In recent years, I have noticed that most bipolar disorders and anxiety disorders have their first onset or first clinically significant symptoms at the age of middle school. This phenomenon has led me to ponder why a flowering season like the middle school stage, which should be sunny, has become a perilous path of crisis. In my opinion, the growth process from childhood to adolescence with the identity change from elementary to middle school students and the corresponding environmental changes have an impact on them. Physiological and psychological changes brought about by the onset of puberty According to the current Chinese compulsory education system, students enter compulsory junior high school after passing the “primary to junior high school” examination, and they are between 12 and 15 years old, which is the beginning of puberty and the critical stage of adolescence. The start of puberty is marked by the rapid development of the body, as the child becomes a teenager: the body’s neuroendocrine system takes charge, height increases significantly, reproductive organs develop, the first menstruation occurs in women, the first sperm appears in men, female breasts and male laryngeal nodes become visible as secondary sexual characteristics, pubic hair, body hair and beard emerge, male voice becomes low and thick, and so on. The rapid growth of adolescence makes their body shape, physical appearance and even physiological functions closer to those of adults. As the body grows and sexual maturity is initiated during puberty, there is also a significant developmental change in mental activity, which progresses to maturity at a rapid rate. According to developmental psychology, individuals entering adolescence experience rapid cognitive progress and change, rapid development of imagination, significant increase in abstract thinking ability, and the formation of formal reasoning ability, and are able to question and criticize previous beliefs and common sense, especially those of their teachers and parents that are false. At the same time, they are prone to certain cognitive misconceptions at this age, for example, they can easily develop egocentric beliefs, feeling that they are the center of attention of everyone around them, and even develop so-called “personal myths”, i.e., the belief that their experiences are unique and that they are experiencing growing pains that others They may even develop a so-called “personal myth,” which means that they believe that their experiences are unique and that they are experiencing growth problems that no one else has ever experienced and no one else can understand. As a result, they may become self-absorbed and not bother to communicate with others. Many individuals at this stage frequently enter into a daydreaming state, where they are caught up in fantasies about themselves and even reach a state of “transcendence” where they forget everything about themselves. Individuals in this stage may also have body image problems, with excessive attention to personal image and unrealistic evaluations. Their self-concept and self-identity also begin to change dramatically, sometimes leading to internal conflict and pain as a result of these changes. Individuals in adolescence also experience significant emotional changes. They have an extremely strong desire for friendships and actively strive to seek them out, especially preferring to develop partnerships with peers of the same gender. At the same time, their emotional stability becomes less stable and they are highly susceptible to more dramatic fluctuations. The behavior of individuals entering adolescence is also significantly different from that of previous childhood, with a marked increase in interactions and a preference for forming “cliques” of three or five people who are more closely related. During this period, they are also more prone to risk-taking and impulsiveness, seeking independence and gradually alienating themselves from parents and family, and having more pronounced and frequent sexual impulses. These three dramatic changes constitute the core features of the psychological development of adolescents. In addition to the above changes in physical development, physiological functions, and psychological activities, elementary school students face the challenges of changing their living and learning environments, especially the people around them, and changing educational and student management patterns. First of all, they face a change from a familiar environment to a completely unfamiliar environment, and the most important change is the change of the surrounding people: they say goodbye to the relatively close and stable interpersonal environment formed during the six years of elementary school and enter a brand new environment with no familiar classmates and no familiar teachers. Such a change in the interpersonal environment is a very serious test for children and adolescents who have not yet been adequately trained in social adaptation. In most cities in China, the process of entering junior high school from elementary school through the “junior high school” examination is firstly, the admissions process is based on the examination results, with students with high scores entering the “excellent schools” and students with low scores going to the “inferior schools The first step is to use the test scores to draw a line for admission, with high scoring students going to “good schools” and low scoring students going to “bad schools. After that, there are other alternatives, such as “school choice” or “buy points”, which are chosen by parents rather than students themselves, so that students can enter the schools approved by their parents. As a result, students in the first year of middle school come from different small schools, and it is very unlikely that students from the same class or even the same school in elementary school will be placed in the same class. According to developmental psychology, this is the age when it is most important to maintain, expand and strengthen close partnerships, and their loneliness is very strong in an unfamiliar environment where there are no very familiar people among their peers. Students who are less secure, less introverted, or less proactive in interpersonal interactions may encounter difficulties in rebuilding close partnerships and forming close “cliques” (peers) in this “all alone” environment for a longer period of time. peers. If they encounter relatively strong mental stimuli, such as interpersonal