AIBU to think there is abuse of “mental health”

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As a supposed educator (my role has become solely classroom management) in further education focused on 15-17 year olds who have disengaged from school, I and my colleagues are being manipulated daily with young people who when challenged on standard engagement, attendance, basic decent behaviour and attempts to participate in any work cite mental health issues. They are then engaging with the many support services internally and being excused from any elements of being a student while receiving significant amounts of cash regardless of commitment. AIBU to think we have created a generation of excuses and a dire lack of commitment and resilience?

Of course she isn’t in the wrong job FFS. She’s observing a trend in her told which is what good educators do.

yes OP - same where I work. I have one who throws themselves on the floor regularly and feigns seizures to get out of situations. It’s highly worrying.

It's probably time you changed careers.

No I am in the right career thanks. I am frustrated listening to those with real mental health problems ask why we are allowing some of the behaviours including some students openly stating their intention to deceive to avoid any engagement or participation. I will continue to advocate and support and utilise all I have to those in need utilising my own experience of poor mental health including a formal C-PTSD diagnosis of many years. If anyone truly believes there is not teenagers who play the system, have zero interest in learning a single thing is genuinely in need of opening their minds to how society actually is.

Tbh I'm less worried about fakers, it's more that so many young people truly believe their hype.
Mild discomfort, entirely understandable normal level nerves for things like public speaking say are treated like huge mental health crisis but also with no real work to improve.

What are your medical qualifications that enable you to diagnose mental health and ill health?

Yep absolutely. You can see on here OP that people with experience are in total agreement with you. There is a huge increase in mental health issues alongside a huge increase in malingering, benefit fraud and manipulation of the systems by young people and their families to get what they want. Whether that’s PIP, exam dispensation or as many vape breaks as they want.

it used to just be ‘fuck this I’m off for a fag’. Now it’s ’I need to vape because of my mental health’ in the middle of a lesson.

And no, I’m not in the wrong profession either. I’m bloody brilliant at my job but I won’t allow this kind of behaviour because my job is to get the best outcomes for these young people. pandering to bullshit behaviour is not going to help them.

And of course we support those with genuine MH issues. They are almost invariably the ones who don’t shout about it all over the place.

As a mum of an ASD 11yr old girl who suffers with extreme anxiety (diagnosed by paeds) and who is currently under going camhs assessment as she has suicidal thoughts, this thread really saddens me...

What hope does she have if she meets the judgement and ignorance of some people within the education system... and wider society who think that everything is a 'label' or 'putting it on'

Agreed. It's also a pass to avoid workplace policies on absence. Self certification for a week with Mental health issues.

No one in the education system thinks that ‘everything is a label or putting it on’. No one one here has said that. There is a VERY clear distinction between those who clearly have very valid issues and get as much support as they can and those who don’t have valid issues.

The time that I spend having to sit with the child faking their seizure for the 20th time this term is time away from helping children like your child. And that’s just one example.

Clearly if that child is "faking their seizure for the 20th time" then that would indicate the child does have an issue... Whether you deem that to be a behavioural issue is fairly irrelevant. It's an issue which needs addressed and supported nonetheless.

I'm not saying teachers have the time or even the correct training to be dealing with a multitude of problems you will face, but the education system as a whole needs radical shake up and adequate funding. I feel like children who are coming from disadvantaged backgrounds are scapegoated to an extent. These kids face addiction issues, DV etc so it's no surprise they exhibit issues when at school. There is no answer to the problem currently which is why we face the issues we face.

As teaching professionals, what do you want to see going forward? Is there a solution?

YANBU. I mentor young single mothers - meet them, usually in their homes once a week for a couple of hours to support parenting. I am genuinely horrified by the way so many of them live.

All three of them feel that getting a job would be too stressful. They don’t have to get a job to survive because they get enough money to exist on from various grants and benefits - which would be fine if they were freeed up to parent reasonably - but they mostly sit round in grimy, untidy houses, staring at their phones and doing the absolute minimum of interacting with their children. I am not supposed to tidy / clean / cook / wash - rather to advise and support - but I can’t help myself…

I do understand that they don’t have the confidence and networks and role models for a nicer life. But the system seems to be enabling such a miserable existence. No one dreams of their children living on fast food and scrolling their life away in squalor because they feel too tired + stressed by existing to work / tidy… their lives are worth so so much more than this. Straight talking isn’t considered fair, reducing financial support risks further depriving children, further medical justification of their choices seems more enabling.

