To agree with Wes Streeting's statement that MH issues are overdiagnosed?

[Locutus2000]

Pretty controversial stuff.

Who decides?

What an absolute shit show of mental healh conditions the world has become. There is no hope for us. This country has literally gone fucking mental.

If you meant support at school, the problem is that all children need child centred learning, we all learn 'differently' given we all have different learning styles. The problem with our education system is that one size is meant to fit all, there are lots of NT children who also struggle at school because of this system

There's a huge amount of romanticising of the past here. Life as a pre-industrial peasant dependent on subsistence farming would have been absolutely shit. I can't imagine anyone (who actually understood what it meant) swapping today's lower income lifestyle for it.

I think people are just all very different and expectations need to be managed. I heard someome with adhd received pip and that is surely not right. Yes if combined with serious mh issues but not on it's own.

There is too much info available, everyone googles and decides that thay have anxiety, or they have adhd. It is no wonder PIP is being reviewed and that is absolutely appalling for those with serious and significant disabilities.

Resilience is an underrated quality, and we do our kids a huge favour by helping them to develop it.

He’s not a talker? No that’s probably because he’s been on the spectrum as you put it all of his life and finds talking to a stranger terrifying. Same goes for him missing appointments, people have to understand that ND people don’t respond well to strangers and any form of therapy that is usually used just won’t work the same for them. It wasn’t one event that would have changed his life, he’s probably always struggled but it became more apparent after the death of his mother.

It was undoubtedly difficult, but people were temperamentally more suited to it and just got on with it. Plus they had religion and their families close by. It was physically harder, but not necessarily mentally harder. Don't underestimate the value of religion in their lives. It gives people a completely different mindset when it comes to suffering, hardship and death.

Completely dramatic.

I cant remember the name of the book now, something like Hubbub or similar, basically its about the fact that all through history people dont really like being around other people and the noise and chaos they bring.

I remember a really striking bit of the book, a description by the writer of the day, perhaps in the 1700s or 1800s, describing this awful cacophony of noise, the horses and carts rolling through the streets, the street sellers crying their wares, the building works going on, babies crying constantly, people living on top of each other, no privacy, animals making noise.

It always has been.

Parents are 'self diagnosing' things like adhd because the assessment waiting lists are absolutely huge and their children are suffering in the meantime. Assuming that your child is ND and approaching it as such is often the only way to see any improvement in family life. People think ND is overdiagnosed, but the reality is that 80% of autistic females are undiagnosed at the age of 18. And ND people of both sexes are around 7 times more likely to die by suicide compared to their neurotypical peers. Families like mine are genuine - we self diagnosed because dd has been on the autism assessment pathway now for 4 years and we've just paid privately for ds's adhd assessment because he has GCSEs in two years and deserves the same chances of success as his NT friends.

Totally agree . It's all raise awareness/get rid of the stigma. Well newsflash there isn't a stigma re mh issues as everyone nowadays has one.

Teach kids it's ok not to be ok. Give them tools and strategies to manage their emotions so that then the ones with actual mental health problems can be helped sooner.

If they want to get people into productive lifestyles then how do they do that?

It wouldn't be easy to adapt from having TVs and indoor plumbing, sure, but they actually worked less at that time (both hours in the day and number of days in total), had an enormous sense of belonging to their community and got to spend a lot of time with their families and friends, and actually mostly had a really good diet. Swings and roundabouts.

I think it is very complex - an ever expanding psychology industry contributing to pathologising normal responses is a factor.

A difficulty is that diagnosis is subjective - how does a doctor decide who is very unwell and who is thinking that a normal response to any stress is depression and anxiety.

I also think Covid had a significant impact on people and that poverty, education, insecure housing, insecure employment (the list goes on) impacts mental health.

I work with unemployed youth and just about every one of them declare that they have depression and anxiety. I suspect that one of the changes will be that if awarded LWCRA that a person will still have to do work prep activities tailored to the individual.

