To say that the next generation is primarily screwed in terms of resilience

That isn’t correct. You won’t be referred by your GP to community mental health just for a bit of anxiety and you definitely won’t be taken on by community mental health. Community mental health services are struggling to cope with seriously unwell people who need help. Those on their books sit there with nothing for months.

Actually I think you are both correct in some ways. There is a huge provision in primary care MH which was not there 10- 15 years ago and which can adequately treat most common MH problems. But at the same time this was developed, the community MH services, such as CAMHS, CPNs etc were massively cut through 'efficiency savings'. So, if your problem is complex, or needs long term intervention, you will probably turned down, or if accepted, sit waiting for months. Meanwhile the government pretends to put money into MH without acknowledging the carnage they have caused in the specialist services.

the opposite, in fact.

@yellomar You say among other things "They didn't understand mental
health and saw behaviour as deliberate acting out, something to be smacked down hard, rather than any attempt to figure it out. Behaviour is
communication.
Zero positive reinforcement. Just behaviour points, detentions, lack of support,
lack of resources and blaming parents

Did it not keep the 'show on the road' though? So much of this new attitude is giving up and allowing them to opt out of anything difficult.

There is global competition for jobs. Everyone speaks English. Good qualifications are needed more than ever - I wouldn’t say this is anyone’s fault -perhaps financially supporting young people into a trade would help. A neighbour can’t take on an apprentice due to insurance to have them in the workshop - and couldn’t afford to pay minimum wage either. He will retire soon. No one is carrying on the business.

I think awareness of the state of the world rather than it's actual state is a factor. Economically and geo-politically we're not in a vastly different state to previous decades like the 1980s, but reporting is constantly emotive and omnipresent if you let it be rather than factual reporting in 30 min news programs and reading a newspaper. Debate has been reduced to a limited number of character, lost nuance and become polarised and tribal. Most people instinctively want to be decent but fear of not being #bekind can push people into awkward stances.

There always were mental health difficulties. There were certainly plenty of eating disorders and self-harming in my cohort in the 90s at school and it's good that things aren't brushed under the carpet, but there is a lack of provision of timely support when serious issues emerge due to underfunding and working conditions.

Education has become more narrow and higher stakes. It's harder to find escape and alternative ways of skilling up since the loss off Saturday jobs. Everything is seemingly dependent on exams and from a very young age children are drilled to know how they're doing against targets. There is little chance to let children play informally and work out the world for themselves.

There's little scope for safe, low-risk failures to learn from. I cocked up my first GCSE coursework, but learned a lot about organusation and time management from it; more than I'd have learned from being scaffolded through it. Before controlled assessments were scrapped, schools couldn't take that risk and it took staff a lot of effort to guide pupils through the process. Exam leave has pretty much been scrapped with little independent study time. Target culture has a lot to answer for.

Young people are amazing, but they're being raised in a world that has shifted significantly since their parents were young. As a parent, it's hard to stand against the tide of technology, plus resisting outright carries its own harms of social isolation. Finding balance is tough I do my best to raise my children growing the skills they need to grow into well-developed adults, but I can't change social expectations, government funding and targets.

The wider trends were happening anyway, but the Covid era added mass disruption to routines, instability, withdrew support and made waiting lists back-up. It's made it harder to distinguish temporary delays from underlying issues. Having had a y4 with diagnosed learning issues, and an undiagnised y2 in 2020, it's been much harder getting the younger child's issues recognised and supported since, and he's struggled more, for longer, for the delays in diagnosis and support. He also had less secure foundations in his learning. He's young enough that he's now catching up before a critical stage of education and moving up to secondary, but it has affected all of his junior school years. For those who limped through exam years and uni, that's been much more lasting in effects academically and socially into launching into adulthood.

