Child and adolescent psychotherapists can now treat young people up to the age of 25 years. Previously, they were allowed to do so only in Austria until their 18th birthday. According to Konrad, there are already clinics in Australia that offer tailored treatments specifically for young people between the ages of 18 and 25 years. Experts in Germany are now also discussing better offers for this age group.
