The “staggering” rise in childhood anxiety (NHS referrals for childhood anxiety more than double pre-Covid levels, 27 August) deserves a more sophisticated response than appointing counsellors to every school, however useful that may be in some cases, and I say this as a mental health professional – as a clinical psychologist.
Well-intentioned awareness campaigns that encourage us to translate every feeling into a “mental health issue” convey the message that children are individually deficient, while obscuring the reasons for their distress. And yet research consistently shows that their feelings are understandable in context.
Your article mentions the pressures of targeted education, online bullying, poverty and uncertainty about the future. None of this will be solved by extra funding for mental health professionals, helplines and support centres. In fact, it will probably perpetuate the cycle, as these are not medical problems at their core, they are social.
It is particularly disappointing that Labour is failing to make these obvious connections. Do we have to get to the point where every child is on a waiting list for clinics before we take appropriate action on the root causes?
Dr. Lucy Johnstone
Bristol
As a clinical psychologist, and like anyone who has contact with young people, I have seen anxiety rates rise. But it is important to stop pathologizing young people and focus solely on increasing crisis treatment.
That’s essentially paying people like me to be an even more expensive band-aid. I would argue that a lot of what’s happening is not a mental health crisis, but a crisis of empowerment. Regardless of age, people can handle incredibly stressful things if they know they have the resources and social support to deal with them.
Young people feel powerless; they are aware of the stresses and dangers in the world, but they don’t feel like they are being listened to or given the tools to deal with that stress. Most don’t need more from me; they need more focus on community, fun, support, connection, and engagement.
Dr. Helen Zorg
Woodstock, Oxfordshire
The fact that British children and teenagers are significantly more likely to suffer from anxiety and unhappiness is deeply troubling. Several plausible reasons have been suggested, but I think one possible reason has been overlooked. There is a fashionable trend towards ultra-soft parenting, where children are given lots of comfort for the feelings that are stirred up by every adversity. I realise that my large number of grandchildren is still a small sample, but the happiest and least anxious of them are by far those who have learnt that not all their negative feelings can be soothed and resolved by others. The support of loving parents is of course invaluable, but learning resilience is also important.
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In 1991 I started working in a large secondary school in London and immediately felt the impact of the Thatcher/Major years on our pupils. Children were living in poverty and deprivation, with very little support from social services, and this was having an impact on their mental health. We were calling A&E almost as often for mental health problems as for injuries on the playground. Within the first few years of the Labour government from 1997, things improved rapidly, with more support for schools and families. Sadly, history is now repeating itself for Keir Starmer.
Linda Karlsen
Whitstable, Kent