Why is there so much anxiety in kids?

[JudesBiggestFan]

Spoke to a family member earlier who is a teaching assistant.
Said the number of kids off with anxiety at her high school is phenomenal. Anecdotally I know of so so many severe issues....panic attacks, school refusal etc. 'Because Covid' seems to be the answer..along with why there is so much bullying/poor behaviour in schools. Is this why or is there more to it?
My own three boys seem fine thus far, but as I'm an emergency services worker, they only missed a really minimal amount of school.
But the poor behaviour of others does impact on the classroom environment/teacher stress so still has an effect on them.
So what is the reason? And what can be done? School days are supposed to be happy and carefree and it just feels like kids are just so sad.

I worry about this with my 5 year old and have just signed him up for swimming and rugby to get him out and about at the weekend

This thread got me thinking about the past. Many children born in the early 1900s would have experienced a world war. Families were torn apart, children were separated from their parents and sent to safer places, and millions lost sons, fathers and husbands.

These experiences must have caused immense trauma not only for the children but anyone living through those times. However, you never hear about the massive mental health issues/burden that developed as a consequence.

Were people mentally tougher or just more resourceful back then? Were families more cohesive? Were communities more caring and supportive? Or perhaps the lack of awareness of the effects of trauma on mental health and the non-existent healthcare service meant you had no alternative other than to suck it up and get on with life the best you could?

I have heard quite a bit about the mental health impact of the war both in general and within my own family.

Or are we now suffering the fall out of the war

Well my great grandfather committed suicide and he was born then. Pretty sure he didn't do it for shits and giggles.

Covid meant that the world was a scary place, you couldn't see your friends or hug your grandparents, germs lurking everywhere, an unseen enemy. In lots of ways, worse than a war when the enemy was known and visible and communities could pull together.

Enough to tip many kids or adults over the edge.

It's also well known that everyone from that era thought the answer was to bottle everything up and not talk about it. Don't discuss your feelings.
This has been passed down through generations and only now are we starting to open up about feelings.

Sounds good, @lyson I think kids need stuff like this along with chance to use the skills I mentioned.

100%

I had the chance to speak to my granddad about this before he passed away.

They accepted from quite an early age that life was unfair, random and cruel - many kids lost siblings to childhood illness or at birth. Many went without food at times, particularly when rationing came into play. Poverty was what it was, if you wanted to get out of it you had to do something about it or accept your hand in life. Whatever happened simply lying down and dying wasn’t an option as there were few safety nets. People were held to the same standard, no special exceptions to rationing because ‘Kate has problems with food’ or ‘Paul doesn’t like the food on offer’. Society wasn’t as centred around the individual and their ‘needs’.

In a way knuckling down and getting on with it was probably a bit of a tonic and distraction, rather than lying in bed with the curtains closed.

Me too, massive effect. Shell shock, war neurosis well known. Listen to the stories of survivors of war, holocaust etc. not to mention those who can’t speak because they were short for desertion, and check out the suicide rate.

@9outof10cats just because people didn't talk openly about their mental health doesn't mean they were not hugely damaged by what they had been through. Added to which that generation had to deal with stigma and shame attached to any kind of mental illness. Much of the damage done to people may not be as visible in public but will show up behind closed doors in the family, bad and abusive parenting, violence in the home, alcoholism, you name it. These things aren't new and are generally the result or trauma and poor mental health.

just looked at Thomas Marasyk a sickness in our time about suicide in 1881 where he hypthoised that a decrease in religion coupled with increased modernisation would cause a rise

we are now in a peak of both

And this view that everyone just sucked it up and got on with it is rose tinted spectacles. Self medication, addiction, suicide rates, various experimental procedures involving shocks, lobotomies, asylums, mummy’s little helper would suggest this wasn’t actually the case

Although all of that is true, there were others who went through horrific experiences who did build good lives for themselves. Even those who initially suffered mentally most went on to live good lives.

Mummys little helper was for housewives struggling with the boredom, lack of opportunities and bad marriages.

I think a considerable amount of anxiety stems from the fact that we are always at risk of being filmed, photographed or recorded.

Anything we do can end up on someone's mobile phone, and from that there can be an imbalance of power. Our mistakes are more indelible than ever before and digital footprints can come back to haunt us later in life. The culture of trial by social media probably isn't helping, either.

Children constantly see adults being 'cancelled' for sharing views or merely being a little clumsy with words, therefore enforcing the message you will be exiled in society for not fitting the ideal.

Suicide rates have decreased. And if you look globally there’s no correlation between lower religious observance and first world countries and higher suicide rates, if anything the opposite

That still exists now, it’s just called wine o’clock

My mother was on a cocktail of prescription drugs in the late 60s/early 70s, I was basically brought up by a junkie with huge mood swings. There were certainly mental health problems in the past and I'm sure it affected me. The problem I see is normal emotions being described in terms of mental illness.

One example of this that struck me was news coverage of students confined in halls of residence shouting out of the windows that it was affecting their mental health. I can totally see that they were frightened, worried, angry, hungry, upset etc but these are normal emotional reactions to the situation not mental health issues. I was more concerned about the students who might be curled up in a corner of their rooms withdrawing into themselves. I'm sure those young people who were filmed are mostly fine now and will have stories of how they coped to tell their own children.

And what were the symptoms of that? Anxiety and depression?

many people today build good lives for themselves despite mental health problems, I’d say the chances are higher now

Those things existed but I’m willing to bet there would be far more if today’s generation were conscripted and went through something similar. In fact I’m not convinced we would be able to raise an army.

Where is that study? Please share.

What study?

Because much of modern life is incompatible with human nature, the same way as animals become stressed and anxious if you take them out of their natural environment and stick them in a zoo.