I wonder how many of our teens are mentally ill?

[minifingerz]

Reading some of the other threads on this board and my heart is breaking for other parents who are going through what I went through with dd for 4 years. She is 16 now, and no longer aggressive and impossible to live with as she was between 12 and 16. But she is mentally ill, so life is still hard. No more shouting, breaking things and being violent. And she goes to college and does her work, but she is so very sad and I'm frightened for her.

She was seen at a specialist hospital last week for assessment, referred there by CAMHS after 3 years of on-off (mainly off) family therapy, and then CBT failed to improve things. After having been made to feel that we could resolve our problems with dd through family therapy, we now find out that dd's problems go way, way beyond that. She has been diagnosed with PTSD, treatment resistant depression, a deficit of empathy, conduct disorder, body dysmorphia, and possibly a personality disorder. I feel absolutely gutted that we struggled on for four years without a diagnosis, and experienced so much trauma, which has damaged our other two children and impacted on our health.

All those years when we were going to CAMHS wringing our hands and saying 'why is she behaving like this?' in pieces over how utterly unbearable her behaviour was, and being assured that although dd was depressed and anxious, there was nothing fundamentally wrong, and that we needed to learn how to manage her behaviour....

Is it that CAMHS is inadequate for children with complex difficulties? Or are so many teens behaving in very challenging ways at home that really hideous and abusive behaviour towards parents and siblings is now being seen as part of the spectrum of normal teen behaviour rather than a sign of severe emotional disturbance?

Anyway, sorry to witter on, but I feel so sorry reading all the posts on the board at the moment. to all of you going through hard times with your teens.

I typed many replies to Lanark which I've deleted! I've decided not to comment on her gothic, faux misery comparison!

I'd also point out that my dc's and the dc's she knows who are also struggling emotionally are a million miles away from the gothy, miserable, but creative and educationally engaged teens you are thinking of. My dd's problems have resulted in her leaving secondary with almost no qualifications, have damaged her physical health and have left her with an uncertain future. I was one of the teens you describe, but I was able to work and study and was politically and socially engaged. My dd is nothing like that.

I'm really quite offended by the idea that someone thinks there are parents like me out there pathologising normal teen behaviour.

She doesn't have a clue. :-(

Me too mini.

Lanark2, are you saying that teenagers mental health is being over diagnosed and treated? From what I've seen it is quite the reverse and many parents on mumsnet have had huge problems getting any kind of mental health intervention for kids who really need it. My DD has not got a formal diagnosis of a "disorder" and I agree with the point this diagnosis is not necessarily helpful. Her condition still warrants professional help though, because she does not enjoy being anxious, miserable and having suicidal thoughts. Are we to ignore teenagers who are self harming and/or suicidal rather than getting them help?

So sorry to hear about your DD’s troubles minifingerz. I remember some of your earlier threads and how hard it was to get any kind of help. It sounds very complex but I’m glad that there’s at least a bit more clarity around some of her issues and I hope some better help on the way through this specialist assessment.

Is there something about family life now that is making our children more at risk of mental illness, or at least less resilient? Is it the same in other countries?

My experience might be a bit out of date now, but I taught teens in Southern Europe in the 00s. In all the schools I taught in, pupils were expected to attain very high grades at IGCSE and speak fluent English by age 16.

In one particular country, you couldn't really get a job without an FCE in English. So there was a lot of academic pressure. Grades were so important. The school days started at 7.30am and finished at 2pm. Many of the pupils would also go to classes at an "afternoon school" for a few hours at 4pm.

However, there was nowhere near the level of mental health problems we now seem to have in the UK. I had maybe three or four girls with anorexia at 17, but those were in locations where there was quite a substantial beach culture.

My pupils were happy and lively. I still keep in contact with many of them through facebook, and now they are in their early to mid twenties and doing phenomenal things.

I have wondered for years why the youth experience for these young people was so different to mine and young British people today -- and I'm afraid that I think a lot of the problem is the lifestyle and culture in Britain itself.

