Teen mental health in the 80s and 90s

[GladysGeorgina]

I work as a pastoral and safeguarding lead in a high school. I was at high school myself in the mid eighties and very early 90s.
I work with so many students who are struggling with their mental health. I also have personal experience with my teenage dc. The AMA thread last night from a school housemistress talked about the wave of mh issues within her school, particularly self harm.
I look back to my time in high school and I just wasn’t aware of peers experiencing mh issues. It just wasn’t something we talked about or knew anything about. I remember one girl who used to have what I now know to be probably panic attacks and she was collected from school when this happened.
I’m not naive enough to think teens at this time didn’t experience mh problems but what happened to these children? Were there really fewer issues like I remember? School refusal also wasn’t something I remember happening.
I guess what I’m asking is am I remembering correctly? Did anyone work in a high school at this time and can remember what teen mh was generally like? Did anyone experience mh issues during this period and what was it like for you?
I feel like I face such alot of significant need at school and it troubles me. Was the need just “hidden” in the 80s and 90s or have things really got so much worse for our young people? I’m not a journalist or reporter by the way. Genuinely trying to make some kind of sense of what I see every working day.

Fair enough, but I think the majority of teens in the 80s and 90s would not have had parents old enough to have fought in the war. I was born in 1972 and didn't know anyone whose parents were older than 30s and 40s.

I was a teen in the 90s, I had panic attacks and was self harming (although my parents were not aware of this last bit). I had some sessions with a school counsellor who was kind but fairly ineffective, then later my parents paid for me to go to a private therapist who was pretty terrible.

Things came to a head in my first year of uni, I was depressed, considering suicide. I accessed student counselling who were great and also persuaded me to go to the GP. I started on antidepressants, dropped out of uni and spent the next year recovering.

It has made me very aware when parenting my teens.

I was a teen in the 1990s. I had depression and anorexia. I was hospitalised for 6 months and did my A levels in hospital. (A teacher brought the papers and sat with me while I completed the work) My memories of 6th form college are really sad. I barely remember any lessons just going to the toilets to escape/cry and trying to find somewhere alone, where no one would see me, to eat the carrot sticks or cucumber I brought for lunch. I remember one lovely teacher asking me if I was OK, (I'm sure I just said yes) but another teacher who was an absolute cow absolutely annihilating my work in front of the class and I burst into tears.(I still feel shame and embarrassment about that 25 years later!! )

I have an issue with people talking about anorexia being "fashionable" in the 1980s/1990s as if it was something you actively chose. My anorexia started in the mid 1990s and lasted about 6 or 7 years, another friend was anorexic and had several hospital admissions and was largely unable to work, for all of her 20s, it wasn't a passing phase.

I'm pretty sure I don't remember any non teaching or pastoral staff that we might have been directed to with any issues. I don't even know if I had a form tutor that I could potentially have spoken to.

Officially nothing was wrong , nothing was ever wrong. What do kids have to worry about or be stressed about? What do they have to be depressed about?

Unofficially?

Well I was seen as the happiest girl ever by classmates and teachers. I was a fucked up mess, self harming, risky behaviours,drinking etc.

There was another classmate selfharming(picking at herself until she bled ) which I didn't recognise as such.
Another was a kleptomaniac.
Two had serious drinking problems. Think spending most of the school day drinking.
There was no "school refusal " but truancy was rife.

Drugs,alcohol, sex and inappropriate relationships.

Abuse, at home or outside of it.

Yes I had internet,but that was my solace,my hiding space, my relief.

A girl I knew a bit hung herself. The adults around us came up with the most ridiculous explanations to explain it. Including that she had been cursed by a witch/gypsy and spreading hysteria about keeping our belongings safe and what not bullshit. Not one whisper of the truth.. that she was miserable,desperate and as far as I knew she had been abused.

I was called stupid and ridiculous for self harming,shamed,shouted at. Suicide attempts (by my and another friend) were hushed and dealt with at home with no care or concern. And the threat of what seeking medical help would mean. "You'll be tied up to a hospital bed, the nurses will be horrible, the police will be called. Everyone will know. Is that what you want?".

That's without the kids that just disappeared... the loosers,the runaways,the pregnant and married early, the druggies,the alcoholics .

Officially,nothing was wrong though.

What do kids have to worry about or be stressed about? What do they have to be depressed about?

I remember this being the prevalent thinking as well. More recently than the 90s even.

Also, although I agree that the timing is a bit out for most people, the comment about parents living through the war is relevant to an extent, I think collective trauma (wars, poverty, desperation, oppression, less compassionate medical care, less effective medical care leading to more premature/unexpected death, fewer safety standards/measures so more accidents) was simply the norm for so many generations that some people probably did see it a bit like "what do you possibly have to worry about?"

And people of my grandparents' generation (born in the 20s) thought that talking about traumatic things was wallowing in it and would make the trauma worse. The way they were taught to deal with things was just bottle it up, get back to normal life ASAP and never discuss it again. I am not sure how long that lived on for, but it must have for a while, I was reading about the Aberfan anniversary and some of the surviving children were interviewed, this happened in 1966 and most of them said it was never talked about or mentioned, life just went on as though it had never happened. People thought that was the best way to deal with something sad. You can see that kind of attitude in Call The Midwife as well (I know it's a drama but it is supposed to be historical).

I was born in 1968, started school in 1972. My parents were both in the war, mum in the WAAF, Dad made bombs.

My grandfather was in the war, its impact on his MH was passed down the generations to many of my relatives. Maybe today’s teenage MH problems are part of rather than to be compared to the way previous generations dealt with trauma?

I agree with this.
I went to a fairly high pressured (for the time, seventies and early eighties) all girls boarding school.
One girl had a noticeable mental health problem, she had a compulsion to pull her hair out (trichotillomania) and eventually lost so much that she needed some time away from school. She wasn’t a boarder, and was sociable and outgoing but underneath must have been stressed.
I don’t remember anyone with an eating disorder, and I didn’t see anyone with self harm scars until I was older. I think the school had around 600 pupils so small enough to be aware of girls in the other year groups.
I have teenagers and I think that their lives are more stressful than mine was at their age. One isn’t on social media as she found it made her too anxious, the other isn’t on it as she hasn’t tried it yet.

The issue is life didn't really went on like it never happened. Most traumas do manifest in one way or another even without being labelled as such. A lot of the times those ways were unhealthy and in turn traumatic for current children ( abuse,addiction,dv, being emotionally unavailable, neglect etc.) . So we ended up with a lot of intergenerational trauma. Children often seen as spoilt or making a fuss over nothing or labelled attention seekers because they"have it so much better than we did".

I was at secondary in the 80's and I do ponder this, I was aware of 1 girl who had anorexia and another who self harmed. Other than that never noticed anything. However, I do remember a few bad lads who were always excluded and then left, looking back they would be diagnosed with something now. I also remember one poor girl having to leave when it came out that she was a lesbian and a couple who got pregnant and were never seen again. My friend remembers a girl getting pregnant and coming back to school with her teeth knocked out, can you imagine the life she.must have had and no one did anything

Yes, I know. We know better now that unprocessed trauma comes out in other ways, but in the past it wasn't seen that way. Probably logical in a way, because if you are processing trauma there is often a period where it seems/feels worse before it gets better. They were afraid of that part in the middle where it is worse. You have to remember that mental health care was horrific for much of human history as well, with people locked away in institutions, barbaric treatments and other things like that. I can imagine that people would want to avoid any possible perception that they might be "crazy".

If you’re interested in the effects of social media on mental health, the Freakanomics MD podcast just released an episode about this. podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/freakonomics-m-d/id1577556965?i=1000589525853