Children are being taught to need help
Parents are projecting their own anxieties about the state of the world on to their offspring
We are seeing in our surgeries an alarming number of teenagers who are fluent in the language of therapy. They complain of “low self-esteem” and problems of “body image”. They wonder whether panic attacks typical of post-traumatic stress disorder were “triggered” by apparently trivial incidents at school. One girl, dragged in by her parents following an end-of-term binge, suggested that she had been “selfmedicating” her symptoms of low mood with alcohol.
It is not surprising that young people speak in these terms because it seems that scarcely a week passes without another report claiming that an epidemic of mental health problems is sweeping the nation’s schools. Most recently the charity Action for Children (AFC) reported a survey revealing that the plight of children was “getting worse”, warning grimly that we were in danger of “sleepwalking into a crisis of childhood”.
Many children had familiar concerns about bullying, performance at school and relationships with peers. But 40 per cent of children interviewed were also troubled by wider social and political issues –
Brexit, poverty, the climate crisis, racism and sexism. According to AFC chief executive Julie Bentley, “far from being carefree, children are buckling under the weight of unprecedented social pressures, global turmoil and a void in government policy”.
It seems that professionals – teachers, doctors, therapists – as well as campaigners and politicians, are encouraging young people to regard themselves as particularly vulnerable to personal and social adversity. Children are being educated to interpret their experiences of unhappiness or disappointment in terms of psychopathology, requiring expert therapeutic intervention. Further, parents are projecting their own anxieties about the state of the world on to their children, with the effect of making them ill.
Alarmist surveys of deteriorating childhood mental health invariably conclude with calls for more resources for teaching children about mental illness at younger ages and for more counsellors and psychologists to meet the remorselessly rising demand for therapy. I would suggest that adults should sort out their own problems and, as the Pink Floyd song had it, “leave them kids alone”.
‘Special K’
Ketamine was first marketed as an anaesthetic and subsequently widely used illicitly as a hallucinogen. The news that it could be soon licensed for use in severe cases of depression resistant to other treatments has received a cautious welcome. Some early studies have suggested that, in the form of a nasal spray used weekly, it may produce rapid and enduring beneficial effects.
It is more than a decade since a patient who was a regular consumer of “Special K” in the London club scene explained its unique capacity to induce “out-of-body” sensations. Though he particularly relished the “K-hole”, which he described as a profoundly spiritual near-death experience, he was wary of the risk of psychosis and mysterious adverse effects on the bladder, and soon gave it up.
I think he would endorse the scepticism of Harvard professor Wes Boyd who, noting the high cost and scary side effects, dismisses the drug as “an overhyped rip-off ”.
Tory election battle
It is fair to say that neither of the candidates in the Tory leadership election arouses much enthusiasm among medical colleagues. Though Jeremy Hunt claims to have rescued the NHS from austerity, he will never be forgiven for his ruthless defeat of the junior hospital doctors. Boris Johnson has upset many with his suggestion that, if he becomes prime minister, he may axe the sugar levy and other “sin taxes”.
As it happens, Johnson is right that these taxes bear down heaviest on the poorest and that although, not surprisingly, they reduce sales, there is little evidence that this results in improved health. A recent French study reported as showing that drinking fruit juice causes an increased risk of breast cancer is as plausible as one of Boris’s tall tales from Brussels. At least both candidates have held back from endorsing Matt Hancock’s ill-conceived suggestion about making measles immunisation compulsory.