To ask why there are so many kids with mental health problems?

[Newmama29]

I’ve been scrolling through some threads recently & I find people are talking a lot about their kids/teenagers having mental health problems. Why is this so prominent now? I, myself, was only a teenager 10 years ago so I am baffled as to how many people claim their teens have mental health problems. Is it just that we talk about it more or is society causing this?

I was a teen in the 90s and I remember similar conversations to this post about "why are there so many teens with anorexia/eating disorders now compared to 20 years ago". The answer those days was girls magazines and mass media, now it is social media.

In the 00s, it seemed to be depression and anxiety. Now it seems to be OCD and panic attacks. But it is all under the broad metal health umbrella, just different focus with the passage of time, but I think teen years are quite turbulent and a time when you start being more aware of peer pressure and how you are feeling in relation to those around you and what "normal" should look and feel like.

I think it is due to more awareness and more funding and support in certain areas which then means more people are seen, diagnosed and treated.

WeeWillyWinkie9

Thats rubbish Cahms and adult services don’t want hoards of cases on their books. The patients on their waiting lists are very ill. They weed out all but the most severe cases which are not just cases of pathologised anxiety.🙄

Gettingfleeced

There is no support or funding

The Gina ford contented baby book was first published in 1999- a book that promotes crying it out, no eye contact with your baby and basically says that a baby being dependent on you is wrong.
many child care trends around the same time followed similar principles - super nanny with her naughty step- child showing emotion - time out by themselves rather than talking it through.
i would hazard a guess that early childhood caring methods may have contributed to the rise in mental health issues in teens and young adults today

Partly I think genuine mh issues are empathised with more which is amazing but sadly people want to fix normal human emotions a lot more now too. Safeguarding is a word floated around with good intentions but it's abused. I know of someone who was considered to have mh issues when she was at school, but she had lost her mum who dropped dead one day of a heart attack and suddenly was an 11 year old girl on her own. Tbh I thought it was a disgrace for unqualified people to slap the mh label on her, bereavement and grief is complex and referring her on to cahms etc did nothing for her. Luckily she's okay now thanks to her older sisters. Another issue I have with this is the affect it has on younger people's futures. Parents are told they're doing the right thing getting their teens referred on for anxiety instead of supporting them as they navigate through the stresses of being a teen, then for example they want to join the armed forces and they fail the application process because of an anxiety diagnosis. I am not not not not not saying to never get teens help, just to start the process at home first without the need to add so many labels, they are rarely a good thing and I say that as someone who sees day in/ day out how much of a person is lost when they become a project for safeguarding purposes. It also causes the person who is the subject of it all to just share less with their parents, friends and family if they can't express emotion or struggle without being labelled and forced to then share their vulnerability with strangers. It's a weird world nowadays where its assumed a stranger in a professional capacity can help you more than yourself or a family member who knows you.

Gosh that was a terrible book. I remember my SIL following her methods and me barely being able to hold my newborn niece in case she fell asleep in my arms which the book didn't allow ! Oddly enough my niece ( now16 years) has had quite severe MH issues and suicide attempts.

I was wondering if it’s all the drugs the parents took in their youth

Of course you were.

Interesting, because to me it's the opposite. Kids being mollycoddled, and now they have no resilience, and expect everything for nothing. Obviously both methods are wrong

It can't have been Gina Ford. My nans generation stuck their babies outdoors to cry it out where they couldn't hear them and rigidly stuck to bedtimes etc.

Routines are actually great for creating feelings of safety. Maybe it's all the gentle parenting and permissive parenting 🤷‍♀️ that certainly creates feelings of anxiety in children when they know that their parents aren't in charge and can't keep them safe.

