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!

It’s the snowflake culture. They’re not being brought up to be resilient, confident, assertive, emotionally stable humans, so facing the real world is a shock to them.

When I was a teen, a local 17 yo girl hung herself. The adults around us blamed "curses", how "unnatural " it was, dissected every single detail to prove she was driven to it by "something else".

Poor mental health? No way, not that girl.
Evil witches ? Obviously!

@emilyfrost

It’s the snowflake culture. They’re not being brought up to be resilient, confident, assertive, emotionally stable humans, so facing the real world is a shock to them.

I dare you to live a day in the lives of some of my kids... you'd be rocking in a corner by morning.

And somehow,the get up every day,they make it to school,the even learn,they manage to play and crack a joke ,they form bonds and connections, they just barely hang in there,but bloody hell they are hanging!

Snowflakes my ass.

it’s rare that you’d find an older person who remembers feeling suicidal during their teen years for example

@peepeelongstocking, people just didn't talk about it then. If they did they were told not to be so soft and pull themselves together. Suicide rates have declined massively since the 1960s. There's an academic paper about it here: academic.oup.com/ije/article/39/6/1464/736597 and I've attached a graph from it.

@ComeOnBabyHauntMyBubble

Good on you, couldn't agree more. Maybe teaching kids that they're "snowflakes" doesn't help with their mental health

Obviously children have to be protected but I think many are over protected and find it difficult to cope when they're older and have to make their own decisions.

Social media too.

@cruzin Agreed. My mum's 77 and one of her classmates killed herself when they were 17. They knew it was a suicide, they all did, and they knew why she did it. but for the sake of her parents they had to pretend it was an accidental overdose. There was a lot of shame and stigma attached to a suicide in the family.

Somebody talked about learning how to fail - children learn this through play!

Running through this entire thread the answer could have been - PLAY PLAY PLAY. We send chidlren to school at 4 and begin to teach them formally leaving little chance for them to play naturally with other children - particularly children of different ages as they would have done before modern schooling.

We no longer let children play outside for hours on end with groups of kids of all different ages - this built resilience, problem solving, coping with relationship dynamics, empathy.

The reason kids dont' play out are various -cars/ screens/ social media etc.

Then as teens we push and push towards exams

We have ruined childhood turning it into some horrible hurtling run towards the goals and achievements of adulthood.

Read Just William - 11 year olds roamed for hours building dens and having adventures - even urban kids had this sort of freedom 30 years ago. It wasn't unsafe (as I am sure some will say -) It was a lot safer as a childhood than getting unhealthy and anxious staring at screens indoors as British children are now.

I don't think we have more mental health issues. I think we have more acknowledgement, more awareness and more support.

Young people have more of a voice.

I've worked in a pastoral role in a secondary school, been a teacher in a secondary school and have a niece with mental health problems. Almost all the problems I've seen stemmed from social media - bullying, constant pressure to get likes, 24/7 access, addiction to it, and on and on. Don't know what the solution is though.

Social media & not being ptotected from adult concerns.

Inactivity and not enough time outside.

Too much screen time, and afults distracted by screens. Not enough real human connection.

Loss of imagination. Stuck too much in the here and now, which let’s face it sucks.

I think it is a mixture of Social Media and the expectancy that University is the ultimate educational goal.

Growing up only the "posh kids" and those with money ever went, the rest of us had to go out and earn a living from the day they left school.

I wouldn't swap my teenage years for those they have now for any money.

DS15 has SLD and looking at the situation as a whole, even though our challenges are different, I am so glad that he is totally oblivious to all that.

He is such a happy, young man and that is all I have ever wanted for him.

Read Just William - 11 year olds roamed for hours building dens and having adventures - even urban kids had this sort of freedom 30 years ago. It wasn't unsafe (as I am sure some will say -) It was a lot safer as a childhood than getting unhealthy and anxious staring at screens indoors as British children are now.

But childhoods like that were also full of different types of risk. You only have to read threads on here to see that. Children who were flashed at or abused and bullied by older children, but parents weren't around to see, notice or in some cases, care. Children who were neglected. Children who grew up in homes filled with violence, addiction and all sorts more.

But there was no help available so there was nobody around to knowledge that they might be suffering mentally, they just got on with it because there was no other choice.

A lot of those adults now struggle massively with MH issues.

I think the option of 'overprotected' snowflakes is the easy one and therefore will look elsewhere. For a start, it's not going to be the same answer for each person.
I've been told I have poor mental health occasionally, and sometimes it is undeniable. It started in my teens. I suppose there were a few reasons that others may resonate with. Some of it was no doubt plain ol' teenage angst of discovering that the world wasn't my oyster - I was unfortunately associating on a daily basis with the better off for whom it was, through no virtue of their own. I've always tended to prefer the company of those whose opportunities were more in line with mine. In the age of social media that kind of pressure will be worse. Some like to minimise these sorts of pressures to 'jealousy', but that's not good enough when it will always directly impact living standards and chances, up to and include the chances to continue living. I don't underestimate that last phrase as economic pressures grow.
Another one was the pressures of dealing with violence from 'peers'. A related one was dealing with a society which seemed solely interested and solely valued the domination of others through wealth and power - again, that tendency has increased. Those of us more interested in just producing what we can are unvalued and thrown out or exploited. I suppose that's the introvert/ extrovert duality to some degree.
Finally my major pressure was sexism, again related to the previous ones. I can't think that that has decreased in practice, not with social media. We may have gained some rights - but sexualisation has increased massively as has the pressure to accept it.

There's a very nasty undercurrent on this thread of "they're kids,what do they have to be depressed/anxious about" as well as the reasons given being mostly artificial with a hint of self inflicted.

