Mental health issues do not discriminate, whether you're 15 or 35 they can still have a dangerous impact. People need to realise this.
Today the BBC have released an article titled 'Exam stress smong teen suicide causes', and it has really got me thinking about how we handle mental health in children - specifically in the UK. The research, carried out by the University of Manchester's National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, found that:
- 36% had a physical health condition such as acne or asthma
- 29% were facing exams or exam results; four died on an exam day or the day after
- 28% had been bereaved
- 22% had been bullied, mostly face to face.
I have had mental health issues throughout my life, but I was only just diagnosed with social anxiety and depression in March of this year. As much as I knew that I had these illnesses it still surprised me that my doctor took me so seriously, telling me that I must stay on the medication he has given me for at least a year. He had seen me about other health related issues in the past, and in this appointment he told me that he had been worried about my mental health then. I didn't realise my issues were quite so obvious.
I am so grateful that my mental health issues have been validated, however when I look back at the past 4 years of my life (in which my depression started and has been on and off since) I feel immensely let down by the education system and wider society for not considering that children and teens can - and do get - mentally ill. We live in a society which is under the assumption that children and teens cannot possibly be mentally ill as they have "nothing to worry about" - and yet exams are becoming increasingly difficult, there is a pressure on children to partake in subjects they do not care for up until they hit 16 and now we force them to continue with education until they are 18. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as you are coupling these stresses with major hormonal changes that massively impact teen behaviour.
I cannot remember a time in which I did not have anxiety, but I know that it started in Primary school. I was kept behind a year very early on, so I was placed in the year group below to carry out Year 2 for a second time rather than moving up into Year 3 with the rest of my peers. I feel as though this may have started the bullying I experienced; the school eventually apologised for moving me down and put me back into my original class. I suppose by this point solid friendship groups had already formed. My interests differed to a lot of the other kids, and although I had "friends" to play with they clearly did not think much of me. I remember the horrible sadness I would feel when someone wouldn't invite me to their birthday party, or another occasion where I didn't get invited to the sleepover afterwards. The worst experience I had was one day at break time - all of the girls in my class told me to wait in the playground as they went into the changing rooms. I didn't listen and snuck in behind them, and as a result I was subject to listening to them all talk about how much they disliked me. It took me a long time to tell my parents, but by this point the damage had been done. No one liked me and everyone thought I was a freak - I believed them, so I helped get my bullies out of trouble and took on a damaging thought process that has followed me way beyond my childhood years.
I am very lucky that I have recognised my internalised self-hatred, though it did result in a variety of issues in Secondary school that I will not go into. I would let people treat me horribly and thought nothing of it - I was a freak, so why shouldn't they have treated me that way? I was lucky that the other kids wanted to associate with me at all. It wasn't until I went to university that I realised that all of this was disgustingly wrong. I was trapped with this realisation, and my social anxiety was so horrific that it prevented me from forming any solid friendships for a while. This is when my depression began, and I have been battling episodes of it ever since. Now I am in a position where I no longer think of myself the way I did, however my depression is often kickstarted by the smallest of insults from those I care about most as I start second guessing my self-love.
Clearly my own experiences with poor mental health have been somewhat debilitating, but this BBC article made me think of how much worse other children have had it and, when coupled with researchers only just realising the causes for suicide in teens, I worry that there are many out there who are suffering in silence. We need to start taking our childrens mental health more seriously, as the most horrific part of this article for me was that they studied suicides in people from as young as 10. Something has to be done, and society needs to start recognising that illnesses like depression can be killers if left untreated and ignored.
[the BBC article can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36380910]
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