Almost a quarter of children now have a ‘mental disorder’, figures show

Nearly a quarter of children in England now have a ‘probable mental disorder’, a report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has found.

The number of these disorders, registered on the basis of answers to a questionnaire among eight to sixteen year olds, is increasing.

Data for 2023 shows that 23.3 percent of children are likely to have a mental health disorder such as anxiety or depression, compared to 19 percent the year before.

Experts have previously highlighted the impact of the Covid pandemic and the disruption it has caused to children’s education and social lives, alongside the cost of living crisis and social media as damaging to children’s mental wellbeing.

The statistic was featured in the ONS’s Child Welfare Measures 2024 report, which also highlighted the shocking increases in stressors experienced by British children.

One of these was the percentage of children now living in ‘food insecure households’, based on interviews with their parents or caregivers.

In light of the rising cost of living, data for 2023 shows that more than one in six children (16.9 percent) now live in households that are at risk of not giving them the nutrition they need.

This is an increase compared to just over one in ten children (11.6 percent) in 2022.

Poverty also increased year after year.

The proportion of children living in households without full access to 21 everyday goods and services rose to 15.3 percent, equivalent to about one in six children.

This was an increase from 12.6 percent (about one in ten children) the year before.

The ubiquitous nature of social media and online access was also having an increasingly negative impact on children’s well-being.

Nearly a third (32 percent) of children reported seeing something ‘disturbing or unpleasant’ in the past 12 months from November last year.

This is an increase compared to 29 percent a year earlier.

The team did not explain what content this might include, but social media is flooded with graphic videos from war zones or explicit adult content.

There was also an increase in the number of children falling victim to crime.

According to the ONS report, almost one in ten children (9.8 percent) were victims of crime in 2023, compared to around one in twenty (6.6 percent) in 2022.

Boys were 11.6 percent more likely than girls to be victims of crime, compared to just 8 percent.

But while boys only saw the crime rate they experienced increase by 3.5 percentage points year-over-year, girls saw their crime rate double.

Children also visited nature less often in 2023.

Access to green spaces has been linked to a range of health benefits, both mental and physical.

However, according to the ONS report, fewer than half (46.4 percent) of eight to 15-year-olds in England visited an outdoor space that wasn’t their garden in the last week they were out of school in 2023. .

This is a decrease from the 50.1 percent of children who reported visiting such a place in 2022.

When it came to overall life satisfaction, British children reported mixed feelings.

About one in twenty (4.8 percent) of children reported having ‘low’ overall satisfaction with their lives in 2023, the same percentage as the year before.

But the percentage who rated their life satisfaction as high rose to 44.5 percent, up from 41.5 percent the year before.

However, only 35.8 percent rated this as ‘very high’, down from 38.4 percent the year before.

More children also indicated that they were unhappy in 2023.

When asked to rate their happiness the day before, 6.4 percent of children rated it as ‘low’, a small increase from 6.1 percent the year before.