Many more teens seem to be having serious panic attacks

[Ihaveyourback]

On a daily basis in dd's class (15) she has around four children a day having to leave mid lesson due to panic attacks at some point in the day. At least four of her friends are self harming, and three have full blown anorexia.
DD is finding it very stressful and is getting quite scared, and god only knows how the children are coping themselves. Before it was about one or two a month, now every day someone is in difficulties.

My younger dd (12) is also experiencing something similar in her year - eating disorder, anorexia that needed hospitalisation and anxiety. It is worse in my older dd's year but I would say a quarter of 12 year olds in my dd's year and friends have significant MH issues.

Please can you tell me what you are experiencing in your schools? Are you noticing a massive upward trend? I am assuming it is the pandemic, exams combining but I could be wrong, my eldest dd is now saying she doesn't want to go to school, she is feeling overwhelmed.

I am quite frankly horrified at how many children are in a really bad state. Most seem to having some kind of counselling, which does not appear to be working at all for them.

If you are going through this, or understand this in a more informed way I would be grateful for your thoughts. Or if your child is not experiencing anything like this and your school seems fine. I am wondering if it is the school environment, their age or the pandemic.

@Ihaveyourback

I teach in a high achieving school. 11-18 years old. I've taught for over 30 years and I am talking about exam aged dc. I also have pastoral responsibility for KS4, so I'm pretty clued up. I would honestly say that - overall - students are less stressed than they have been in previous years. I am actually surprised at how ok our Y11s in particular are. They are mostly resigned to the fact that they think exams won't go ahead and think that their subject teachers will have their back. Perhaps for some this has taken a lot of exam pressure off?

But exams are going ahead in England, so why have they eased up.? What makes the students think they will be cancelled?

Surely they have lost 6 months of class time? Even online school can not make up for that has been lost. No wonder they are relaxed!
If dd was told exams her GCSEs have been cancelled, I doubt she would get out of bed ever again, much less feel any pressure to push herself at school On serious note, she would be quite devastated as she works so hard for them.

Maybe you are in Wales or Scotland Fred because most English schools here are very much feeling the heat of impending exams.

@MarshaBradyo

I'm in a very low income area in the NW. high unemployment rate, loss of council housing and or little town has just been forgotten about and our budgets slashed. The powers that be closed down one of our three high schools and now the two we have are very over subscribed ( the closed down students had to be squeezed in somewhere) and now the council has sold a lot of our green land and we have 600 new homes being built but no improvement to improve infrastructure. The schools, gps, dentists, etc are all totally overwhelmed. My son is 20 and has ASD and often gets suicidal. He's been waiting 11 months for a counselling spot in the local free referral place. The ASD specific counselling to help him identify his feelings and figure out his triggers was shut down due to lack of funding.

Since I've written this my 12 yo daughter has been sent home. Some little fucker squirted hand sanitiser in her eye. The teachers didn't even ask who. Thankfully she rubbed it out right away and was crying pretty bad other wise she could have been seriously hurt. I wish I could afford to take her out and put her in another school. She's very bright and desperate to learn. She wanted to be a vet or a Dr but lately she started really disliking school. She hates the racial slurs the 99% white bits can each other. She reports and nothing. I've written to the governors and nothing.

Isn’t anxiety what used to be called ‘nerves’ years ago? If it cropped up in the old days (I think I read this in an Enid blyton book??!!) wouldn’t they just get the child to blow into a paper bag? I think so much about anxiety is made worse by overthinking and needs a somatic approach. Actors know how to soothe nerves by breathing and posture exercises. Lots of the old ways of learning by rote were very dull but also quite meditative and probably helpful in a mindfulness sort of way.

Also adolescence has always been a totally shit time for a lot of (most?) people

My DS (secondary) school has a dedicated quiet area for children that have panic attacks.

He was one of them - had them daily and school sent him home for a week to recover and speak to GP.

When he eventually came out as gay, they stopped and he hasn’t had one since...

When I was at school in the 00s self harming was pretty common, most of us did it but it was unusual for anyone to do it badly enough to need stitches or medical treatment and we didn't really confide in adults about it. In hindsight there was an element of social contagion and reading about it in magazines did encourage people to try it.

I'll sound like an old fogey but I think pre 6th form teens are too young to have cameraphones and social media accounts except maybe supervised WhatsApp groups. I honestly shudder to imagine what my adolescence would have been like these days.

It also seems that many children are really babied by both parents and schools and are then maybe expected to suddenly cope with too much at secondary. In my day it was pretty normal for primary school kids to walk home without parents for example. By 11 you were normally trusted to be home alone for a bit and these days I hear of neurotypical 12 year olds who still go to childminders.

This is one of the saddest things I have read for a very long time. So sorry. Whatever it takes for you and your DC, I hope you find it and that the negatives of situations you describe don't win.

If anyone is mystified about ASD, panic attacks, etc (in girls, but very much applicable to boys too), Charlotte Amelia Poe's book is an incredible lived experience. It's short but so much of it recalls years of massive, escalating difficulties in school and the vicious circles.

I think one reason might be people are more open about their mental health now and don't hide it. I left high school over 12 years ago when I was 15 due to an eating disorder and anxiety (panic attacks walking into crowded classrooms) but it was all kept quiet. Same with self harm, I would say most of my friends back then did it at some point but no adults found out.