Coupled with the ignorant and frankly deluded view of how "there was no such thing in my day" just shows that despite talking more about it and the supposedly increased prevalence and awareness, we haven't strayed far from the attitudes in the 90s,80s,70s,60s,50s etc.

Plus ca change .

High stress lives for a larger percentage of families due to poverty, insecure housing , low wages, unstable income because of zero hours contracts, both parents working leaving little family time.

If family life is stressful it’s inevitable that children and young people will display anxiety. We need big changes.

We have ruined childhood turning it into some horrible hurtling run towards the goals and achievements of adulthood.
I think that's very close to the truth too. An arms race in education and decent jobs has been created, which is barely being acknowledged. There are simply not enough resources going round.

I work with young people with mh difficulties, and I am always amazed by their resilience. I see significant trauma in a huge percentage of the people I work with. Traumatic events that may well have been brushed under the carpet in the past, to never be spoken about again.

I have never thought to myself 'oh this person just hasn't been taught how to be resilient or haven't been taught any coping skills by their parents'. Never have I thought the reasons for anyone's difficulties is because they haven't had to experience failure or have not been disciplined properly.

The reasons are often very complex and it can't be blamed on any one thing.

I think we do need to normalise some emotions, yes it is normal to feel anxiety at times etc, but the people experiencing a range of normal emotions aren't the ones who get accepted by services these days.

One thing I do know for sure, is that the young people I work with are not snowflakes and their problems are not down to a lack of resilience. They have resilience in the bucketload and they cope with things some of us can only ever imagine, and they do it day in and day out.

Autism in girls has gone unnoticed in many.. my husband at the age of 44 has just recently started the process of being diagnosed, after 20 plus years of been given every other MH diagnosis under the sun. It is so common for autism to be missed, especially in females, the screeners just do not work for females and we have missed too many.

@ComeOnBabyHauntMyBubble

There's a very nasty undercurrent on this thread of "they're kids,what do they have to be depressed/anxious about" as well as the reasons given being mostly artificial with a hint of self inflicted.

Coupled with the ignorant and frankly deluded view of how "there was no such thing in my day" just shows that despite talking more about it and the supposedly increased prevalence and awareness, we haven't strayed far from the attitudes in the 90s,80s,70s,60s,50s etc.

Plus ca change .

Yep.

This thread has really pissed me off.

Blended families.
The expectation that noone should aim to be a nurse, only a Doctor.
Social media blurring the lines between home and school.

@LeGrandBleu

I think it is the "positive parenting" taken to the extreme. I see parents of young children constantly and I mean constantly praising their children for every single action of the day.

• As you wait to cross the street, a mother lifts a child to press button "good pushing" ,
• a child makes a fuss at the till because he wants to pay, mother hands credit card and holds Childs " great paying"
• At friend's house, great .... putting the shoes on, good flushing, good this, great that,....

As a French, I find this nuts.
The praise is meaningless, and if a child expect a praise for anything, down the road, there is a big cliff.
And not letting them do wrong. In France, a shitty work, will have a lot of red, and the request to redo it. Here in Australia, a sticker with "good effort" .

If from the very first age, toddlers years, a child knows that sometimes you get things right, other you don't, be it a tower of cubes that collapses, or being the first ready at the door, children build a callus on negative emotions.
IN the same way, I see a lot of parents consoling and comforting for things that shouldn't, a child (4 years old( is told off nicely when being indelicate with a book " careful with the book, you are ripping the pages" child start crying and hiding behind my sofa, while the mother goest and console her saying " she didn't mean it"

Interesting point, it is a bit like that in education- we used to fail exams or get into trouble if our work was shoddy. I'm not saying it was great either

I suspect it has to do with 30% growing up in poverty.

Add on to that alcoholism, stress, drug issues, insecure employment/zero hours, lack of work-life balance on the part of parents.

For good measure, throw in a school system where children start their formal education at 4, are constantly tested and have limited access to outdoor play and the natural world.

Then there's the fact we actually care about and test for mental health issues nowadays...

@Aquamarine1029 had pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Social difficulties such as poverty trauma and bullying are much the same as they were 30 years ago.
But one of the big issues I see working in CAMHS is poor parenting which includes failing to take responsibility for all the things listed by aquamarine1029 and thinking there is something “wrong” with their child and expecting therapy to correct years of pish poor parenting.
All this “I’m their best friend” shit does my head in.
None of the above applies to organic brain conditions, or mental health issues relating to Neurodevelopmental conditions which are on par with 30 years ago but which where largely hidden in society.
Finally TikTok Instagram and Facebook have a lot to answer as again do parental control over viewing some parents never check their kids phones for a variety of once again pish poor reasons.
Nature or nurture? I’d say in about 90% of referrals to CAMHS outwith those listed above are all nurture in presentation.

@ScrapThatThen

I wonder if not learning to self soothe as infants is part of it.

You do know that most children through history and in most cultures around the world never get/got taught to self soothe?

I think the constant busyness and need to be on is terrible for all our brains. Maybe things like BPA levels, who knows.

Also, I do think that people these days are encouraged to see themselves as victims and sufferers. Half the posters on here have 'crippling anxiety' or illnesses that most people had never heard of growing up like tokophobia. What is this teaching their kids?

@cruzin

Very interesting! Although I feel like (this might be completely wrong) the suicides that do occur are less the upper age brackets, and increasingly younger, which is the worrying thing.

@ComeOnBabyHauntMyBubble

I struggled v. seriously with MH issues as a child and teen and it wasn’t really something caused by a societal thing. I’m not suggesting it didn’t happen, it just feels like something has changed and made it more widespread?