What's happened to young people? Can parents give me insight.

[EveningSpread]

I work in Higher Education, and I'm increasingly worried about young people.

So far this year, I've encountered more students than usual who:

• say they are unable to attend classes due to anxiety
• who are afraid of being in classes
• who won't speak when spoken to by staff or other students
• who say they find getting on a bus and getting to class to overwhelming
• who find the thought of doing their work so stressful that they can't cope
• who don't come to classes due to family parties / their hamster dying / waking up late (to name the reasons I've had just this morning) and expect you to fix what they've missed - in other words, who seem totally immature and unprepared for life (a different problem to the other things above, perhaps)

Obviously we express sympathy, reassure, and explain that they need to access the help that will enable them to function - to enjoy life, succeed on their degree, and get a job afterwards. (So the wellbeing services, and their GP.) Often the reassurance really helps. But equally a lot of these students don't cope at University. I'm sure this problem is exacerbated by the fact that I work in an institution that attracts students from postcodes with multiple indices of deprivation.

Part of me hopes that mental health issues are sometimes exaggerated or even an excuse, as an increasingly large percentage of my students seem essentially afraid to leave the house -- which would be much worse than them just trying it on/being a bit lazy! It's great that we have a language to talk about mental health now, but it's hard to know how/when to tell people that (a) they are responsible for improving their own mental health so they can function in the world, and (b) experiencing some mild discomfort and difficulty, such as being nervous around new people, is normal and crucial to development.

But I'm left wondering: how are parents coping with their young people if these are the miserable lives they're living? If they're not going to classes, are scared to leave the house, and can't function?

So AIBU, or is this problem getting worse? What can parents of roughly 16-20 year olds tell me? Are we still dealing with the legacies of COVID? What's the word on the street among young people about mental health these days?

Excellent post-Could have written that myself!

Parents stop indulging this bullshit

There are studies into the impact on mental health after the Spanish Flu Pandemic 1918-20. Also the Black Death had long term effects on society.

www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/spanish-flu-pandemic-and-mental-health-historical-perspective

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7986373/

I don't know where you've got this idea from. I was born 1946; traumatised parents/siblings (cf bombing of cities, horrendous war experiences), rationing post war for years ie very little in shops, 56 in my class at Primary school ( and this was in a good, maybe the best primary school in Manchester), many schools in cities couldn't get teachers and my ' unqualified teacher' cousin taught 90 in a class in Salford.)

Unequal pay so eg women teachers earning much less than men; women working in eg banks sacked when they married; women unable to get a loan or a mortgage; discrimination against girls re 11+ so girls who passed much higher than boys sent to Secondary Mods; most children ( 70% +? ) sent to Secondary Moderns School so couldn't take any exams, brutality in schools, universities routinely discriminated v women so eg a low 'quota' for women entering a Medical Degree course; Oxbridge having roughly 10 times the number of colleges for men as women; no reliable contraception, no legal abortions; no jab v polio etc for years so more disabled children; appalling housing eg back to backs common; many/most households didn't have mod cons so no fridges, washing machines, central heating, cars, foreign holidays, indoor loos; long working hours so many/most worked eg Sat am; poor health and safety regs, discrimination rife v minorities and women; many jobs gave no pensions at all, etc.

This is not having everything handed to you on a plate.

IMO the media caused mass hysteria. It encouraged people to take jabs and observe the lockdowns, which no doubt saved a lot of lives, but then the deadliness of the virus had been somewhat exaggerated in the first place...

I think you have it in a nutshell. I think that the use of screens fed off Covid too, because that's what we were all left to rely on for human contact. And I think a lot of young people never got back to the face-to-face thing (my 20 yr old is a case in point, only really going out to go to uni or PT job).

I follow a page for parents on uni students and I've noticed how many parents are posting concerned about how their YP isn't settling in and wants to come home! I'm shocked at the lack of resilience tbh but we've done everything for them to the extent that some of them just can't cope and are unwilling to stick at it. Uni drop out rates are crazy! That wouldn't have happened back in the day - it would have been the exception. You would never have wanted to let your parents down by giving up and you had pride in the fact you'd got to uni in the first place.

Now, we have open days and taster days, and parents and offspring spend time sussing out unis. When I applied, I didn't see any one of the five I applied to. When I went to uni, the first time I saw the place was when a schoolfriend and I had to go there to find accommodation, as we hadn't got into halls. When we got off the train, we had to ask what direction we needed to take for the uni!

I don't remember in my 4 years anyone wobbling or wanting to go home, bar one girl whose mother had taken her life and she was already suffering serious mental health issues prior to uni.

It seems that the more YP get, the more difficult they find it to thrive?

