Downward Spiral

[Berserker]

So I have a family with 12 kids, all of them are doing great except for my second child and I don't know why. He's collecting every single mental health problems imaginable, even the ones he shouldn't be collecting. And no mater what I do, nothing seems to help. I've set him to see a shrink for over a year now, but his mental breaks never disapear. Worst, they keep multiplying. He suffers from a burnout ever tho I took him out of school to exclusively focus on his happiness. He has wishful thoughts even tho I sent him on 2 first class trips, he's also lethargic, bored, suffers from a loosing streak, a burnout, and low self esteem. They all respond at his birthday and last the whole year. Now his mental health his so bad that he has a 10% chance of offing himself.

Is this a bug? Is this something that randomly happens to teenagers? What can I do to try and make it better other then try to collect as much happiness as possible to click off all of his mental disorders on his birthday? And how can I make him loose his mental breaks other then going to get a mental therapy? Cause he's been going for over a year and nothing changes.

[PokingWaterGames]

Does he have a large negative health/happiness points balance? That is one source of status effects that can come out of nowhere on their birthday - they will gain status effects to increase their health/happiness points back up to near zero if it's very negative. The strength of birthday effects is being decreased in the next big update so if this is the source it won't be as strong.

Otherwise, some status effects can increase the potential for other status effects (hover over the icons to see exactly what each status effect changes). So there does come a point where if you accumulate too many Mental Breaks, the character is doomed or will have a hard time recovering. It's good to start getting Mental Therapy at the first sign of danger before it's too late.

The first class trip doesn't help with Wistful, it only decreases the potential to get Burnout - make sure to hover over the little icons under each action to see all its effects.

[Arami]

Check the first tab under the Asset List (hotkey N). At the top right, the icon that looks like a stack of people tells you if your home is too small. If it is, this can cause Witsful. Check the actions he is automatically set to do. If he's lethargic, he may be watching too much tv, disable it. If he's bored, he may be staring at a wall, disable that. If he has a losing streak, he's playing too much chess, lower the priority of that. Go through what you have set him to do and set all base activities to 3, his schooling and therapy to 2, and only auto-purchases to 1, that should allow him to enjoy himself more.