My 16 year old niece, supposedly in year 11, has been to school 3.5 days so far since September. She barely went last year. She has anxiety and self harms. But so do all her friends. I genuinely dont know if it's real.. or a trend.

Spot on @HotPatootiebootie. This is just what 14 year old ds says. It seems to be more a problem with girls than boys. He says loads them are claiming to be transgender, non binary, bisexual etc. It's social conditioning and worrying.

Is your child at a private girls school. As it is a control thing the anorexia spec when then they struggling

My dd developed an eating disorder during lockdown. She was hospitalised and the paediatrician told us there has been an epidemic of it post lockdown. So much so there is a waiting list for treatment.

I'm in my 40s, in my teenage friendship group two girls had bulimia, two were self harming , we all 'self medicated' to a certain extent with drugs and alcohol , the boys expressed suicidal thoughts - but our parents and teachers were so in the background they wouldn't have had a clue. One of our gang was hospitalised briefly after taking an overdose. I don't think things are much worse but I think we are much more aware of mental health and it's all over social media which has pros and cons. Possibly in my teenage days there was a certain element of having to find resilience as we wouldn't have talked to our parents or teachers about it - you certainly wouldn't have been allowed to leave a lesson if you had a panic attack - and probably the lack of social media etc did give a bit of respite,
There are a lot of kids who are worriers who are seen as having anxiety disorders rather than just being worriers- the worried well- and possibly there normal worries and fears are channelled too quickly to a clinical type route

Reading through this thread, so many families and children are struggling. Sending you all

Thirtyrock your post is incorrect. Children aren’t channelled to a clinical route too quickly, far from it. You need to read the headlines. The numbers of rejected children by CAMHs and even children getting a referral from their gp for CAMHs is huge. Schools face a massive wait when they refer and seem to be being left to deal with vast numbers of struggling children themselves.

I have another child being treated for anxiety and depression caused by bullying.The wait he had to go through even though very clearly ill was horrendous and made it far worse.

The vast majority of needy children are rejected for help. If they are lucky enough to get taken on by CAMHs they have to do a short course of CBT first. Even after doing that and clearly very ill my son was then case closed. Calls to crisis and severe depression later he was then taken back on. Then held in a queue for some time. Only now is he under a psychiatrist and clinical psychologist, getting treatment and getting well.

My ds did talk about his crippling anxiety and depression( when he was capable of talking)but it was beyond my quite experienced capabilities. Like many with ED my dd didn’t mention it at all as to want to keep thin and hide it completely. She is mortified by it and to the poster making unpleasant accusations further down the thread most certainly doesn’t think it cool enough to want to be heard vomiting at lunch time. That is an awful thing to say. Self harmers are also often mortified by their struggle and go to great lengths to hide scars. Get informed instead of making up quite unkind theories and accusations.

I find these threads quite unpleasant and upsetting. There are often several posters with limited experience.Many who have never even had a child with severe mental illness and who know very little about the process or the deeply traumatic impact it has on parents and the children themselves.

It’s bizarre. All other physical illnesses are treated with compassion. The lack of funding, support and acknowledgment recthis problem is a national disgrace. Posts

A friends DS started having panic attacks. Turned out it was from the weed they didn’t know he was smoking. It was all bought in school.

media.samaritans.org/documents/DEAL_myths_and_facts_handout.pdf

www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/recovery-information/eating-disorder-myths

Nyhavn17

I totally agree with thirtyrock and it's really presumptuous to assume that anyone who disagrees with you has no relevant experience.

Dpnt get me wrong i think counselling and clinical intervention is extremely important for the right kids, but i also think resilience is as important for many as mistargetted clinical intervention.

But the majority aren’t getting clinical intervention.Heck they’re lucky if they get any intervention. Where is all this intervention coming from?

It's not just intervention in terms of camhs which is very hard to be accepted by as you say. At a low level there is a lot of support available for emotional health.
there are a huge number of young kids referred to counselling, school nurses, gps etc who have normal worries and fears and parents think they have anxiety disorders or need labelling. Many parents don't want to engage with the support advised - eg tackling sleep, exercise, relaxation- and want a diagnosis. I was a very anxious child but had to learn to find my own coping mechanisms and resilience- this would not have worked for everyone I appreciate that but there is a lot more support available online and in schools - else's, school counsellors, school nurses- than there was before. I know for serious mental health problems there are big issues with accessing appropriate support though.

'Elsas' not eises

Really you have evidence for this.🤔I don’t think parents want labels, just support for their kids when needed. Telling parents to provide exercise and sleep is not support.

All these interventions, are kids supposed to be using them or not? You sound judgemental and as if they’re damned if using them and damned if they don’t.

You don’t need a referral to access your own gp who will send you on your merry way if your child is just normally anxious and have you tried to get counselling for your dc? Even school counsellors where they exist are hard to access.

I’m in my 50s and could get anxious due to moving continuously. I just got on with it as you say because nobody would have been that interested if I didn’t but I’m not sure how valuable it was long term or something as a generation to brag about.

I personally don't think teenagers need to be "taught resilience" they need a safe environment and by that I don't mean a risk free one because that won't be sustainable as they get older. More an environment where they can take appropriate risks and be supported to put things right when they do fuck up.

Obviously decent mental health services should be available when needed.