The HCM City Mental Hospital every month receives tens of students who arrive with signs of mental illness.

The number of student clients proved to be higher in April: 18 students arrived suffering from mental disorder, 45 with depression and 81 with anxiety disorders.

Quan, a father, recently came to the hospital with his daughter, H, a 9th grader, who could not sleep.

One evening at midnight, H’s mother got up to discover that her daughter’s room was still lit. When she entered the girl’s room, she saw H dressed in her school uniform, with her bookbag on her shoulders. The girl told her mother that she needed to go to school immediately, and that she would be reprimanded if she was late.

According to Quan, H’s teachers had sometimes punished H for tardiness as a warning to other students. H told her parents that she felt ashamed in front of her friends.

Nguyen Thi Giang from the hospital’s pediatric mental disease& psychology ward said anyone would be shocked by H’s daily timetable. The girl gets up at 6 am and then goes to school. She leaves school late in the afternoon at 5 pm, then has just 15 minutes to have a light meal before going off to an evening foreign language class. She gets home at 8.30 pm, has dinner and hurries back to her lessons and homework.

The girl vows that she needs to improve her learning capability at any cost and to improve her image in the eyes of teachers and friends. According to Giang, this has put excessive pressure on the girl.

“H suffers from auditory hallucinations. She thinks that she hears the call from a friend, waiting for her to go to school,” the physician explained. “This is a signal of anxiety disorder”.

Lam Huu Tai, from District 1’s Preventive Healthcare Center in HCM City, noted that most of the students suffering from mental diseases are secondary or high school students.

V, one of Tai’s patients, came to see him because he suddenly lost his interest in learning, felt tired and wanted to play truant. The boy, who had been a good and communicative student, suddenly felt withdrawn and did not want to go out and meet friends.

“It was V’s parents who turned their son to such a person. They were always too demanding of V, thus making the boy feel ashamed if he could not satisfy them,” Tai explained.

Giang noted that Vietnamese parents nowadays seem to place overly heavy duties on their children and wish to make the boys and girls outstandingly intelligent. Once children feel too much stress, they break down and suffer mental or emotional conditions, which can have serious consequences on their future lives.

“Children have the right to play and enjoy their lives. Don’t make your children sick just because of your ignorance,” a physician said.