Why we can't afford to ignore our young people’s mental health any longer

By Kate Hodges, Young Peoples Mental Health Programme Manager at Zurich Community Trust.

"Today’s announcement about just how many children and young people have mental health problems makes me weep!

On one hand I am pleased to see that another survey has been done – the last since 2004 – and we can now get a glimpse of just how many children and young people are struggling with their mental health.  I’m also pleased to say that this wouldn’t have happened without pressure from Zurich Community Trust partner’, the Children and Young People’sMental Health Coalition.

But that is where ‘my pleasure’ ends!

The figures are shocking. Given we’ve had a recession, social media has come of age in all its glory (and horrors) as well as increased exam pressures over the last 13 years, it’s hardly surprising to see more young people battling with their resilience and having to deal with poor mental health.  It’s just too much and why so many of our children are at crisis point!

It shouldn’t be like this and neither does it have to be. The cost of not intervening early enough is estimated to be around £17 billion a year and if you do wait until that point of crisis then problems are much harder to unravel –problems become more complex, they become established behaviours and therefore much harder to treat.

Of course we need to look at the root causes but we also need to act quickly to help this generation to get their lives back on track for fulfilled futures before this epidemic gets even greater. 

Right now we're missing too many opportunities to be there for people when the first symptoms of mental health problems present, and for many, this first happens in childhood. One of the most authoritative studies to date on the prevalence of mental health problems estimates that 50% of adult mental health problems were established in childhood by the age of just 14.

If we don’t we face the prospect of more wasted lives and the impact of all that illness on the NHS, social welfare and the judicial system as well as that of all those around the young person. How much better would it be for these young people to be fully functioning and contributing to society emotionally, physically as well as financially?

I understand the money has to come from somewhere and in these uncertain times tough choices have to be made, but there is no good physical health without good mental health.  These are our children, who will go into the workplace, become parents themselves and we must get it right from the start… a cliché but the foundations and building blocks must be right.

The prospect of not doing anything is too terrifying to contemplate. This powerfully illustrates the need to be working more with schools to support young people, taking advantage of the touch-points we pass through in our lives where mental health problems could be recognised early and support offered.

We need schools and their workforces to have the knowledge and the resources to identify problems early on and support in place within communities for them to signpost young people on to.  And we need better access to community counsellors and the Children and Adolescent Mental HealthService (CAMHS) – the recent Green Paper is a start but we are just on the starting grid.

Our young people need the tools to understand their mental health better and how to protect themselves.  They also need support to spot signs in their friends and family and to encourage them to seek help.

These figures are a wake up call and it’s time to bring about this cultural shift and for our children’s emotional literacy to be taken seriously."

#MentalHealth #OneVoice #United #MakingChangeHappen