I don't think it was - have you seen the stats?

Two words: social media.

edited to add four words: social media, screen addiction

Obviously. We heard the stats every day during the pandemic.

Access to smartphones and internet…. Not socialising enough in the real world with peers. I’m listening to an interesting book called---- “the anxious generation” all about Gen Z and how things started changing for children growing up. Smartphones, less free play etc

Well said @ElizaMulvil. The deluded who rail against the 'Boomer' generation just are totally ignorant of the reality.

Imagine a YP asking to use your loo now, and directing them to a smelly, 'dry' toilet in the back yard???!!

I think a lot in the UK forget the early scenes in Italy, and how devastating that would have been in the UK. How insulated the general public was from the scenes in UK hospitals at the height of the pandemic. It allowed many uncritical thinkers the luxury of conspiracy theories.

I am not sure if younger have more mental health issues that previous generation. I think every generation has issues, it manifest different. For example the silent generation had lot issues but they kept it within. The baby boomer deals with problems differently to millennials. I think it reasonable to say all the generation I mentioned had more socialisation with our peers than the current younger generation. I think think accounts for the difference in mental health and there is less need for the stiff upper. I think younger generation don't the need to be as stoic as older generations. I am a millennial - I think we have access to our emotions but probably more resilient than the current generations. I think possibly may have gone to far as accepting mental health problem as excuses. We need to strike a balance.

Well then you should be in no doubt that the stats were not exaggerated, particularly taking into consideration that these were in tandem with lockdowns!

Do peopl not realise that the flu is also deadly to elderly and vulnerable people?

See above.

Absolutely!

“It seems that the more YP get, the more difficult they find it to thrive?“

@Runnerinthenight agree with this completely (as well as the entirety of your previous few posts!). From a workplace standpoint I would say the current young work generation are almost unable to ‘strive’. If something is hard, they give up easily. If they have to research something and do more than ask Google they struggle. If they’re worried about something then it’s obviously a sign they shouldn’t/don’t have to do it.

Yes, that is why we have flu vaccination. We didn't have any protection when the pandemic began and for a long while after.

Thankfully now we also have Covid vaccination. I am having mine in a couple of weeks.

Your point is?

Wow I didn't expect so many replies when I checked back in! Thank you so much everyone. Hearing all these stories and views is so valuable.

I agree with what many say about the difficulties young people face, and it's good to be reminded what the world might look and feel like to a lot of them.

At the same time, I share many peoples' feelings that there have been massive shifts in expected behaviour and emotion processing - with some good aspects and clearly some bad, too. Resilience is low, worry is high, diagnoses are up.

One thing I'll certainly take away from this is to ask struggling students more about how they coped while they were at school/college - as they clearly attended then or would have failed/got fines etc - ad how they managed to get to University. And try to help them to see that if they could do it then, they can do it now too.

One of the most useful and difficult aspects of all these replies is being reminded how different peoples' experiences and responses are. It's an obvious point, but it means individuals require different approaches. Academic staff simply don't have the time to learn enough about them all to help them, nor ought we to enter a therapeutic relationship with them as we're not qualified. We have to point students in the direction of wellbeing services or the GP, even though this sometimes feels like passing the buck.

I think one of the things I struggle most with is how to help those students who seem very, very young or to want a lot of hand-holding. I'm used to students who want to present as grown ups and have fun, and it's so sad that these seem to be dwindling. They should be having fun and enjoying life, and so many of them just seem crippled with worry. I try not to condescend to them, but reassure them that one great thing about getting older is that you give fewer shits!!!

We're turning into the society depicted in Walle.E

Flu was the pandemic we prepared for.

It was the only pandemic we prepared for, and that's why the UK response to Covid was so shambolic.

The world can be a cruel and threatening place, as is all too apparent from media that lays it all out there. It isn’t really suited to us and it seems to me that youngsters are very sensibly deciding they don’t want to engage with it. They are not wrong and any sensible person would suffer from anxiety too.

It’s covid, but it’s more than just covid, it’s a general lack of socialisation.

I hear “my child had a great social life online” so often. But sitting on your own in your bedroom silently typing to invisible people is not a social life. They just do not have the skills to cope.

18 year olds today were born in 2006. What came out in 2007? iphones. And in 2010, when they were 4? Ipads.

These young people and all the ones younger than them have grown up being ignored by everyone around them having their noses buried in a screen. And when they acted up, they were given a screen to distract them. They have not been to the park, to their friends houses, to the town centre or shops even half as much as their patents generation have. Probably not even a quarter as much.

They just cannot cope with the social and real-world demands of everyday life.

Not only the UK. Most of the rest of the world were in the same boat and acted similarly.