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.

Everyone has anxiety.

It's lovely that you think of childhood and school days as carefree.

For many, childhood is not carefree at all.

I suspect this is the case for a much higher percentage of children than you would guess if you are from a stable family background.

If I was back at school today perhaps I'd have a chance of speaking up about how anxious and depressed I was, the suicidal thoughts, the eating disorder.

Perhaps that would save me from another 30 years of trying to deal with it?

I think a lot of children had the beginning stages of mental health issues when I was at school in the 90s but we just didn't talk about it and 'got on with things'.

This is seen as more 'resilient' but is it? Or is it just ignoring problems that could have been resolved earlier until you have a breakdown in your later life?

People often divorce the thoughts around 'why are so many children depressed or anxious or acting out through angry/bad behaviour?' from the frankly horrendous stats of how common it is to be sexually, physically or emotionally abused or to grow up in a household where a parent is/has been emotionally or physically abused.

Then add on top of this the number of children growing up with parents who are drug addicts or alcoholics (including the many functioning ones).

On top of that add on the children where there's nothing that would count as 'abuse' but that are growing up with parents who just lack basic warmth/parenting skills.

Children who have been adopted, children who have one parent who is absent or not consistently in their lives. Children who have been bereaved.

Sadly there is lots of trauma in our society. Many of the children you know and that your DC are friends with will have experienced all kinds of trauma that you don't know anything about.

It's not reserved for the 'troubled' kids. I was a straight A student, middle class family, very polite, plenty of friends, etc and also totally traumatised.

I will say though I also agree that normal feelings are often pathologised now.

I manage a team of people in their 20s and being nervous about giving a presentation = anxiety.

We need to do better at asking the right questions to figure out whether someone is showing symptoms of trauma and actually get them early help vs having normal reactions and coach them on actual resilience (as opposed to a stiff upper lip in the face of genuine mental health issues).

The system is absolutely clogged up with referrals for people experiencing unpleasant but understandable emotional reactions to life stressors and events who feel they have a "condition".

I think the issue is that mental health treatment is not appropriate for someone who does not have a mental health issue. If you are anxious and down because you do not have enough money to heat your house, the answer is not 6 counselling sessions, but more money.
Similarly with children if they are sad and anxious because they do not have any friends, they need help and support to make friends, not counselling sessions to talk about how they feel.
Identifying and tackling root causes where you can is always much more effective than treating the issue as a mental health problem when it really is not.

@wheresmymojo As someone else says above, it is the quiet well behaved kids who are mentally struggling who can be at most risk.

The shift from 'feeling anxious' to 'having anxiety' has really affected how people view the feeling itself

From what I know about basic, burn out or stress related anxiety, once you have not come down from your daily life stress experiences for a prolonged period of time your body produces too much cortisol and any minor challenge hits you harder and causes an ever bigger stress response. There is definitely a physical element to anxiety and depression (among many other factors of course) but once you have hit a certain chronic anxiety and stress level it does become a mental (and physical) health condition.

We should all, as a society, understand more about these basic physiological and psychological processes and learn to manage them with access to support as and when needed. Of course wellbeing in with so many other things, social mobility, access to nature and green spaces, access to high quality education, health and nutritious foods, access to healthcare, tacked drug and alcohol problems, etc.etc.

But yeah, more people then ever now actually do have mental health conditions and telling them to carry on with a stiff upper lip can make things so much worse, especially once a certain threshold of stress and trauma has been reached.

A lot of the healthy foundations are laid in the early years but with parents of young children being constantly on high alert through 24/7 digital media, global warming, wars.... It's a fact, the world has changed and we need to take a long hard look at how to manage and survive.

I also wonder if society has become less tolerable to ND individuals - noisy classroom hit my kids hard but they weren't a thing during my secondary - though corridors at lesson times were but classrooms were quiet.

A lot of their primary school classroom were busy - lots of exciting things everywhere - and lots of group work - which really didn't seem to suit them - we spent a lot of time just doing basics and lots of practise at home - if we hadn't I think they have fallen further behind and got more and more aware and upset by that.

They come home and have time and space to decompress - many of their friends go back to over crowded or stressful home situations or after school activities many at teen level competitive - most are fine with that but I think it may add to stress for a few.

👏👏👏

Marking place

@BritainsGotTalons you need to take a chill pill

I think it depends what age they were. Mine went from a full day with friends most day to having only the internet.
The computers crept up to the bedrooms to give them more privacy with their friends as they would have of meeting in real life.
One of mine went from that complete pause to hey kid gcse time shit gets real now and still the uncertainty of not knowing that they'd definitely sit them. The younger one was less affected. The eldest said he felt he was playing catch up on doing what teenagers are meant to be doing because he missed that important window to keep everyone else safe. But it was the one who went back to GCSE years who has struggled.

I think one of the reasons is the fact so many parents tell their children they can be and do whatever they want so they often have zero direction at all.