conflicts or major test failures, they are prone to mental stress and may exhibit abnormalities such as sleep disturbances and mood swings during the early years of their schooling when they have not yet been able to establish good partnerships. In addition, teachers and other school staff are strangers to the new students entering junior high school, which constrains them from making the choice to seek help from adults. It is clear that these new students are going through a very difficult time as they move from elementary school to middle school just from the dramatic changes in interpersonal relationships. In addition, the shift from elementary to secondary education and student management also poses challenges for these new middle school students. At the elementary school level, although teachers also pursue test scores under the baton of teaching to the test, the pressure to advance to the next level is not so great, and students are more conscious of complying with teachers’ requirements, so teachers do not give students many mandatory requirements, and the teaching model is relatively “flexible”. Elementary school teachers are also more gentle in their student management style. It is said that many elementary school classroom teachers follow students from the time they enter elementary school until they graduate. During the six years of student-teacher interaction, classroom teachers often play the role of both teacher and parent, preferring to communicate with or ask for help from parents when there are problems, and are less likely to impose excessive constraints on students. Moreover, there is no boarding system in elementary school, so teachers do not need to be overly involved in the management of students’ time after school. In contrast, at the junior high school level, the pressure to advance to higher education suddenly increases. The teaching and management mode of the school is very different from that of the elementary school. The teaching and management mode is rigid and cold due to the “meritocracy”, which is oriented to the results of the secondary school exams and the results of the regular exams. In addition, there are many children who have never left their parents, who have both emotional attachment to them and dependence on them for care, and who have made the transition to “independent living” in a boarding system in one step, which is a crisis that many students have difficulty coping with. In most cases, the adjustment difficulties of junior high school students are mainly in the first year of school, when most students spend a relatively short period of time being unfamiliar and uncomfortable and then gradually adapt. However, if they fail to adapt well in the first year of school, some students may experience symptoms of anxiety or depression in their second and third years. Moreover, depression and anxiety are the main manifestations of mental disorders that appear in junior high school. Depression and anxiety manifestations and characteristics of junior high school students Children and adolescents in junior high school have age-specific characteristics of anxiety and depression. Depressive episodes in individuals in this age group are different from typical depression in adulthood and have the following five characteristics: first, the degree of initial onset is generally mild, second, depressed mood has significant fluctuations, third, poor mood is more common than depressed mood, fourth, the duration of the illness is relatively long-lasting, and fifth, the chance of spontaneous remission is greater in mild cases. The typical manifestation of depressive episodes in children and adolescents is often a progressive increase in sullenness, depressed mood or boredom, accompanied by an increasingly pronounced lack of speech, loneliness, depression, and no longer willing to open up to parents. Many parents think that these manifestations are a normal part of their children’s growth process, that they have “preoccupations” or “growing pains” that will disappear naturally, and tend to take them lightly. At the same time, their previous innocence gradually disappears, the smile on their faces becomes increasingly rare, and they are increasingly reluctant to participate in group activities with their peers, preferring to be alone. When children and adolescents in this age group realize that they are depressed, they often want to improve their mood through personal efforts, such as recalling happy events they have experienced in the past or imagining fictional “stories” that can improve their mood, and in this state they may have flashes of self-smiling. From the perspective of adults who know them well, such as parents and teachers, it is possible to detect an unusual change in their overall mental state in a relatively short period of time after the onset of the depressive episode, from lively and happy to introverted and silent, which may be perceived as a change in personality. Another feature of depressive episodes in children and adolescents that differs from depressive episodes in adulthood is the more common intentional self-injurious behavior. During depressive episodes, they may be stimulated by environmental factors to develop unusually intense self-injurious behaviors, or they may suddenly develop unpredictable self-injurious behaviors, such as head banging, wall pounding, or wrist slitting, when they are unable to release their internal pain. Anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents in junior high school can take many forms, but most are mild and do not persist, such as the common pre-test anxiety. If symptoms are severe and persistent, they may develop into an anxiety disorder that meets diagnostic criteria. The most common anxiety disorders are specific phobias such as place phobia including school fear, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, hypochondriasis, somatoform disorder, and somatoform disorder. In addition, Asperger’s syndrome, which was not identified and diagnosed in childhood, also becomes a major obstacle to adjust to school life mostly in middle school. Since junior high school is an important transition stage from childhood to adolescence, there are growth challenges brought by normal physiological development and psychological development during adolescence, as well as adaptation challenges caused by changes in the learning environment and living environment, and corresponding psychological stress and mental disorders are likely to occur during this stage.