T

he demanding shift into adulthood as well as the burdens of urban life expose young adults in big cities like Jakarta to the threats of depression and self-harm, according to experts.

Yoan Octaviani, a 22-year-old office worker and resident of Tangerang, Banten, said she had suffered depression that led her to harm herself.

“One day it felt like something crushed my heart so bad that it hurts,” she told The Jakarta Post on Friday. “I could not stand it anymore. So I bought a cutter, went home and cut myself.”

She added that she had also harmed herself with lit cigarettes, finding the physical pain a relief from the emotional agony.

“It gave me a distraction; strangely, I felt more at ease,” she said.

Yoan recalled starting to feel an overwhelming emptiness during her third semester of university, in 2014. Four years on, she still questions the cause of her depression as her life, she claimed, “was not that bad”.

Still, she suffered from panic attacks and insomnia.

She said she had sought professional help, but it did not help her the way she expected, so she decided to quit her treatment.

Yoan gradually found relief by cutting out the toxic people in her life, surrounding herself with friends who made her feel good and spending meditative time alone.

“I have not [truly] dealt with [my depression]. However, I told myself not to be dragged into the darkness again,” she said.

People like Yoan consider physical pain to be more bearable than mental pain, said Petrin Redayani Lukman, a psychiatrist from Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital.

She explained that for sufferers of depression, anger and disappointment are often seen as abstract, incomprehensible pain.

“Meanwhile, if they cut their arms, they can see the blood, they can watch the process, and they can comprehend the pain, which helps them release the stress,” she told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a seminar on mental health among youths on Friday, held to commemorate World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10.

She said many young people suffer depression when their parents and friends were unable to comfort them, triggering feelings of anger, isolation and inferiority.

“In my observation, Jakarta parents are busy because both mothers and fathers work. They do not have quality time with their children,” she said.

Competition at school as well as parents’ demands for them to achieve high scores could also contribute to depression.

Petrin said that another source of stress for young adults in today’s digital age is seeking validation from people on the internet.

“Young adults, whose psychological character is still developing, tend to seek validation from other people. However, when people say bad things about them on social media, it can also lead to depression. They don’t see that these people, who are not close to them, are not legitimate sources of validation,” she said.

Benny Prawira Siauw, coordinator of Into the Light, a community dedicated to suicide prevention, said studies had shown that Indonesia’s urban environment was a strong depressant.

Traffic jams, the dense population, discrimination, the wide social economic gap and the competitive lifestyle could be triggering factors.

The accumulation of all of these could result in a mental breakdown, he said.

“Young people are facing piling risk factors, but we often shrug off their complaints. We think their problems must not be as difficult as those of older people. This stigmatization is what makes young people reluctant to seek professional help.”