To list the factors would take thousands of words. I suspect a lot of it is the environment and culture created by industrialisation, then post-industrialisation. Then there is the weather and climate. Then there is the dearth of venues for young people's cultures. Then there's the traffic. Then there's the breakdown of communities and the economic factors that separate extended families. Then there is the dangers to young people inherent in Britain these days.

To be concise about it, the easiest way to explain it is to say that my pupils lived in a "village" environment with a "village" ethos, even though they, in many cases, actually lived in a town or small city. They had an extraordinary amount of freedom. At 13/14, they would go down to the local cafe with their friends and stay until 8pm at night, just drinking soft drinks or coffees. There were never any fights or bad behaviour. At weekends, they would go with their friends to the beach, or go-karting, or to a cafe for lunch, or to a swimming pool -- and not come back until 7pm.

There was also a family-friendly social culture. On a Saturday evening, entire families would go out to cafes and restaurants, including grandparents, so when the teens wanted to go off with their friends, the environment was safe and, because there were so many people around that the young people knew, the environment policed itself.

Of course, this isn't the case in Britain. The culture, environment, weather etc dictates that young teens cannot really do this. Their freedom is quite curtailed because it just isn't safe. So I suspect many young Brits start to turn inwards, and their only perspective on the wider world comes through the media, digital or otherwise -- I suspect this is a prime foundation for the development of disordered thinking.

Werksall - I really like your analysis.

Some really good points there, I think also we have a very 'deferential is good' society, where instead of seeing development in a person s character, we by reflex, see a movement away from deference and conformity. This is even evident in school bullying, and many teens see telling people what to do and who to be, and pushing others down as acceptable developmental behaviour because of our deferential, more in charge = socially better' level and status driven society.

Teens are moving out of who they were into who they are. Many parents, schools friendship groups etc can try to bully teens back to who they were or who theses groups think they should be. In a deferential society, plus the media versions of conformity either reinforcing or conflicting with these. We have even more conflict as Internet culture is about developing massively using a more open extended culture, yet teens can come back to an immediate real life world that treats them as if their thoughts and ideas haven't developed, and this is stressful as hell.

Lanark with all due respect you seem to be on a different wave length to the rest of us. We are not talking about stifled teens who would be freed by a new punk movement and frankly your talk of 'goth' and faux-miserable is pretty insulting to those of us who have young people whose misery has absolutely nothing 'faux' about it and who are struggling against a very real and soul destroying desire to be dead much of the time. They are not ill because they are being forced to conform, indeed, many of them would like nothing better than to feel they could conform. Your post has actually made me quite angry.
Werksall - I think you've made a really interesting comparison. I do think my own children and those I've worked with have suffered massively from a lack of freedom which erodes their self confidence in being able to manage their own lives. I do wish there were some really good cross cultural studies on this. Thanks Mini for starting this thread - it's made me really think (which has been a nice change from worrying).

minfingerz and clare

The freedom aspect has always struck me because it was so pronounced. More so because a few years ago, I watched a documentary on British youths going utterly wild in somewhere like Kavos. The programme makers interviewed a Greek taxi driver and he said that he thought the British youths' problem was that they had no freedom at home in Britain so when they came to Kavos and tasted a bit of freedom, they just couldn't handle it.

I also think it is interesting to point out that, in the vast majority of cases for the country where you couldn't get a job without an FCE, the mothers of my pupils worked full time and property was expensive. So I don't subscribe to the argument that working mothers are part of the problem, nor that the high cost of living is somehow a contributing factor.

I guess my feeling is that, in Britain, our society and culture is pretty toxic to young people in a way it wasn't in, say, the 1960s. Indeed, I think our society and culture is pretty disastrous for almost everyone. I also suspect this toxicity could be to blame for the high rates of binge drinking in Britain.

I also wonder whether British children and teens are being kept "young" for too long. Back in my day, which isn't that long ago (I'm only 40), it was pretty normal for a 14 year old to get a job at the weekends for pin money. That seems to have completely died a death in my area now, even thought the socio-economic demographics haven't changed. So the question then is ... how are these teens engaging with the wider world? With people who are not their families nor their teachers?

