August 31, 2021 - 3:00pm
Stephen Fry’s recent piece in the Telegraph, reflecting on the damage done to the mental health of children and young people as a result of lockdown, could not have come at a better time. As the new school year begins across England, we could well be sitting on a mental health time bomb for children. Policies over the last 18 months have resulted in months of educational disruption, loneliness, and social isolation for the young.
This is not just limited to school aged children. For those at university who started their degrees in 2019, this September many will be entering their final year, having never enjoyed a full year of face-to-face teaching. Instead, since the start of the pandemic, they have been subjected to such indignities as being locked in halls (including fire escapes being tied shut to prevent them leaving), police searches, and even being told to “wait behind” in the event of a fire, if self isolating — all with the supposed aim of preventing covid.
These policies and the attitudes underpinning them are reflected in increasingly poor mental health in young people. In a startling statistic, it was reported this week that during 2020, 231,791 prescriptions for antidepressants were issued to children between the ages of 5-16 — a record figure, according to the NHS. Among primary school children, the number of prescriptions issued has risen by 20% while those for secondary school pupils rose 23%.
A recent report by Mind backs up these chilling figures. In a survey of young people suffering from mental health problems, they found that 51% said their mental health had got much worse since March 2020, and heartbreakingly, 44% reported rarely or never feeling optimistic about the future.
Meanwhile, repeated exaltations to “protect the NHS” may well have had a predictably damaging effect, with 46% of young people saying they were reluctant to seek help for their mental health because they were worried about overburdening the health service during a pandemic.
Young people and children have sacrificed enough during the pandemic and deserve adults making sure they have the opportunity to enjoy a good education, and to have a chance of a normal childhood, in return. We owe it to them to make sure services and help are on hand to bring them back to good health.
In the Mind survey, there was, thankfully, a bright spot. While there was some worry about beginning to socialise in person again, 52% of young people stated they thought their mental health would improve once restrictions eased, with 59% looking forward to enjoying school, college or university again.
As schools and universities reconvene in England, adults should reflect on how important this is for young people. Education is not just about grades and exams, but about the time spent with classmates, and the experience of socialising with others. Rather than young people being an afterthought whose education and freedom can be forfeited to combat Covid, we should be prioritising them — and stop viewing our youth as just a means to an end.
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SubscribeTip of the iceberg of harm the insanely destructive Covid Response has caused.
My guess is for each old and frail life extended two younger lives where shortened. As well as the end of pensions, the looming depression, loss of small business and jobs, and the decline of the West Globally.
Very telling that the commentator has to remain anonymous. A doctor complaining about the epidemic in mental health among youngsters, would be pilloried and unable to work if identified. Further proof that the NHS is a cult, that permits no dissent or criticism.
The mental health crisis has been intensified by Covid but not started. It has deeper roots. Without excavating the deepest, one might suggest that a society which goes in for endless self-blame; which stigmatises success and praises victimhood; which encourages morbidity and condemns resolve; which fills its children’s ears with angry, aggressive noise in the place of music and reduces dance to ritualised rutting; which regards unskilled dross as art and endlessly campaigns and hectors and shouts; which offers no community, no pride, no future and no hope is bound – utterly bound – to damage the minds of its young. Add drugs to the mix, not to mention the unreported epidemics of bullying in our so-called “schools” and it is a wonder the young survive at all. The left is a kind of social blood poisoning – and our whole society is septic.
And a society that tells children and young people that non-conformity to absurd ‘gender’ stereotypes, or an attraction to the same sex, mean that they are ‘transgender’, and should take opposite sex hormones and have bodily mutilations so that they can outwardly ‘fit’ with society’s expectations. It then tells anyone who objects to that, and has the courage to simply be themselves in their own body, that they are ‘transphobic’ and ostracises them.
The inevitability of what so many of us warned of and for which we were harangued and vilified. More is to follow.
A minimised range of self-reported symptoms gathered by remote survey is a very poor indication of the true extent of mental illness. MIND is, like most well-established charities, a business and has a financial purpose to presenting statistics that help their case for extra funding. Of course, their survey may reflect reality, but may equally be strongly biased for commercial gain.
Look at the rising suicide rate.
All that the governmet will take from this is: “more profits for our friends in pharma …”
We don’t yet know or fully understand the long term effects of SSRIs on the developing brains of children and adolescents. More research is needed before we can safely assert that no serious harm will be the result. Other therapies and strategies are preferable until we understand better what the consequences may be.
For me that is what is important about this news. In a national and global crisis such as this pandemic there are bound to be troubling psychological effects on some people, including children.
Children went through a lot. Whether the stats are accurate or not, it would be surprising if the general trends were not seen
exhortations, not ‘exaltations’