When the going gets tough, Generation Snowflake bails out. A new study on 1,500 U.S. adults finds that half of millennials and 75 percent of Gen Z say they have quit their job for mental health reasons. In comparison, less than 10 percent of baby boomers say they've quit over mental health.
"Mental health reasons" can cover a lot of possibilities, but it is clear that the younger generations are much quicker to self-diagnose and take off when faced with adversity at work. "You get paid to do a job, and if you can't produce, your stress levels go through the roof, and they don't know what to do next so they just quit," says Dr. John Huber, founder and CEO of Mainstream Mental Health in Austin.
Dr. Huber tells KTRH parents bear much of the blame for the younger generations' lack of work ethic and preparation for the workforce. "Whenever (our kids) would start having a stress issue, we would intervene instead of letting the kids work things out and learn, and develop coping strategies," he says. "So instead of letting a kid fail in class, the parents would jump in and try to do the homework with them...and that taught our kids that somebody's always gonna come to the rescue."
Coddled young people have largely been left without the proper skills or temperament to compete in the real world, according to Dr. Huber. "In my company, I've been hired by businesses to help their staff, and sometimes I've had to teach basic phone etiquette---how to professionally answer a phone---because nobody ever taught them that," he says.
This is just the latest example of stressed-out millennials having trouble functioning in society, but Dr. Huber believes the older generations can be a solution. "We need to step up to the plate and help (young people) learn these coping skills...and use it as a teaching moment," he says. "That way we can slow down some of this turnover we're having in the workplace."