The Herald on Sunday

Stories of anxiety from Generation Angst

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Caitlin-Jay Wyllie-Quinn, 19

It was when I was about 13 years old, starting secondary school, that I felt my mental health problems started and at first it was due to bullying. I can honestly say that through the whole time at school, I received absolutely nothing in the way of real help. The only support that I got was there was a school counsellor, which I got through CAMHS, but that was not regular, I would see him maybe two or three weeks and then I would not see him for six months. Even that service has actually now been cut.

In all that time I didn’t have a diagnosis for what I was feeling. I couldn’t speak to teachers about my problems. My guidance teacher was awful. She told me that the reason why I was getting bullied was because I was too sensitive. I didn’t really know where else to go. At about 16 I had what I think was my first bout of depression. I got rejected by CAMHS. I was told I wasn’t going to be given any help. And I asked why and he said because I wasn’t a serious enough case for them to deal with. I was told this was because I wasn’t selfharmin­g or suicidal. But no one had asked me about that. And at that point I was so low. At that point I would have said yes I was suicidal.

One of the problems is social media. For a lot of young people the first thing they do is go to their phone and there’s a lot of bad sites out there and a lot of bad informatio­n that can be detrimenta­l to young people’s health, particular­ly around eating disorders and body image. It’s so easily accessible to the point it’s scary.

Lucy (name changed), 15

School is very stressful at times. I guess it is partly how much work they give us all at once. Some of my friends are more together than others. Everyone is stressed, even the smart kids are really stressed about schoolwork. You have to do your work, but you also have all the social pressures as well. It’s bad enough when you’re at school, when you might have drama with friends. But it’s also with social media as well, you can’t escape it. You have to keep your account working the whole time, interact with all these people on all these different social media platforms.

Ewan McCall, 17

I can honestly say that through the whole time at school, I received absolutely nothing in the way of real help

I was really stressed out for the exams in S5. One of the big problems is exams. The whole year is building up to these exams. And also a lot of people aren’t academic so they might feel they have failed just because they can’t memorise things well.

I know a lot of very intelligen­t people for whom it’s just the sheer panic of how much time there is to do it in. I just got my exam results and did quite well - managed to get into university.

I’m pretty happy about that. I did feel the exam pressure, though - especially in S5 and S4 because those are really the years where it was heaped on.

Young people are finding everyday life high pressure. With social media we’re constantly in contact with the rest of the world - and all the news that is out there. There is a constant bombardmen­t of stories.

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