To ask why children and teens have such bad mental health? (pre-pandemic)

[peepeelongstocking]

Surely there must be something massively wrong in society, but what is it? I’m inclined to think it’s social media (screens as a whole really), and a lack of prospects for the future (due to high house prices and lack of jobs). Surely there must be more to it though.

I know we’re diagnosing MH issues much more, but it’s rare that you’d find an older person who remembers feeling suicidal during their teen years for example. That seems to be more or less standard now.

I’d love to know what others think it is!

@Sockbubble

Fatandfifty49 Have a look at Unicef's report "Worlds of Influence, Understanding What Shapes Child Well-being in Rich Countries".

Here's the link:

www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/Report-Card-16-Worlds-of-Influence-child-wellbeing.pdf

Thanks Sockbubble for sharing this. The UK are 27th out of 38th in the league table of child well-being outcomes: mental well-being, physical health, and academic and social skills. I've only skimmed through some of the report but it's very interesting reading.

@AIMD

I feel that one could reuniting factor is the high stress out in children by our education system. My son, at 6 years old, has just started getting home work and this week will have his first test. At school he is terrified of making mistakes When doing writing, worries about loosing his break time if he doesn’t finish all his work and is worrying about having to do his first spelling test this week. He really values his down time after school and is struggling to adjust to fitting in his home work in his home time now.

I feel we out way to much pressure on small children, test them too much uneccissarily in primary school and don’t allow them enough freedom to play, be creative and make mistakes.

I’m not saying this is the be all and end all, just that to be it feels like something that must contribute to levels of anxiety type issues with children.

When I have spoken to teachers at DDs school about homework they say a lot of the homework pressure comes from parents! If they don’t set homework, parents complain their child isn’t being stretched. But if they set homework, other parents complain it’s too much stress. And to be honest the kids who would benefit the most from doing the homework never do it anyway. Also schools are pressured into cramming kids for SATS by school league tables. Look at all the angst on MN over primary and secondary school applications. All the parents who are tutoring their children for selective schools because their child couldn’t possibly go to the local state school. If a school doesn’t fill its student quota they lose funding, and they know all the middle class parents will be comparing exam results so is it any surprise they are pushing kids to perform well in the tests?

There is evidence some mental illnesses are more likely to start presenting in adolescence, but the factors are complicated and not entirely understood and, as others mentioned, there is also evidence of a cross cultural happiness U-curve - that people get more miserable into late teens, getting worst in middle age, and starts to improve on the other side of 50.

Along with the reasons other gave for why it feels that way, it's also true that in many places it used to be far more common to institutionalize children and teens. Now things have swung more towards the community, but still drastically under resourced.

I started having suicidal ideation at 9 (and I spent hours in the forests before that and had failed plenty of times before then). I was in group therapy from 11 - my small suburban middle school managed to run multiple weekly groups (it was seen as best if people who were in the same classes weren't in the same groups) just from its own students - late Gen X/early Gen Y kids, participation trophies hadn't kicked off yet, but plenty of our parents were financially successful addicts in terrible and nice looking marriages. I learned and practiced useful coping skills that I do think more could have benefitted from. There is a lot of work on mental health first aid, but it's still an area that on an individual and community level needs more consideration and research.

Resilience isn't taught, it's a combination of different biological and sociocultural factors as discussed here and here. Having a mental illness doesn't mean someone is less resilient. It does mean someone may need specific coping tools and spaces to practice them to be able to use them in real life and be given realistic expectations on them. There is an issue, and there has been for ages, of a desire for quick mental health fixes - that if X doesn't flip us like a switch, it's just snake oil. Just like with other overlapping aspects of health, it's a bit more complicated and involves personal, community, and population level issues.

Disintegration of society - families now rarely able to support each other in a multi-generational way, financial and societal pressure for both parents to work, children separated from caregivers too early and for too long, impact of social media (on sense of self at best and as a conduit for bullying at worse) - no escape outside school hours, increased pressure on family as a whole, increased family break up, reliance on screens as a substitute for social interaction for young children, increased pressure and evaluation in schools, etc, etc

Social media / smart phones - massively. Not just the content but the fact that it's there 24/7. Never switch off from their peers. Snapchat.

