In 2017 it was released that children between 5 -15 had a 1 in 9 chance of developing a mental health illness.
I took a look at a couple of websites to see what they had said about it (I’ll hyperlink the websites below this blog if you wanted to have more of a look) and it’s really eye opening to see what mental health was/is linked to in children and how it is caused. Not only did I look at the websites, but I also put a poll on twitter and a suggestion/question box on instagram to see what others thought. Since doing all of these things, it has really opened up my eyes to what children go through behind closed doors.
I’ll start off with my findings from websites, so basically I looked on numerous websites form other blogs, to charity websites and also scholarship informative websites (did not understand much on there.) The purpose of why I did that is because I really want to know what is really going on; I wanted to open my mind to anything and everything. The first wesbite I clicked on was obviously The Mental Health Foundation website. It mentioned that income & adversity, identity, family & realtionships, & behaviours were all reasons as to why mental health existed between young people. These are all categories though, and they could expand in to much more. For example, identity can relate to sexuality or a preferance on how you would like to dress. Statistics shown that young people aged between 14-19 who were part of the LGBTQ+ community had a 34.9% chance of having a mental health disorder compared to a hetrosexual young person who had a 13.2% chance of developing a mental health disorder. There are more statistics to go over however, I will leave all the links that I used to gather my information at the bottom of this blog post.
On the 2nd of August I put up a poll on twitter. Unfortunately I only had space for 4 options for people to choose from, so I decied to go along with:
- Social Media
- Upbringing
- Other children (for example, bullying)
- The News
I also added to the tweet that if there were any other that you may think of then please write below and someone commented back saying personal traumas such as death and sexual abuse.
The one with the most votes was upbringing with 75% of the vote.
On the same day I also added to my Instagram story a question/suggestion box and basically asked what they believed were the main causes to mental health in children. The replies I received are as follows:
- School
- Trauma as a young child
- Death
- Work environments
- Sexual abuse
- Being a carer
School & Bullying
The one that was mentioned a lot on instagram was school, and I know a couple of young people who are still in school who have been bullied (they are also in seperate schools.) I was also bullied in school, the majority of it was in primary but I did have my fair share of negative comments in secondary school regarding my weight and “chubby cheeks” which were the topics that were picked on me during primary.
When I was in primary though, I did approach a dinner lady and I remember saying to her “(name) is calling me chubby cheeks again” and she literally turned around and said “well he probably fancies you because he’s calling you names” obviously I can’t remember it word for word because this is going back about 15 years ago; but it was something along those lines. Looking back at it now, it honestly was the most unprofessional thing she could have done. I mean what dinner lady who has a duty of care over these children, says to a child after they approach them saying that they have been called names to come back with “oh they probably just fancy you” NO WONDER my confidence suffered because people like her just couldn’t be bothered with the hassle. Is this still happening in schools? It does make me wonder.
Moving on to secondary school, this is kind of the place where my mental health illness really started to kick in. I remember one day in like year 7 or 8 this lad called me fat, and was making jokes about my weight which caused his friends to laugh (most humilaiting thing ever) and I don’t even know what come across me but I literally said to myself that I was just going to stop eating. So I did. I did lose a lot of weight and my family were getting concerned about it, but I remember my mum always asking me what I wanted for dinner and I’d say to her I was still full from lunch (but I didn’t have lunch) and I would proably go for about 2 or 3 days without eating anything.
When my mental health did get really bad to the point where I was very depressed and I was self harming (for a complete other reason, not bullying) I did happen to have 2 brilliant counsellors in the school where I could pop in whenever I wanted – no waiting times needed. I don’t know if they still have these in schools or not, I don’t know if they are still in my old school but they were a god send. But I’ll touch upon that later in a different post.
I often wonder where schools are going wrong in terms of mental health because it seems to be happening everywhere. I went into a primary school a few weeks back where I knew someone was getting bullied and they had posters everywhere preaching about kindness; they clearly didn’t work.
What are teachers doing? Do organisations come in and talk about these things? Do they know how common bullying is?
Upbringing
Upbringing could mean so many different things, such as financial stress amongst parents/guardians which rub off onto children, sexual abuse, kids caring for family members, being discriminated, the list truly does go on.
The thing about upbringing though, is that it will most likely affect your adult life. I know of people who have suffered sexual abuse and about 40/50 years on from that it still affects them and their relationships they have with other people. Going from my perspective, I have a sense of dread if there is a knock at the door because I instantly think that there are bailiffs, people who have had parents come in and out of their life with no consistency whatsoever leaving them unsettled and not knowing how to act when someone actually stays.
I’m not going to lie, my childhood was bittersweet. I had amazing moments, but I also have witnessed things that have scarred me for life and things that have made me build up anxiety etc. As I have literally just mentioned, I have a massive sense of dread when it comes to people knocking on my door. The reason being is because as I grew up my parents were in a fair amount of debt, which is quite normal to be honest because 8.3 million people in the UK are in debt. However it did take its toll on me because I would see them cry, stressed, and there would often be times where we would have to hide until the bailiffs had left. I am also very money conscious now, which has often had me very stressed and annoyed. Yesterday I was getting p*****d off because I wanted to go to the zoo this weekend but it was costing over £20 per ticket. My partner, Callum, was saying to me “babe, it is just 20 quid” but from my upbringing 20 quid feels like a 100 sometimes. I also moved a lot, and I am assuming that it was either because of being evicted or trying to run away from debt. Back then I loved moving a lot because it was always the excitement of a new bedroom, but as I got to about 16 where I moved into a shared house by myself, since then I have never been able to settle. Since then, I never felt as if I had a home and that I would contantly be trying to escape from something (deep, I know.) But that was just the way it is, and now that I’ve moved in with Callum although it was hard considering I moved somewhere where I had no family or friends I am determined to make the house that I live in a home.
I could carry on for days writing this post, because there are so many areas to cover and touch upon. It is really important and it’s good to open up the discussion of childhoods and the stories that come out of it because no other childhood is exactly the same. Everyone from a young age has all these different experiences which form you as an adult.
I hope you enjoyed reading and I will attatch the links I used for information.
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/blog/what-new-statistics-show-about-childrens-mental-health
http://www.dawba.info/abstracts/B-CAMHS99_original_survey_report.pdf
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/c/children-and-young-people
Chaos in the Calm 