Unfortunately, all it takes is opening a newspaper or listening to the news to realize that there is a subtle and silent illness threatening young people above all: the pain of living, a growing sense of profound dissatisfaction that, in the most serious and extreme cases, can also lead to suicide.
One name that could stand for them all is Julia Ituma, an 18-year-old volleyball player who died in Istanbul, where she was staying with her team for a training camp.
Several surveys and studies reveal that young people report having suicidal thoughts or confide feelings of sadness and despair. We are facing a profound and complex problem, whose roots it is impossible to investigate in the few lines of this article. We will therefore limit ourselves to sketching an overview and will try, finally, to shed some light, offering a possible path of hope.

The fragility and loneliness of young people

The first obvious fact is that young people today are very fragile; they seem unprepared to face the waves that sooner or later come crashing into everyone’s life. This fragility affects them first and foremost because, in an always-connected world, they experience profound loneliness and find no points of reference either within the family - a reality as fundamental as it is increasingly threatened - or in society.
So they are lonely young people who tend to isolate themselves, living a life that is often more virtual than real, and therefore becoming increasingly unaccustomed to living in relationship with others and building relationships.

Performance anxiety

Added to this is the pressure of a society that increasingly asks us to appear rather than to be: you exist if you appear, if you receive likes or views, and to appear, you must conform to a standard, you must be popular... And if you move away from that model? If you cannot reach it? The way is opened to uncertainty, and a sense of failure and dissatisfaction takes hold.

A path to complete joy

Just as the picture of distress is complex, so too are the possible paths to solutions, which would deserve thorough, well-documented exploration. For now, then, we will simply recall an illuminating saying of Jesus that could serve as a starting point for reflection: “I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11).
The Gospel, the good news Jesus gives us, is full of light and joy: it tells us that we are not alone, because we are beloved children; it tells us that heaven wants us to be alive and deeply joyful. Here, then, is a point of reference to rediscover and present to young people, so they can find the fullness of life and savor it in every detail.
A great expert on joy is Saint Philip Neri, rightly called the Saint of Joy, a joy that carries the fragrance of eternity precisely because it comes from God's love. The founder of the Oratory, he was surrounded by young people to whom he showed the way of the Gospel, encouraging them to live joyfully. His sayings are famous in this regard, including: “Cheerfulness comforts the heart and helps us persevere in living a good life.”