I find it strange how open they are about their ‘struggles’ - as in we’ll be on a large video call about work, a product launch or similar and the staff in their 20s will frequently bring up their personal life, circumstances or experience as part of the convo.
I find it so weird. Like, why do 50 people in a call need to know you won’t be at that thing because that’s when your therapy is, or you relate to that subject because your dad walked out when you were 15 etc??
share it with HR or a manager but I don’t need to know someone in an office on another continent is tired because they do t sleep because of anxiety …

I actually think a lot of people on this thread are not saying that, what a lot of people are saying is that the majority of the population do need to focus on building more resilience so that the support can go to where it is actually needed, for people like your son.

My son actually has good care from a cahms clinincal psychologist and it has improved his ability to take part in everyday life hugely I am really nervous about the transition to adult services. Particularly whether his medication will continue.

There seems to be this idea that if we support people we are dooming them to lifelong failure on this thread and that they should just get a grip and get on with it but my experience is support has lead to more resilience not less. literally one of the biggest things of 'how to build resilience' is having support networks.

I fully agree. Blair and his 50% aim for youngsters going to Uni has caused massive damage. We've a major shortage of skilled trade/manual workers. At the same time, we've loads of graduates with random degrees and £50k in debts still working in Tesco or McDonalds!

Kids who know they're not going to get top grades in GCSE and A levels so are unable to aim for Uni are disenfranchised and become disruptive as they see no point in bothering. Kids who "may" get good enough qualifications to get to Uni end up depressed if they start struggling and see marks going downhill.

We need a lot more emphasis in schools on alternative "non academic" routes, and not just the lip service to making wooden fishes and metal trowels! The education system needs to massively beef up non academic options in schools to get the non academic kids thinking and doing other things. Colleges need to offer a lot more courses. We need a lot more "old fashioned" style of secondary modern or technical schools. We need a return of adult education which was dismembered around 20-30 years ago so that people who are mid 20s and above have options for getting more qualifications and learning skills in evening classes etc alongside work.

We've suffered far too much emphasis on 16-21 year olds, virtually all educational resources directed at them. Nothing for over 21s and schools have remained in the dark ages teaching a largely irrelevant curriculum to probably halve their pupils!

That isn’t correct. You won’t be referred by your GP to community mental health just for a bit of anxiety and you definitely won’t be taken on by community mental health. Community mental health services are struggling to cope with seriously unwell people who need help. Those on their books sit there with nothing for months.

This compounds the problem. Many seeking treatment do not need specialist mental health treatment.
There is a considerable amount of support out there that is evidence based but like a lot of mental health treatment requires people to work at it.
My DS is suffering with Anxiety we have significantly reduced his screen time, worked on breathing exercises and increased his time spent outdoors doing exercise all of which are evidenced based interventions which improve anxiety. None of which require a specialist.
Yes there are interventions which require specialist but for most common mental health issues this isn't the case. However there is an expectation placed on MH services to fix peoples problems. If less people with common mental health issues expected/demanded specialist intervention then there would be more resources available to support those that need specialist intervention.
Yes there are gaps and increased resources required but the expectation being placed on services is huge and totally out of the scope of what they are commissioned to provide.

No there is no counselling or admission to inpatient when needed. People seriously don’t know how bad it is. They think it’s all there until they know somebody who needs it and then they see there is nothing. No support at all even if you’re very unwell and suicidal.

Yep there are meds but meds alone aren’t the answer.

I work in the oil and gas industry for a multinational, we have employees from all over the world, mostly from other oil and gas centres like Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Angola, Azerbaijan etc It is all very cosmopolitan and makes for a very interesting work place. Our graduate recruitment programme is not just UK based and each year we get a large cohort of of overseas grads. What is noticeable is that generally, new young workers from the above countries are a lot less flaky then their UK counterparts. They take less time off, require less spoon feeding and supervision, they can take constructive feedback and generally don't shit the bed if on the odd occasion they have to work late. I don't believe for instant that the UK grads are less academically capable but there is a noticeable difference in attitude towards the job and how they apply themselves.

@Gallowayan

People mostly turn out OK . Eventually they grow and up take responsibility for themselves. People of my age use to have safety pins through their nose and wear bin bags and believe they were hard-core punks/ anarchists. They didn't stay that way, they got a job had kids etc and grew out of it.

