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?

Very easy to judge and ask passive aggressive questions posing as being “truly baffled.”when your own child is so small. Come back when they are a teenager with whatever mad shit will be in social media then. Get back to me when they have been sitting at home for almost 2 years during Covid, not seeing friends, not going to school, not socialising, not graduating, trying but struggling to learn remotely, missing rites of passage and lots of “firsts” due to a pandemic nobody understood and most people were terrified of. Pressured to get vaccinations, watching love ones die, wearing masks when they eventually went back to school where they couldn’t breathe, got screamed at if they tried to remove them and couldn’t see their teachers faces nor their friends.
Get back to me when they get bullied on social media, when they try to emulate impossible filtered beauty and figures. Get back to me when they have hidden autism that they have tried to mask for years but it is now impossible. Get back to me when they see the news or watch TikToks about the atrocities of the world and start obsessing and worrying about them.
Get back to me when they are deliberately ostracised by a friend group because they are not cool enough, thin enough or popular enough. Get back to me when they trawl the pro ana sites online looking for “thinspiration” and stop eating.
I have 4 kids. 3 of them sailed through. covid and one didn’t. It broke her. She missed out on crucial parts of growing up, she struggled with remote learning and she absolutely withered without social interaction. I have brought her for help and the psychologists and psychiatrists have all said that the pandemic brought about a pandemic in itself of mental health issues in young people and that paired with social media pressure and all that brings is a melting pot for acute mental health issues in teenagers and they have waiting lists of six months plus yo even be seen (private).
It’s very easy to question teenage mental health and to be honest, you being a teenager 10 years ago means jack shit because the world has changed beyond recognition in that time especially for young people.
You honestly have no clue. You are 29 with a baby. It’s all ahead of you and you can be the best mother in the world with the best boundaries and resilience training and it can still go terribly wrong. Remember that.

Totally unqualified but I think it’s a combination of:

• young brains being influenced by internet/video/tv which is shortening attention spans and creating a lack of ability to be bored
• children on the whole not being taught resilience (rewards for participating, being made to feel like they are good at everything)
• lack of independence as children are kept more ‘safe’
• social media and the constant presence of perfect influencers
• increased exam pressures at earlier ages
• everything being a big deal - huge birthday parties, y6 proms etc … things are built up and it creates a pressure for everything to be just so
• presence of ultra processed foods
• better diagnosis and greater awareness

And none of this is the fault of parents, it’s wider societal and environmental and almost impossible to opt out of and shelter children from but I think society is general quite harmful to the impressionable nowadays and children are the most impressionable of us all.

Im not even saying these things are wrong but I think they all work together to create a less than ideal environment.

It’s always been around but social media and everyone having mobile phones has definitely amplified it.
In the 80s/90s loads of girls had eating disorders and were fainting all over the shop, then it was depression and self harm, then everyone that watched Zoella had ‘anxiety’. Now it’s confused, easy influenced teens identifying as poly crescent moon non binary asexuals or whatever. Teens are ridiculously impressionable.

There's a strong element of it being not seen as much in the old days. We now get constantly bombarded with information about mental health and it makes even healthy teenagers question themselves (I have teens, both emotionally resilient and with no MH issues, but both aware of mental health in a way I wasn't at their age). Same at work, there's a big emphasis on it now. So if you don't have mental health problems yourself it feels much more visible than it did in the past.

There will be different triggers for different people, some will have been badly affected by lockdown, some by social media, some by poverty, some by abuse or neglect or traumatic experiences. It's not just one thing and some people can cope with some things that will tip other people over the edge.

Our desire to over medicalise every normal human emotion and want a medication as a quick fix.

I was a teen with mental health issues so it's not new. I think awareness is more widespread. That coupled with lockdowns meant that a lot of (now) teens missed out on a hell of a lot of the socialisation and mixing with their peers that usually goes into building of characters and figuring out who you are as a person which at least in my opinion would absolutely take it's toll on someone's mental health. The last few years has had a shit tonne of out of the ordinary shit going on

@Spottymushroom That is a lovely long list and might well be the reason for the increase, but not a single one applies to my DD.

What I hate about these threads is the feeling that other people will look at my DD and judge her anxiety and depression without consideration there may be deep seated issues in her background. Luckily we have supportive friends and family.

@changeyerheadworzel I think you’ve projected a bit. This was exactly why I was asking & not judging btw. I want to understand the many societal changes & pressures that have caused these problems. I don’t think there was any need to be so rude.

It's just different for different people.

Could be
Trauma
Bad parenting
Overworked and stressed parents
Too much screen time
Not enough outdoor time
Limited time to explore, play and get dirty
No support for kids struggling at school (even parents can be looked down on if they help their kids by doing extra work)
Unhealthy food
Absence of secure boundaries and expectations (so many kids don't do any chores)

There doesn’t always have to be a reason. DS made his first attempt to end his life when he was 12. He didn’t even have a phone at that point so no access to social media. He had two loving parents, a nice home, no money worries, a close wider family. He had plenty of friends and was doing well at school but he still felt his life wasn’t worth living.

He’s in his early 20’s now and still struggles massively with episodes of depression.

@Iheartmysmart I understand that there isn’t always a reason in cases, I was talking more generally about society why the increase there. I am truly sorry for your son, that sounds so hard for him & for you as a family to deal with.

I work with a lot of mental health practitioners and put the same question to them. Unanimous verdict... social media.