Absolutely, but their needs are not taken seriously due to the focus on ND, abd just expected to get on with it. Just had parents evening, told my daughter isnt making as fast progress as expected, she has potential to do much better' Our response 'OK, please tell us what strategies school will be putting in place to support her, so we can continue/reinforce these at home?'. Their response 'oh, we don't have capacity to help her as she doesn't have an ehcp, we just thought you should know so you aren't shocked by her test results'.
So they have resigned an able child to the underachieving bracket, just because she doesn't have a diagnosis. Luckily, we can afford tutoring, but many others can't, and their learning needs are not being met.

Sorry, rant over!

That's up to employers, but given the regular descriptions of bullying by managers and the problem of finding work in the first place, I'm not sure it's going to be easy.

I feel there's a lot of projection here. I think it's much more likely people were too busy trying not to starve to death to worry about much else. Life expectancy was low. They were just trying to survive another day.

However I do agree that religion provided a sense of meaning and hope of life after death that was valuable. While I'm acutely aware of the problems it entails, we have lost a lot in abandoning it.

Quick, we need money for war! Target the vulnerable but first a smear campaign so no one objects!

Oh my dd is resilient. She has bags of it. Like most ND young people. She has battled autism, adhd, dyspraxia sensory processing, SH, CPTSD ,suicidal idealisation and several attempts, crippling Anorexia and force feeding, EDS, depression , anxiety and many many hospital admissions. She is fighting all of it and wants a career but it takes time and requires expert treatment and an understanding of ND. Unfortunately ND people
are let down massively by the nhs and the education system. Like many my daughter was and it exacerbated her struggles.

ND young people are hugely resilient. Every day is a lesson in resilience. Ditto those battling mental illness. So do us all a favour and do stop with the lazy lack of resilience bull shit.

You have a point on community, perhaps, but their diets were monotonous and deadly dull. Imagine today's youth surviving on turnips, carrots, cheese and bread (or similar). Disease was everywhere and there was no respite and minimal healthcare. Death was everywhere. Let's be true to reality here.

DP had a mental breakdown which was just the latest in a string, which left him unable to speak real sentences, every word that came out of his mouth was utter confabulations.
He has a very patchy memory of it and the hospital let him self discharge as he managed to get the sentence "I want to leave" out of his mouth despite being in an extreme state of mental distress.

I was sure something else was going on. I asked if he could be referred to neurology, was told no because it's a long wait list and it would just be a waste of the neurologists time, and this was psychological. I asked if we could see a psychiatrist then and was told no because this is clearly just generalised panic disorder, anxiety and depression, collect this prescription for venlafaxine and be on your way.

Every time he has had a turn or been showing the same pre-crisis signs I've taken him back to the doctor and begged for some help from a psychiatrist and get told no.

When he is having these episodes he says it feels like time stands still and the only way to leave is suicide so I'm very concerned he will just become another statistic.

I do think in his case he has anxiety and depression but as a secondary condition to whatever the fuck is going on that nobody will investigate. I think if that was cleared up, there'd be no anxiety or depression, but they'd rather treat the symptoms not the person.

And you've hit the nail on the head. Focusing on not starving to death (physical hardship) means the mind isn't wandering around developing neuroses about other things so they literally didn't have the bandwidth to end up like us - neurotic, anxious, depressed nervous wrecks.

When are you talking about. Because people who worked the land tended to work from day light to sunset, very very long hours in the summer and pretty long now, back breaking work, fulled by pottage and not much else

There was no such thing as a 'weekend' it didnt exist, although people were expected to go to church on Sundays.

How do you know they don't have anxiety? I experienced severe anxiety and chronic panic attacks in my teens that was essentially put down as "teenage behaviour". It wasn't. I'm now 26 and have struggled with agoraphobia for years. I wish I had been taken more seriously at 13, 14 than I was.

Agree with this

You do realise that managing emotions is hugely difficult for children with ND and not something you can just tell ND kids to do. Many people struggling with MH are ND.