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?

They just demonstrates a lack of understanding and empathy. Nobody is helped by being told to 'get on with it'

But sometimes they are. Depending what it is of course but so many parents shelter their kids from everything they find uncomfortable.
They don't do chores, dont need to do homework well, don't need to visit grandparents, dont help out in any capacity. Just numb themselves with screens.

Your ignorance is astounding.

Totally agree stickybackplasticbear!
My son was diagnosed with anxiety aged 9.
one of my daughters diagnosed this year with anxiety.
Ive suffered with my mental health since age 12. Diagnosed with EUPD in 2018 but ive always thought i had ASD [ high functioning asperger's) and a new psychiatrist is testing me for this now.
Was absolutely devastating seeing my son so anxious from aged 2. ( HE was our 1st born).
Someone has listed all the reasons why young people are diagnosed with mental health problems -I'm not going to repeat them.
To be honest OP, your post touched a raw nerve, I've been on anti depressants since i was 18 ( MY Mum became unwell with breast cancer then died from it!)
Please walk a mile in someone's shoes before judging. My 12 year old daughter has struggled with social media comments since starting high school.

I've done school inset training on this recently. Most recent stats are that 20% of, i think, 8-18 year olds have diagnosed anxiety. And that's without all those who struggle and aren't diagnosed. I thought it was a typo for 2%. Really couldn't believe it. But apparently not.

2011 was the start of the first bug increase in mental illness in young people apparently. Coinciding with the invention of the smart phone. They took away young people's escape, privacy and alone time.

and lack of exercise. There's research that shows that exercise impacts mental well-being positively.
Drs 'prescribe' that along with getting out in nature therapy.

XelaM - what the actual duck?!!! your lack of compassion/understanding is astounding! i hope none of your kids ever suffer with depression/anxiety. one of the most unbelievable posts ive ever read on mumsnet.

Disagree tbh. I'm damn resilient and so was my father.

I'm talking about from an early age.

I don't stress over my kids falling over unless I see a major head injury/concussion for eg. Some parents are literally pandering over a cut knee. Brush it off, walk if off, it's fine, chop chop. Kid at my daughter's tennis was in crying hysterics having been hit by a ball in the shoulder by surprise (not even hard) - Mum ended up rushing onto court and making matters x10 worse removed her from the match due to a possible fracture (!!!) My kid slipped during a rally and cut open her leg on a hard court- carried on playing and simply wiped the blood away at change of ends. Politely asked for a plaster. Even the coach commented to me thank god there's one kid who's not so bloody dramatic and over emotional.

We created these weak children who then have turned into weak 20 and 30 somethings.

I'm proud to be resilient. There's worst things happened to people but we over sympathise and over indulge all the time.

I agree with the job thing too. At 14/15 I was working Saturdays and at 16 I worked part time around college.

These days places don’t seem interested in taking on anyone under 16 often even 18. So even opportunities to earn for themselves and gain some work ethic is lacking.

Totally agree clement. Some of these posts are so lacking in compassion and understanding. Makes me mad! 2 out of my 3 children suffer from anxiety. Some posters on mumsnet should walk a mile in someone's shoes before commenting!!!
And that's me being polite!

Social media. Lockdown. Under funded services. Poor /absence of permanent housing. More awareness.

@Swrigh1234 i agree with you 100%. I was a nurse during the pandemic so I understood the risks of Covid but I was completely uncomfortable with the isolation of the young & healthy “for the greater good”.

I want to just mention the absolute obtuseness of some PP here. Just because I said I didn’t suffer with anxiety/depression doesn’t mean that I didn’t think it exists. I was purely asking if this was a diagnosed mental health condition or a normal feeling of being anxious for something or upset about a normal thing to be upset about, previously mentioned by other PPs. I’m sorry if this post has triggered some people that have teens suffering from genuine poor mental health, this wasn’t intended to accuse anyone, more to understand the differences between teens with genuine mental health concerns & labelling everything as a mental health problem instead of normal teenage emotions. I completely understand that there are many teens with mental health problems.

Poverty is a massive cause. In the last 13 years people have got poorer and poorer.

Not having enough food to eat definitely fucks your mental health.

Ahh, yes all those lads fighting in the war came out of it so well!

Being told to pull your socks is fine in some circumstances but obnoxious and dangerous in others!