That's exactly what I was trying to say a few pages ago. Once these "troubled" teenagers are out in the workplace, rubbing shoulders with adults in the real world, they often mature and turn out fine. It's the artificial "bubble" of schools that's the problem!

I remember many years ago, I worked with a largish firm that took on a lot of 18 year olds for professional training courses (before everyone went to Uni who wanted a profession!). She maintained she far preferred recruiting 18 year old college leavers rather than 18 year old school leavers as they were generally more mature and "ready to work" having experienced two years of the more mature college environment instead of two years of extended artificial school life in a school sixth form!

I do wonder whether we'd be better with a three grade system, instead of primary and secondary. I.e. primary for maybe 4 years, the intermediate for 4 years and finally some kind of college for 4 years, instead of moving schools at 11, do it at say 9 and say 13, and then go into a college environment for either academic qualifications or for trades/manual skills, etc. That seems to be the way in some other countries who don't seem to have the same kind of problems we have with our schools. Personally I think forcing kids to stay in school until 16 predominantly doing academic subjects is the cause of a lot of our problems. They can't start to do trades/manual skills soon enough so turn to being disengaged and disruptive as well as MH issues.

I think there are two things at play affecting everyone, but perhaps seen disproportionately in younger people who dont yet have the life experience to put them into perspective. First is that by talking about MH more (which is absolutely right to do) people are starting to mistake usual feelings for MH diagnosis and telling themselves it is not right to feel this way. So for example, the idea that any anxiety is a bad thing and sign of pathology, rather than understanding that sometimes you feel anxious and that is ok.

The second is that the world in general feels a lot more difficult and less hopeful than it did 10 years ago. I think this is a cyclical thing and will bounce back but we are all under more pressure because of it, even if it does not seem to directly affect us.

What will happen? Some people will move through it and become more resilient. Some will lead miserable and narrow lives.

I have experienced a baffling lack of resilience across the board (regardless of age) and my theory is that certainly in a country like the UK, people have lived in relative safety and security for the last few generations, and have not had to be constantly challenged in ways that those who live in less stable countries have.

Resilience is not a taught skill, it's one that is built on experience, it requires individuals to face challenging situations and find appropriate solutions in order to learn from them, and on the whole, that has not needed to happen across the board. Before anyone jumps on me-I am not saying that individuals do not encounter challenging circumstances, I am saying that as a society, the UK has had a good 80 years of relative stability.

That's why I think COVID has come as such a shock. I still hear so many people talking about the effects of COVID on their well-being etc. but very few of them are taking active steps to overcome this, but are instead wallowing in it (as harsh as that sounds). When we look around us at the rest of the world, since COVID, other countries have had to deal with wars, natural disasters, dictatorships etc. They haven't had the time to sit and wallow.

While I appreciate the importance of looking within, I do think the current trend for incessant navel gazing (again, across age groups) that I see in the UK is dispiriting. And it detracts from us as a society being able to focus on the needs of those who truly need additional help and support. People seem to have lost the ability to categorise emotions. Feeling sad, anxious, angry etc. are natural emotions to specific circumstances. Feeling these emotions does not mean one HAS anxiety or depression. And people should not be worried if they do feel these emotions from time to time. The nuance is somewhat lost.

@SheerLucks

I’m actually wondering if a lot of these resilience issues in young people are down to the introvert/extrovert difference.

This is something I've been pondering on. Back in my youth and early adulthood, I think most people were "middle of the road". I remember a few overly extroverted people and a few overly introverted people, but on the whole, the majority weren't at either extreme and were just middling! Say, in a pub 20/30 years ago, most people would just be sat chatting/sitting not being a nuisance to anyone, but nowadays, it's groups of people shouting/jeering, always on the move etc. A lot of people seem "pumped up"!

Nowadays, people seem more polarised. There are definitely a lot more introverted people about, but also a lot more extroverted, and I don't notice many at all in the middle. It's all the extremes.

Obvious when you watch TV game shows of the 70s and 80s where contestants were generally pretty middle of the road, some a bit quiet, some a bit gregarious, but on the whole, middling. Compare to a modern game show and the contestants are jumping around, shouting, etc., even on "quiet" game shows!