Totally agree with this. I grew up in the 90s and I remember some pretty depressed self harming teens when I was in school but I doubt their parents or teachers were even aware. It just wasn't talked about. Eating disorders were quite visible in terms of awareness but not other mental health issues. My own cousin in her teens was in and out of mental health hospitals with depression but as a family we were not allowed mention it to anyone there was such a stigma attached to it. I find even the language my teens have to describe their feelings great and they seem very aware of friends struggling and outwardly look to support them. In saying that I do think social media and the reduction in physical social interactions has played a part in negatively impacting teens mental health. It isn't good for anyone to live more in your head. Thankfully mine are involved in sport and I can see the difference in their demeanor when they come back from training or a match they are revitalised. It is so important

Why not wonder, it’s a variable , alcohol causes foetal alcohol syndrome, cocaine alters your dopamine receptors in your brain.

Women have their eggs from birth, men produce sperm all the time. If people are told take vitamins and eat healthily before conceiving, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that drug use would have an effect .

I don't agree with this at all - cocaine was very available many many years ago, as was vallium. Diets were much poorer. Alcohol was thought to be fine in pregnancy and so was smoking. Drs would recommend Guinness and fags to pregnant women. We've come a long way in terms of pregnancy related health and knowing what's good and what's bad. As a whole, our nation drinks and takes drugs at a much lower level than previous generations.

I was given a copy when I was pregnant. I thought it was a joke. I genuinely did.

Then they are doing it wrong.
gentle parenting isn’t about just letting them got on with it.
its been the safety net that allows them to push their boundaries and build their independence and resilience.
it’s not brushing feelings under the carpet and instead helping them understand their feelings and move forward with them.

id take gentle parenting over crying it out and no eye contact any day

This

The early years are a time when a child's brain is developing rapidly. Some say it's the most important stage. Nowadays most parents (myself included) employ someone else to care for their child at his age, either by dropping them at nursery or with a childminder etc. Maybe those children feel rejected? Maybe it starts off a whole chain of negative feelings, of not being worthy or something? I don't know, but it is a change in our society and it worries me for my own children (though may just be my mum guilt coming out).

I think phone use in general has a lot to answer for.

It reduces our need to socialise in person or get up and do anything as our entertainment is right there. I notice myself that suddenly hours can go by scrolling and I’ve not really achieved anything that day. I frequently see people of all ages sitting around just on their phones messaging people that aren’t there etc whereas in the past they’d have all found something to do together.

Many teens also seem to live in fear that they might “miss something” if they aren’t glued to their phone, plus there’s the comparisons to other peoples “best lives” and if you are having a hard time at school it can follow you home now via your phone.

Add constant news updates to your phone plus the lack of freedom without being supervised, kids have phone and trackers on them all the time and it’s a bit like being in a gilded cage.

I am not religious, but maybe there were some benefits to its structure, rather than our secular society. People might have found that having a sense of purpose, believing in the soul, in service and community helped them in life. Society and culture seem to be losing the sense of soul, which is probably not very inspiring to the young.

I am not religious either but I do think it helped form a community, the support it offered and sense of belonging.

I mean with that came condemnation and rejection so it wasn’t all good obviously!

@VegetablesFightingToReclaimTheAubergieneEmoji Yes, it certainly wasn't all roses. Maybe we need something else to give people hope, purpose and belonging.

Especially with insecure housing. It’s really hard to feel part of a community

'most D-est C' wow- lovely way to reference children.

parliamoglesga · Yesterday 09:58
No resilience and no grit.

We also now pander to the minority in really odd way- see transgender issues and allowing normal life to be dictated to by a small minority who shout the loudest.

delusions of perfection perpetuated by social media.

Poor parenting in the sense that there’s perhaps not great discipline and now instead of children “being seen and not heard” they’re “seen and heard all the time”. There’s a happy medium there in that we should always be mindful of children and their opinions but also aware that they’re not decision makers or rulers of the roost.

All of this 100% - and, while it's great that the support and awareness is there for those that do need it - at my teenage DCs school they constantly do seminars and talk about anxiety and mental health to the point that kids feel that they must have anxiety or poor mental health rather than the usual ups and downs of being a teenager.

I would differentiate between those with a NDD and associated MH difficulties than those with MH difficulties alone.
Both very different presentations in general.