Lack of down time and lack of outdoor time.

Lack of resilience / self sufficiency / independence in some cases.

I am tired of this phrase ‘resilience’ being banded around. What does
it really mean? Unpick it and you’ll find it means middle class safety nets of family wealth and social networking ideas. It just doesn’t exist for many. If that’s what the more dismissive and unsympathetic think cause mental health problems, then everyone is essentially agreeing that British social, economic and cultural, issues are at root.

Social media, increase in broken families, soft parenting...

I find it very hard to define and describe, and of course it's a massive generalisation, but I think some continental countries do manage to inculcate what you could call resilience in their children. I don't think it's to do with advantage in the sense of class and education; I think it's more about having pride in yourself and the ability to be self-reliant which I think perhaps comes from them allowing their DC independence a lot earlier then we would in the UK, but within a supportive social structure that is a lot more group orientated. It's very hard to pin down though.

I don't think there's any one thing. Parents are working longer hours to make ends meet meaning less time for families, more families living in poverty, teens have more access to the world via social media which also means online bullying, unrealistic images and trolling. The list is endless. What I have noticed though is how families don't help each other out now, so many children don't have that close knit extended family where children are raised with cousins, aunties and uncles, all the people who would have your back, be there to support and love you. I think being a teenager now can be lonely, isolating and worrying. My son is 15 and quite happy but I worry he doesn't socialise too much but if he was out hanging around our estate I would worry about gangs, drugs, alcohol etc. I hate to blame parents but a lot of children have a lack of boundaries, discipline and parental involvement in their lives.

I don't think parents work longer hours now than they did 100 years ago and in fact poverty has been significantly greater in years past it's just people have a different threshold for what they consider poverty now

I think a lack of coping skills and societal change where we have this comparison culture is the biggest issue. There is a me me me now now now instant gratification culture where lives should be instagrammable and everything in life you own should be upgradeable every 24 months like a phone contract. There is a culture of "anxiety" and "depression" - largely self diagnosed - an unhappiness with their lot because they have a fear of missing out. Nothing has to be earnt anymore because you can take out a finance deal or spread the cost in 3 easy payments with Klarna. There is an expectation of walking into top jobs by virtue of attending a mediocre university with mediocre a levels and then complain they have to start at the bottom with menial tasks.
All in all they believe they've been sold this dream of what they "should" have and when it doesn't match up to reality it's their mental health that takes a hit. Rather than thinking it's not what they should have it's what they COULD have if they work hard enough?

I'm a YP counsellor in schools and colleges. I have a very big and varied caseload and I can assure you that social media comes up pretty much never. Because my waiting lists are so long (no money for full time hours for counsellors in state schools) I may only see the most at risk so perhaps the 'average' teen suffers anxiety linked to SM but not with the kids who come to see me who are suicidal and self harming regularly.

The one thing all my clients have in common are very chaotic family lives and/or inherited MH challenges. I don't think this generation of young people are lacking any more resilience than previous generations but society now does allow them to talk more openly without as much shame around struggling with mental health. The shame around being mental illness will hopefully die off over time - this means that in the future kids can talk to their parents (for example) about how unhappy they are without worrying that they will be in trouble or loved less.

I frequently get talked at by my mum about how teens don't have it that bad and they just need to get on with it like she had to. 'There wasn't counselling in my day'. She was one of the last people in the UK to catch polio when she was a child and this is has affected her mental health all her life. Our kids (in UK anyway) won't catch polio and are able to talk honestly about their feelings with someone like me. This is progress.

I'm not sure there is such a massive increase. I think there is more diagnoses, perhaps some of this is over diagnosis? Being human can be hard , really hard sometimes that's not mental illness.

I had appalling mental health as a teenager , loads of my peer group drank to much, lots of drugs .I had a friend end his own life at 16 . I wouldn't have dreamed of discussing this with anyone, not sure I had the words and not sure who I would have said it to anyway !

So it's great that many young people have an outlet for these feelings now but I do think we need to widen our idea of normal emotions. Feeling awful, sad , angry are emotions we all feel and aren't always pathological.