I see the same in real life. My son mentioned the same when he was trying to "find his tribe" at university. Lots of students wondering around, head down, earbuds in, ignoring everyone around them, and then groups of students shouting and being generally noisy, drawing attention to themselves.

When so many people are being loud, that's exactly the behaviour that introverts can't cope with, so it forces them to retreat even more and disengage.

Where have the "middle people" gone???

How did the non reading student get on the course

Did they have to do A levels which involved reading

Totally understand, must be quite depressing

This podcast just dropped which may be of interest: https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/e19edb0d/why-the-kids-arent-alright

This kind of moral panic about lack of resilience in the next generation is a recurring theme.

Boomersand gen x worry that millennial are snowflakes, millennial worry that gen z are flaky and so on.

People mostly turn out OK . Eventually they grow and up take responsibility for themselves. People of my age use to have safety pins through their nose and wear bin bags and believe they were hard-core punks/ anarchists. They didn't stay that way, they got a job had kids etc and grew out of it.

Resilience has become one of those words which is used like tooth paste by every talking head, political pundit, expert etc in relation to mental health and society.
The type of resilience they’re talking about is always different though and it’s an important distinction. Sometimes resilience is just way of saying people need to shut up and put up, other times it’s the toxically positive kind where you’re not allowed to acknowledge you’re upset or hurt when something really quite rubbish has happened… I find people who talk about resilience often have their own brand which isn’t always positive or healthy.

Mental health services are dire and will continue to be until they’ve had a complete overhaul. Back in the early 1990s certain local authorities directly funded crisis centres for women that were 24/7 staffed by mental health professionals and social workers, obviously this isn’t the case anymore. Now you’re lucky if you can get a space in refuge if you’re experiencing DV. Having lived my adult life through an austerity government I just assumed the gov didn’t know how to deliver services, but that’s just not the case it’s always been about money.

Recently, I’ve noticed there seems to have been a rush to recruit for SEN support and seemingly the NHS has outsourced this yet again, as a cost cutting exercise more than anything else, but these private sector charitable organisations I wonder how much good they do when they won’t pay people properly for really challenging work. How can they expect to retain good staff if they’re only willing to pay slightly more than min wage come April? I’m not saying all these services will be sub par or won’t be appreciated, I’m just saying there isn’t any willing to invest in anything especially when it comes to kids. It’s a sticking plaster that lines the pockets of those at the top and fails staff and clients. It’s this mentality that’s got us where we are, thinking we can run everything like a corporate company and dole contracts out to the private sector thinking they’ll provide value for money.

Tell me, how on Earth are kids meant to develop resilience if they’re witnessing this? Even if there is ‘more support than ever’ for mental health just simply having a prescription doesn’t change the fact your social situation can be absolutely dire. Poverty, wars, threat of another war, crime, lack of opportunity, low page wages, no consistency in support, can’t see a doctor… The effect cost of living has on parents? You’ve got to be a very lucky person to have not experienced the effects of at least some of this for yourself recently. I think I’d retreat to my room too if I could.

If your life is not as healthy as it should be - good food and exercise and relaxation, in a stressful life situation - you're going to be hard to fix.

Maybe they simply want the option of an attainable lifestyle where these things are inherently achievable

Interesting discussion. Competing theories of how to build resilience in kids. I guess we will see how this plays out in the global marketplace. To some extent we already are, with DEI departments starting to see their budgets slashed. Employers want to hire capable candidates, not those who demand a gold star for everyone.

I wonder what all these people suffering Mental Health problems think are going to fix it. There's counselling and medication, admission to hospital for seriously ill ones, but it's no magic bullet. If your life is not as healthy as it should be - good food and exercise and relaxation, in a stressful life situation - you're going to be hard to fix.

I am not talking about those with SENs or autism, adhd or extreme depression.

I think people are mislead into thinking that it can just be fixed by someone else.

Oops part of my post disappeared!
You wouldn't directly refuse school to a parent (clip round the ear) but once registration over, it was easy enough to disappear for the day!