I also fear that the rise of digital culture among teens is only going to make the issue of youth mental health worse. Digital culture instagram, flickr etc plus a sense of confinement gives teens a fish-eye view of the wider world and humanity; it creates a kind of hyper-reality that teens then inhabit and believe to be true. I can't help feeling that digital media makes many teens view themselves through a very distorted mirror.

" plus a sense of confinement gives teens a fish-eye view of the wider world and humanity; it creates a kind of hyper-reality that teens then inhabit and believe to be true. I can't help feeling that digital media makes many teens view themselves through a very distorted mirror"

Yes. I also wonder in a bah humbug old hitting way if the actual mode of delivering tiny snippets of information - constantly changing, through a small brightly held screen, often for hours on end, day after day, has some impact on the developing brain (teenagers brains are going through structural changes). Add in that many uk teens eat diets of utter hideousness, full of teams fats, high in sugar... And that many teen girls are severely inactive.

My own dd won't walk anywhere and never, ever exercises. She has spent 50% of her non school/college time lying in bed with a phone in her hand, for about three years now. She is less active than my 82 year old disabled mum.

Werks. Very interesting point about digital culture, confinement & the creation of a distorted view of the world.
In the past I had always attributed my ds's behavior to peer involvement at school, but your point has made me realise that it could now be the world wide web that has taken up the role of the peer. The mother of all peers! This really frightens me, but then I am from an older generation so what do I know.

Mini that's a scary thought that your DD is less active than an 82 year old - absolutely true for my DD too. She will come for walks with me but we don't do it too often and it's with me - hardly finding her feet in the world. Like your DD her world consists of lying on her bed, phone in hand. I am now thinking of things I can do that will encourage her to be independent a bit more, even if it's just browsing shops in an unfamiliar town while I'm in a meeting for a couple of hours.

The one thing they have mentioned that seems to imply a specific cause is PTSD. From what I remember of your previous threads there didn't seem to be an outside trauma to account for her behaviour. But does PTSD mean that some trigger event did happen to her after all? (Sorry if that’s intrusive)

Anyway I hope the specialist assessment leads somewhere positive.

My dd is almost completely inactive too. She lives in her bed and eats in her bed. Sometimes she's under the duvet, sometimes she comes out. It's oddly comforting to know we're not alone in this!

She won't come into the living room due to her intrusive and paranoid thoughts.

She has a couple of reasons to leave the house, one is eating at Nandos or an Indian restaurant, the other is buying new clothes. Both experiences are fraught with difficulties. She has to wear a hooded jacket and hide from the world while we are out but it stops her being completely agoraphobic

Does she go to school/college Thornrose?

I can get dd out of bed to go shopping, go for a coffee or sometimes to visit my mum and occasionally she'll sit with us.

I've said to dd that I understand that sleeping a lot and staying in bed is a coping strategy, but it's harming her.

I'm trying very hard to get her up and moving, and giving her lots of vitamins (D3, prebiotics, B complex), hoping these will improve her health. My next step is to get her outside and also using the sunshine light I bought DH for when she is indoors.

Klein - the answer to your question is yes, but it happened several years after the other difficult behaviours started (self harming, oppositional, school refusing, truanting, acting out at school and home).

So not the source of her troubles, but extra trauma that made things worse. I do hope she can find a way up and out of this spiral. At least she has you on her side, doing your very best for her. So she's lucky in that.

I agree its a lot to with the internet, My daughter we found her to be looking at a website called pro anna which promotes no eating we managed to block this website and also put in place a net nanny so she cant look up anything to do with this sort of thing, She now has an issue with food which we are seeing cahms for.

The pressure at school though is far too much, Some can cope with the fast pace and the continual tests but then some teens find it too much the constant need to focas. so whoever said about school I totally agree. We can tell our kids to not put so much pressure on themselves but its how they deal with that pressure. If they get behind which our dd did as she had to have physio apts so missed a fair bit of science lessons

There is so much on social media it is scary, more needs to be done.

wishing everyone on this thread who is going through tough times easier times to come for your teens/young adults.

Lynette yes, she goes to a special school, although it's a daily fight to get her there!