I agree with the thought though. I was in school through the early 00s and it was totally different. While social media wasn’t the same there was still lots of mobile usage, people texted all the time, used msn every day, used MySpace then Facebook so it wasn’t some digital black hole.
But there wasn’t this concept of constant mental illness in teens. No one skipped out on exams because of anxiety, no one in my year went through ‘school refusal’ etc … what was the difference between then and now? Are things so different or was it just treated differently then.
I don’t even know if covid was really to blame because I think the situation was largely the same 5 years ago.

While I think there's something in resilience and stiff upper lip behaviour, I think it's reductive to say "people in the old days had to fight wars, what would they say about you!"

WW1 and WW2 were horribly traumatic and caused mass trauma that's still feeding down into the world today.

Men didn't just march off bravely without a second thought - there was no choice!

I’m pretty sure there was shit food and social media 10 years ago.

I don’t think it’s more prevalent now, we just talk about it. Which is a good thing, for the most part.

I had depression all through my teens (in the 2000s) and didn’t realise this until I was trying to understand my childhood trauma some 15 years later. I think if I had been a teen now, I would have been able to recognise what I was going through as depression and perhaps sought help.

Pretty sure many people had bad MH after both world wars but it was not diagnosed or discussed but people were encouraged to put up and shut up.

Same thing with physical I'll health.

Exactly.

my Dad worked in one of the old asylums. He treated many men with “shell shock” the men sent to war very much did suffer afterwards. Understandably so!

It seems that some people like to trivialise certain manifestations of anxiety and depression. If it's not deemed 'bad' enough, a good proverbial kick up the arse should suffice. Why on earth do complete strangers think they can make judgments about these things? They have no idea what is going on in another person's head or, indeed, their life. A small cut needs to be treated or it could become infected and turn into something bigger and more serious. Why can we not see mental health problems in the same way? DS2 was diagnosed with OCD in October 2022. He is just starting CBT now after a huge delay. I look back at when he was diagnosed and think life was pretty good then - manageable, relatively normal - now it's a living nightmare because his problems have snowballed out of control in ways I never could have imagined.

I think we should always listen when someone says they are struggling, rather than compare their situation with victims of war or abuse and say they don't have it that bad in comparison. Other people's problems being worse does not negate yours, nor does it make them go away.

There is far more UPF eaten now than ten years ago, and there is far more poverty, and far more social media, and far less money spent on education, and far less social work, and far less on youth services, far less on drug services and far fewer good job prospects after school.

But yeah, otherwise, just the same as ten years ago.

OP, that's interesting that you are a nurse. What do you think of your colleagues who take time off with stress etc As you can see in the reports (FROM the NHS press office) and the ONS Mental health issues account for a huge number of days off work in the NHS?
Do you think some of your colleagues last resilience?

Lack of freedom, lack of safe outdoor spaces, and lack of good judgement about safe spaces by parents (MN is generally staggeringly risk averse).

Children benefit hugely from (apparently) unsupervised outdoor play. Which is no surprise, because that's how little monkey and chimp babies grow up, and that's what we are, essentially.

But a combination of poor availability of safe outdoor spaces, poor parental latitude, and screentime indoors means that kids aren't getting that fundamental time outside in the early years that really stimulates healthy brain development and self-regulation.

Do you think there's an element of learnt behaviour?
You and both your kids?

See that’s where you are completely wrong, COVID did not effect everyone’s mental health at all, that is all media scare mongering.

To answer the question as someone who actually works in children’s mental health, the increase is due in part to, in no particular order, social media, poor parenting, parenting responses too COVID and lockdown and the instant gratification society that exists now.

While children and young people have always experienced MH difficulties the response in society now is inappropriate.
Just how many time have you heard people say “I’ve got anxiety” ? Well of course you have it’s a perfectly normal emotion.
Its like saying, I’ve got the sadness. Joe Public have become MH experts liking to diagnose and medicalise every possible normal reaction.

Online bullying is huge and relentless, just how many parents on here monitor their children’s phones on a regular basis, who are they chatting to and what is being said.
Young people do not have the brain development to make their own decisions in many case but so many parents have such strong opinions about their right to privacy and therefore have no idea what’s going on.

Ive said this many times in here, what specialist MH services consider significant issues and what parents/ Joe Public consider are generally very different. So it’s not always the case that derives are struggling it’s more the case that the distribution for the mild to moderate are more sparse depending on where you live.