There are loads of posts here which have described all the multiple reasons why mental health issues are on the increase amongst young people.
However the posters saying that 20/30 years ago teenagers just got on with it and it wasn't recognised in my school etc are wrong. You probably just didn't hear about it because it was a taboo subject. Believe me, adolescent psychiatric units for inpatient care have existed for almost as long as adult psychiatric units and have always been full of young people requiring support with their mental health.
I do think that decreasing stigma has also led to an increase in people saying they have depression when they don't, however I also don't think that in the main they are the kids who are accessing actual support for their mental health. Equally you could argue that thousands of people attend GP/hospital appointments every single day because they think they have x,y,z medical complaint because they've googled it...and they don't. So discussing mental health in an offhand way or self diagnosing isn't any different to what we do with our physical health regularly but because that stigma still exists, people aren't quite as comfortable with people discussing their mental health in the same way.

They are all still a bit wrong after lockdown. We live in a culture where any feelings/ behaviour is labelled. Any time a child feels worried or anxious, they label this anxiety.

I'm mid 20s so also wasn't a teen that long ago these problems have always existed , its they're just more spoken about.

Also I think we underestimate the 13 years of austerity and underfunding and what impact this has on children and teens.

It's great that genuine mental health problems are being recognised and support is now available.

However, I think one of the flipsides is that some people are very quick to label every emotion as a mental health problem.

For example, if you are feeling nervous about your upcoming job interview, that doesn't (in isolation) mean that you have anxiety. You just have a normal emotion for the situation you're in.

You are 29, how can you not be aware of the reasons? You do come across as judgmental and until you have a teenager living in this world now, not 10 years ago, you will not fully understand the pressures and struggles some of them are facing. You have to live it day in day out.

Sorry I know this may be triggering for you. I don't mean this rudely but at 12 if you are attempting suicide there must be a reason. I'm not saying it would be better at 40 either however at 12 is very young. Surely there must be something to trigger suicide so young.

Social media is all around though so even if your child doesn't have a phone. Friends will do. YouTube is another ridiculous thing the kids watch too (soul destroying).

I'm 50 now and when I was 7 I developed school phobia as a result of emetophobia and coprophobia (except nobody knew what any of it was called in the late 70s/early 80s). I lost weight, couldn't eat, cried all the time and had huge black circles under my eyes. I got into trouble for being uncooperative and was punished at home for lying.

I had no idea how to articulate what I was frightened of, and my parents and teachers were at a loss to know what was happening. Looking back I was very depressed, but what could they do? It was unheard of in children and there just wasn't the level of knowledge, expertise and information that there is now.

If I were at school now I would presumably have been referred for counselling very swiftly. I think the comprehension of how mental health matters present in children and teens now is much better now than 40 years ago, and thank God.

Do some people milk it a bit? Sure. Human nature to confabulate, especially for sympathy. But equally there are more genuine sufferers getting more educated support now than ever before.

I think there's a combination of factors really.
Yes, society is more aware of mental health, the teens themselves are more aware. I remember feeling really miserable when I was in 6th form, but didn't have a name for it. I knew about depression, but didn't think it applied to me, it was what older people had.

Social media certainly plays a big part - they see so many fake images that convince them that's how others look/live/feel they start questioning their own lives. So many girls now believe they should have ridiculous eyebrows, or eyelashes so big you can't see the rest of their face, or be super skinny and wear designer clothes. My theory is if they can't be like those images , feelings of inadequacy set in.

But the worst thing for mental health recently has been the lockdowns. Teens & children were locked in their homes (some of which would have been abusive, or dangerous, or plain unhappy) at a time they should have been learning to socialise, go out into the world on their own, get jobs... They were even told to stay in their rooms, not even seeing their families!

My own kids were very different in how they experienced it all. The older one was fine (apart from doubts over exams) going out cycling and enjoying being without a care. The younger one had so much school work piled on (that was never marked), little contact with anyone apart from us, and became so miserable she developed an eating disorder. As did several of her peers. I didn't know this at the time, only recently discovered how many of my friends children developed similar problems. Some have 'recovered', some haven't and are still struggling massively.

I honestly think the teenage generation have been the worst affected of all. So I'm not surprised there's so much talk about mental health, sadly.

Healthy neglect, I have heard it called.

I would go out after Swap Shop on a Saturday morning and not be back till tea time, about 6.00. No phones, they didn't know who I was meeting or where I was going. And neither did I actually. If the first friend I knocked for wasn't in, the mum might say "she's over the field with doodah" and I would head over to the field, or I would knock for someone else.

It wasnt perfect, but it gave us space to do stupid things we probably regretted, but we could learn from it, without it being filmed, photographed, mentioned to 10 other people and uploaded to social media for people I didn't know to take the piss out of me.

Failing education system that just indoctrinates instead of catering for the child , social media pressure , lack of services , less support within the family as people work longer and life further away from other relatives . Probably just a few causes not all by any means

Yes think you've mostly covered it, except I would add culture of fear / letting children be independent, make mistakes and take risks

What's interesting is that teens in other countries aren't all suffering the same levels of poor mental health, lots of these issues impact all Western children, so which are the ones that are causing it to be so bad in UK specifically. School system? Culture of fear? Lack of family structures?

Social media I am sure plays a part. The length of no face to face schooling in 2020 (which is entirely Boris Johnson's doing and yet another reason why he should be in prison for life) another.

Yes some milk it, some describe normal things as issues, and yes there is more diagnosis, but I suspect that is a minority.

There is a book by an American researcher, who had been tracking generational change for some time. Apparently while there are differences, they tend to be subtle. Right up until recently, when she was startled to see a huge leap in certain mh issues.

I think ultimately she said it corresponded to the increase in internet/social media/online gaming. Twenge is her last name I think, she has a few popular books on the topic.