Also we can feel anxious, depressed and get better , and we can do things that help us get better, there is little talk of this . On the flip side of this I find the talk of mental ill health always focussed on depression and anxiety , there is little talk about people like my sibling with schizophrenia, who is also an alcoholic and has spent the last 20 years in and out of psychiatric hospitals .He was a mentally ill child 30 years ago ,this type of mental illness is still shied away from and perhaps needs to start becoming more of a focus ?

@porger80 I agree with you 100 % I too work in this role but with primary aged children and the children mostly have chaotic lives or trauma of some type. It's interesting that social media doesn't seem to be a factor. I really though it would. I have recently deleted social media and feel much more positive!

@Mumof4andahalf hahaha yes I made that assumption before actually working with YP. Think I tried in a couple of my first ever sessions to bring in SM and the kids just stared at me blankly. I think it's the kind of thing (older) people assume to be relevant until you are faced with genuine MH suffering and then you realise that their problems are way bigger than what Beyoncé has been posting recently! I also think this generation of kids have grown up with SM and can see through it far more than we realise.

@porger80 that's actually a relief tbh. As an adult I know people only really post the positives, everything on there feels like a mum competition some days 🙄

I find the thing about resilience interesting. What makes a child more resilient? Is it down to personality, perhaps having a naturally easygoing personality as opposed to being a natural worrier? Do family circumstances also have a role, it is easier to be resilient when you have strong family support.

Maybe I just knew a mad group of kids but this is nothing new. I went to a girls school in the 90s and it was overrun with mental health problems. The only social media we had was 10p text messaging and MSN messenger.

I am 56 and mental health problems were very common when I was a teenager. They presented differently of course. Anorexia and bulimia were common. Lots of abuse of drugs and alcohol.

I think if things have got worse then the big changes are probably at school: more pressure at a much earlier age (I went to a very high achieving primary but had no homework at all ever) and for teenagers, a much more controlling environment. I survived a fairly unhappy experience at high school by hardly going to any lessons. You couldn't do that now.

I haven’t read the whole thread but known causes include

Maternal mental ill health
Poverty
Low academic achievement
Breakdown of family unit
Insufficient boundary setting and structure in parenting

There are other factors that can reduce problems and some current messaging is unhelpful. Being bullied is often sold as ‘it’s not your fault, you were just picked on, it’s a random choice’ when research shows clearly there are factors about victims that increase likelihood of being bullied and of a long term impact. That isn’t to say blame the victim but rather help the victims address their behaviours that place them at risk.

Blaming schools isn’t helpful either - it encourages opt out and the ‘its the academic pressure’ brigade, when it’s not a huge cause. Academic success protects mental health.

Sleep also protects mental health and children who are allowed to continue with poor sleep patterns are far more likely to have behavioural and psychiatric disorders.

It’s often (but not always) about parenting. Unfortunately not a popular idea but based in evidence.

I’m afraid making society less accepting of very young parenting would also help but not sure how that is best achieved in current culture of personal freedoms versus societal controls and indeed funding cuts to youth education services and sexual health services.
Children who are planned to be brought into a family by a loving, committed couple fare much better.

Better early parenting support, raised expectations of parenting, better financial support for young families would all go some way to address the issue.

More research into impact of frequent early scans in pregnancy might be useful too.

I don’t think it’s social media per se as the lack of downtime. Dd is struggling right now and I think she’s struggling with hyper stimulation. She’s always on either at school or in clubs or on her phone. There’s no boring Sunday afternoon to process stuff subconsciously. We are in the process of resetting.

For me resilience doesn’t mean having a supportive family and money. It means being able to tolerate sad times, boring times, failures. Sometimes life is a question of getting your head down and getting through it. I’m not sure that is seen as a valuable characteristic these days.

Kids have too much to cope with. Separated parents, competitive parents, guilty parents, social media, school expectations, peer expectations,

I split from my ex when DS was 3 which wasn't great but since then we have lived in one place, stuck to a regular routine, I haven't moved a new partner in, DS knows he is the most important thing in the world to me. He has two classes outside of school, but lots of downtime. We do new stuff if he asks to, although we aren't the most affluent. He has consistency, security, and knows he is loved.

It's not the most exciting life for me but he is calm and happy. I can have more fun once he gets to 18. For now, he is the priority.