I don’t know what the solution is - but what we have at the moment seems like a culture of self inflicted downward spiral for so many people.

I agree. I am a long term sufferer of (diagnosed) general anxiety, social phobia and agoraphobia. I’ve been in and out of therapy and some days are better than others. I work, I try not to use my MH as an excuse; the only time it’s really ever come up is needing to book weekly therapy appointments but even then they’re as early as possible so I’m around an hour late to work one day a week.

What really grates on me is the nonchalant “XYZ gives me anxiety” something totally normal and mundane, but doing or engaging with it anyway because in actuality they don’t have out of the ordinary, heightened anxiety.. they just have the normal, human amount of anxiety. Like everyone else.

It’s almost as if it’s become ‘trendy’ to be mentally unwell, which is just bizarre.

I’d give anything to not feel completely exhausted with my own thoughts every single day. And then I watch people joke and laugh about it online and in person and I just think fuck off tbh 😂

Time and resources are being taken away from your dd and other young people with genuine MH problems because of the ones who are 'putting it on'.

You might think that we can't possibly tell the difference between the students who are genuinely struggling and those that are just trying to get out of doing any work. But many of the students who are putting on don't even bother to hide it, they talk openly about it within earshot of staff, they think it's funny. We'd all prefer to be putting our time and effort into supporting the students who actually need it, but we can't because there are too many playing the system.

what we have at the moment seems like a culture of self inflicted downward spiral for so many people

Couldn't agree more, that’s exactly what it is. Added to which, a culture of competitive victimhood and oppression Olympics is making it less desirable to strive for anything.

Overuse is an odd choice of words. How do you know these people don’t have these conditions?

your daughter is diagnosed. The issue is people that say they have mental health problems when really they don’t.

If you're for real, you shouldn't be working with these young people.

I’d like to see the evidence about benefit fraud and PIP. Benefit fraud is actually quite low and PIP notoriously hard to get, especially for mental health issues.

100% agree.

When you look down at your own hands and you're not sure who's they are, after a debilitating anxiety attack, then you will know what real anxiety is. Especially when the "hangover" feels like psychosis for months.

It's not being socially uncomfortable in a crowd, or worrying about an interview.

It's electric shocks in your brain

It's depersonalisation

It's not recognising your own family

It's the blood flooding your limbs

It's the jerking body movements

It's knowing you'll never be the same

It's absolutely horrendous and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

There have always been fakers of illnesses.
I agree with another comment that the real issue is those who believe they have poor mental health when what they are feeling is normal. I have been at social occasions where someone is chatting to various people including people they do not know, and then drop in that they have social anxiety. They mean they get nervous about going new places and meeting new people, this is normal.

I always find it interesting on MN how so many people see suicide ideation as an emergency mental health issue. It can be if someone really is close to suicide. But lots of times it simply means - I do not want to feel this way. It can simply be a sign of being miserable.

And CAHMS is not about helping children cope with shit parents and a shit home life. Children can be unhappy and act out because they have parents who do not meet their needs, but this is not the same as having mental health issues.

Social anxiety can also be chatting all evening and then going home and wanting to kill yourself because you couldn’t stop talking, ruminating over every word you’ve said, imagining everyone despises you and thinks you are a fool and spending the next two days in bed because you can’t face anyone. It’s not always what you see. Masking really is a thing.

THIS. So much.

Social skills are a muscle. Use them less and they wither.

@arbitary that sounds more like low self esteem than social anxiety.

Sometimes the issue is one of people knowingly and cynically faking MH issues.

In other cases, it's more subtle; people are getting stuck in what Alice Evans and Jon Haidt have called "negative feedback loops" where their social skills get worse due to not spending enough time with other people, making RL contact more scary, the lack of RL contact and excessive screentime worsens the mental health issues and poor social skills still further and causes the person to clutch at screentime still more as a way of getting through the day... rinse and repeat. It's genuinely felt, the person is not "faking it" as such, but the way they are being told by society to deal with the problem is not helping them and making it worse.

I agree. Avoidance is the worst thing you can do for anxiety.