To ask why there are so many kids with mental health problems?

The internet/social media.
Was a really interesting woman on radio 4 a while ago, she said she thought social media/smart phones should be an over 18’s thing in 20 years time.

Covid and the isolation/withdrawing into families or smaller groups hasn’t helped either.

As a teacher I find that so many children are being raised with a lack of rules and boundaries at home. Lots of parents don't hold their children accountable for their mistakes so the children don't get to learn from them. Many children have all the obstacles removed from their lives so that when they find something challenging later, they don't have the resilience skills to help them get through it. This isn't all children or all parents of course.

I think social media is a factor, if I think back to when I was a teen, magazines were blamed for putting pressure on kids - I mean one magazine a week v 24/7 social media there's no comparison?

I also think we have an overwhelming urge to explain everything with a label.

Austerity
covid
social media
current education system
collapse of the health system
lack of funding for early years and youth services

We've been through a pandemic

And mental I'll health is no longer a taboo

Racism, housing instability?m, domestic violence exposure or experience

Algorithms reinforcing the view you’ve found

lack of opportunity, lack of optimism. Future looks bleak

Poverty and linked parental stress, social media, lack of funding to schools means stressed teachers and to community projects means less on offer that helps them build resilience. Parents and children on phones all day, comparison is the thief of joy.

My youngest has OCD. I have been able to inform family members, teachers and hospital staff (he was in hospital with something else) in the knowledge that they will know what I mean and roughly how it affects him. I had OCD as a teenager in the 80s and I was seen as weird and awkward and intransigent because there was very little information about such conditions. So I agree with other posters that knowledge about mental health issues has been improved and people are more willing to talk about their problems. There is still a long, long way to go to remove the stigma, but it's better than it was.

There is a book by an American researcher, who had been tracking generational change for some time. Apparently while there are differences, they tend to be subtle. Right up until recently, when she was startled to see a huge leap in certain mh issues.

I think ultimately she said it corresponded to the increase in internet/social media/online gaming. Twenge is her last name I think, she has a few popular books on the topic.

Social media I am sure plays a part. The length of no face to face schooling in 2020 (which is entirely Boris Johnson's doing and yet another reason why he should be in prison for life) another.

Yes some milk it, some describe normal things as issues, and yes there is more diagnosis, but I suspect that is a minority.

Yes think you've mostly covered it, except I would add culture of fear / letting children be independent, make mistakes and take risks

What's interesting is that teens in other countries aren't all suffering the same levels of poor mental health, lots of these issues impact all Western children, so which are the ones that are causing it to be so bad in UK specifically. School system? Culture of fear? Lack of family structures?

Failing education system that just indoctrinates instead of catering for the child , social media pressure , lack of services , less support within the family as people work longer and life further away from other relatives . Probably just a few causes not all by any means

Healthy neglect, I have heard it called.

I would go out after Swap Shop on a Saturday morning and not be back till tea time, about 6.00. No phones, they didn't know who I was meeting or where I was going. And neither did I actually. If the first friend I knocked for wasn't in, the mum might say "she's over the field with doodah" and I would head over to the field, or I would knock for someone else.

It wasnt perfect, but it gave us space to do stupid things we probably regretted, but we could learn from it, without it being filmed, photographed, mentioned to 10 other people and uploaded to social media for people I didn't know to take the piss out of me.

I think there's a combination of factors really.
Yes, society is more aware of mental health, the teens themselves are more aware. I remember feeling really miserable when I was in 6th form, but didn't have a name for it. I knew about depression, but didn't think it applied to me, it was what older people had.

Social media certainly plays a big part - they see so many fake images that convince them that's how others look/live/feel they start questioning their own lives. So many girls now believe they should have ridiculous eyebrows, or eyelashes so big you can't see the rest of their face, or be super skinny and wear designer clothes. My theory is if they can't be like those images , feelings of inadequacy set in.

But the worst thing for mental health recently has been the lockdowns. Teens & children were locked in their homes (some of which would have been abusive, or dangerous, or plain unhappy) at a time they should have been learning to socialise, go out into the world on their own, get jobs... They were even told to stay in their rooms, not even seeing their families!

My own kids were very different in how they experienced it all. The older one was fine (apart from doubts over exams) going out cycling and enjoying being without a care. The younger one had so much school work piled on (that was never marked), little contact with anyone apart from us, and became so miserable she developed an eating disorder. As did several of her peers. I didn't know this at the time, only recently discovered how many of my friends children developed similar problems. Some have 'recovered', some haven't and are still struggling massively.

I honestly think the teenage generation have been the worst affected of all. So I'm not surprised there's so much talk about mental health, sadly.

I'm 50 now and when I was 7 I developed school phobia as a result of emetophobia and coprophobia (except nobody knew what any of it was called in the late 70s/early 80s). I lost weight, couldn't eat, cried all the time and had huge black circles under my eyes. I got into trouble for being uncooperative and was punished at home for lying.

I had no idea how to articulate what I was frightened of, and my parents and teachers were at a loss to know what was happening. Looking back I was very depressed, but what could they do? It was unheard of in children and there just wasn't the level of knowledge, expertise and information that there is now.

If I were at school now I would presumably have been referred for counselling very swiftly. I think the comprehension of how mental health matters present in children and teens now is much better now than 40 years ago, and thank God.

Do some people milk it a bit? Sure. Human nature to confabulate, especially for sympathy. But equally there are more genuine sufferers getting more educated support now than ever before.

Sorry I know this may be triggering for you. I don't mean this rudely but at 12 if you are attempting suicide there must be a reason. I'm not saying it would be better at 40 either however at 12 is very young. Surely there must be something to trigger suicide so young.

Social media is all around though so even if your child doesn't have a phone. Friends will do. YouTube is another ridiculous thing the kids watch too (soul destroying).

You are 29, how can you not be aware of the reasons? You do come across as judgmental and until you have a teenager living in this world now, not 10 years ago, you will not fully understand the pressures and struggles some of them are facing. You have to live it day in day out.

It's great that genuine mental health problems are being recognised and support is now available.

However, I think one of the flipsides is that some people are very quick to label every emotion as a mental health problem.

For example, if you are feeling nervous about your upcoming job interview, that doesn't (in isolation) mean that you have anxiety. You just have a normal emotion for the situation you're in.

I'm mid 20s so also wasn't a teen that long ago these problems have always existed , its they're just more spoken about.

Also I think we underestimate the 13 years of austerity and underfunding and what impact this has on children and teens.

They are all still a bit wrong after lockdown. We live in a culture where any feelings/ behaviour is labelled. Any time a child feels worried or anxious, they label this anxiety.

There are loads of posts here which have described all the multiple reasons why mental health issues are on the increase amongst young people.
However the posters saying that 20/30 years ago teenagers just got on with it and it wasn't recognised in my school etc are wrong. You probably just didn't hear about it because it was a taboo subject. Believe me, adolescent psychiatric units for inpatient care have existed for almost as long as adult psychiatric units and have always been full of young people requiring support with their mental health.
I do think that decreasing stigma has also led to an increase in people saying they have depression when they don't, however I also don't think that in the main they are the kids who are accessing actual support for their mental health. Equally you could argue that thousands of people attend GP/hospital appointments every single day because they think they have x,y,z medical complaint because they've googled it...and they don't. So discussing mental health in an offhand way or self diagnosing isn't any different to what we do with our physical health regularly but because that stigma still exists, people aren't quite as comfortable with people discussing their mental health in the same way.

I work with a lot of mental health practitioners and put the same question to them. Unanimous verdict... social media.