Are we all inadvertently contributing to the ‘mental health crisis’?
For some time, we have been talking about the ‘mental health crisis’ in young people. Many discuss the idea that children are burnt out before they get to university and that, as a society, we need to do more.
But, on the other hand, the actions of growing up have always involved challenge. Generations of students have faced the difficulties of all the transitions involved in the teen years, such as managing peer friendships, academic pressures, and evolving relationships with their parents. So why do the current generation seem to be coping much worse now than previous ones ever did?
Recently I came across some fantastic research that crystallised many of the above issues. It’s interesting because it proposes a new way of thinking of the mental health issues we see so often in teens and young adults.
The Health Action Campaign (HAC) originated from universities as prestigious as Kings College, Ulster University, and University of Greenwich. It is a response to large-scale investigation of the wellbeing of university students in the UK.
That study showed that young adult’s mental health issues typically started in the years prior to the students coming to university. The HAC authors propose that to improve mental health, we need to focus most of our attention in prevention.
HAC proposed four main areas of opportunity to improve students’ preparedness for life beyond school. They then tested the validity of each area with students from the three universities.
- Schools over catering to students
It was proposed that these days, some schools tend to do too much organisation and assistance for students. It’s with good intentions, but means that students might lack academic independence.
The results showed only half of students believed that their schooling had prepared them adequately for independent learning expectations at university, such as attending seminars and report writing. Student belief of not being appropriately prepared was correlated with their reported stress.
2. Overprotective parenting
In a similar vein, it was proposed that parents doing too much for their child was also ill-preparing them for university demands. Without students experiencing occasional ‘productive failure’, they may not be learning resilience skills to cope with the ups and downs of life beyond school.
The evidence showed that almost half of students reported their parent often intervening on their behalf. This ranged from parents helping with homework, intervening with schooling, or even advising which university to apply for. Additionally, two thirds of university students reported themselves to be in daily phone contact with their parents.
3. Social media harms
The authors proposed that more social media use was corelated with less learning to cope with the real world.
The study’s findings showed that 55% of students were online for more than 3 hours a day in their high school years. Being online more was associated with students feeling less prepared for university, lonelier, and more anxious.
4. Medicalisation of normal feelings
It was suggested that young people now tend to view many typical tricky moods as mental health problems.
With this labelling they might start to not learn to cope with occasional feelings. Instead, they might start to think every experience of challenge as being highly distressing and requiring mental health support.
The finding of the research suggested this as an issue. For example, 75% of students believed stress to be a mental health issue, even though the experience of attending university or working will always involve deadlines and trials.
As with all research, follow up studies need to be done — but it makes for provocative and promising ideas to turn around the wellbeing of our young people.
Most importantly, the study suggests we must stop thinking of ‘the mental health crisis’ as being this unmanageable thing which uncontrollably impacts the wellbeing of our children and teens.
We are not helpless and the situation is not hopeless. But for any change to happen, we must start critically looking at what we ourselves do to keep the ‘crisis’ alive and impacting.
What are some things we can do in light of this?
Parents
- Have a clear plan to build your child’s independence as they go through their schooling. Increasingly, let children take on responsibly around the home, and manage their schoolwork obligations.
- Let the school give your child challenge. You get your ‘money’s worth’ when you allow the school to occasionally disappoint your child. Allow children the opportunity to solve the minor problems they experience at school.
- Normalise the experience of having occasional tricky feelings — empathise but don’t emphasise.
- If they go to a therapist — make sure that therapy is improving their wellbeing and not just treading water with support.
- Gatekeep social media use. Ideally hold off until they are in high school. Limit the time they are allowed on screens and be confident that this is in their best interests.
Schools
- Get parents good parent education programs that make sure they are warm and supportive but don’t overdo assistance for their child or stop them facing normal age-appropriate school and home challenges. Deliver these regularly enough so parents don’t fall back into an overprotection trap — particularly when the child moves into a new developmental stage, such as the individuation years of upper primary, or the senior years.
- Spend your mental health budget wisely. Critically evaluate wellbeing programs that may risk children being much more focussed on their minor moods and overthinking them.
- Keep questioning whether you are taking on the responsibilities that your students could actually handle or scaffolding them too much. Help can quickly make them helpless. At some point, teachers might need to step back so students are able to slowly step up.
- Think about limiting student phone use. Better still, remove their phones entirely during their school day.
Dr Judith Locke is a Clinical Psychologist and child wellbeing specialist who presents sessions for parents and teachers at schools around Australia and internationally. For more of Judith’s work read her parenting books, The Bonsai Child or The Bonsai Student. You can also follow her Facebook page, Confident and Capable.
