The figures on poor mental health amongst people under 25 are stark. More people in their early 20s are likely to be not working for reasons of ill health than those in their early 40s. In 2000, 24% of young people aged 18–24 reported symptoms of a mental disorder, which was thought to be staggeringly high at the time. Now, that figure has risen to 34%.
42% of 18–24 year olds cite ‘problems with my mental health’ as the reason they would be most likely to leave their job.
Nothing is likely to change in the near future, as children aged 15–16 are now more likely to be in receipt of disability benefits than adults aged 20–40, and the number of children receiving disability allowance has doubled over the last decade.
Claims for personal independence payment, or PIP (which can be claimed regardless of employment status) have risen by almost 50% since 2021, increasing the bill from £28bn to £43bn. The fastest rise is amongst teenagers, where figures claiming PIP have tripled.
The sick man of Europe
The government is understandably worried; every adult claiming benefit takes money from the economy, and if they are unable to work at all, they do not contribute to it. The number of people claiming either sickness or disability benefit has increased by 1.8 million in the past five years. Those not working due to mental illness has increased by 25%.
Has deterioration in the population’s physical health played a part? The Covid epidemic has taken its toll. Britain had the second highest numbers of deaths in Europe and long Covid is now a medically recognised condition. In January 2022, I published an article in Yorkshire Bylines that proposed the Conservatives’ policies on Covid 2020–21 had shown “a callous disregard for children’s safety” during the pandemic. However, long Covid does appear to have a more rapid recovery time in teenagers than in older people.
The statistics as a whole point to the rapid increase in benefit claims being largely due to mental, rather than physical conditions and illnesses, and people under 25 appear to be within the eye of this storm.
Even though organisations such as the Children’s Society have put in place initiatives to help stem the tide, serious mental health problems that render people unfit for work or education cannot be easily or quickly dealt with. But dealt with they must be, unless Britain wishes to become the literal ‘sick man of Europe’ in the mid-21st century.
What are the reasons for this epidemic of mental ill health?
Over the last five years, as a chartered psychologist with a specialism in child development, I have written a number of articles, in Yorkshire Bylines and elsewhere, detailing a number of interacting reasons that explain such a rapid deterioration in children’s mental health.
There are many pop-psychology books and websites claiming that one or other issue is principally to blame, but my analysis of the situation indicates that a number of issues have come together (Covid and lockdown being minor players within these) as the reason for children and young people’s deep unhappiness.
I wrote an article on the eve of the 2024 election detailing how 14 years of Conservative government had been a disaster for children and young people, principally because the 2010–24 Conservative government showed little interest in doing anything of note to improve their wellbeing.
The corporatisation of state schooling
In fact one of the major contributing issues to children’s unhappiness, the corporatisation of state schooling, is a policy they relentlessly pursued over their entire period in office, in order to extract money from the public sector and put it into the private pockets of an elite, regardless of the effects on users.
The Labour government has recently tabled a bill to deal with the worst excesses of education corporatisation, in the face of great hostility from the Conservative opposition. The height of their arrogance was demonstrated by Laura Trott, their shadow secretary of state for education, on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday Politics, who outlined an amendment she had tabled for the bill to allow corporatised schools to continue their employment of cheaper, unqualified teachers.
Meanwhile, the wages of non-teaching chief executive officers grow exponentially.
The kids are not alright
But there are several other issues that we additionally need to recognise and deal with, which I explored in an article last year, and are briefly summarised below.
Play: Children have a primary need for time and space to play in the real world, both in and out of school. We are an evolved organic species whose natural mode of learning, particularly in the early years of life, is play. Of course, there is a need for direct teaching with respect to numeracy, literacy and to convey scientific and cultural knowledge; but it is in play activity that we ‘learn to learn’.
Love: Human beings under three have a primary need for focused care and attention from a small circle of dependable adults, and as they grow older, to gradually gain independence from them; a process that is known as giving children ‘roots and wings’. As eminent child psychologist Uri Bronfenbrenner once said: “Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about them.” Patterns of underfunded daycare in which staff to child ratios are low, and staff turnover is high risks the development of emotional insecurity.
The need for stability and support
Family financial instability: Some families, where the adults are caught up in insecure employment circumstances of hiring, firing, zero hour employment and consequent money/relationship problems, find it impossible to provide a stable home for their children, and the results have lasting consequences. Benefits need to be targeted to prevent this.
Education and Learning: I have referred to the corporatisation of state education above. For schools, this has led to an emphasis on managerialism and performativity for both teachers and children, and racked up pressure on both. Teachers have been relentlessly bullied by the schools inspectorate Ofsted, which leads to toxic academic targeting that hugely overrides wellbeing concerns, and some children becoming alienated from the education system altogether. Many schools now insist on draconian codes of behaviour that discriminate against children with special educational needs, particularly those relating to neurodiversity. Over the education year 2022–23, 50% of all permanently excluded pupils had special educational needs. This must cease forthwith.
The perils of the internet
Dangers online: Alongside other nations of the world, the UK is currently struggling to deal with the fact that smartphone-owning children have the same level of access to the internet as adults, and that this negatively affecting their mental health.
The two main issues, now poignantly dramatised on Netflix’s Adolescence, are young people’s free access to the most violent, pornographic films and videos imaginable, and the relentless bullying that takes place on social media, placed in a culture where they no longer feel able to shut their home’s door on the bullies in the way that previous generations were able to do.
How the adult world chooses to deal with these problems is open to discussion. It is, however, urgent that they take action as swiftly as possible.
A dysfunctional world
People under 30 have been raised within this dysfunctional world. Those currently under 15, who were born in the years of Conservative government between 2010 and 2024 have been most strongly impacted, growing up in a society of increasing poverty and corporatised schooling. They were the first generation to be born into a world in which an immersive online life has become the norm.
When we additionally consider political instability and global warming, the task of bolstering young people’s fragile mental health may seem huge. However, we can look back to past generations, to those who were children during World War II in particular, as an example that trauma can be ameliorated. From this perspective, it is no surprise that the resulting generation of adults was the one that nurtured the welfare state across the mid-20th century.
Reducing alienation
I would argue that the overarching key to dealing with our current mental health crisis is to combat alienation.
Human beings evolved to live in communities. We make real-life friendships through real-life play, we learn that our parents, families and society care for us during our early childhood through our daily round within the community, we learn that our teachers and mentors care for us in wellbeing-focused educational environments during later childhood and youth, and unless we are very unlucky, in real, everyday offline lives, we are unlikely ever to experience the types of depraved human behaviours that are present in extreme violence/pornography on the internet.
It is this element of alienation we must combat in our young people to make them feel whole again, part of a community that cares for them, and invites them to care for it. This, I would suggest is how we approach reducing mental illness and the consequent retreat from the world we are seeing in those who feel utterly alone, and frequently under attack in their efforts to cope with their everyday lives.
Building community
This is likely to involve a considerable amount of community action, including affordable starter homes for young people between 18 and 30, and job opportunities for them that offer them education, training and wellbeing support.
Working towards a four-day week would give the younger generation time to access some of the play activity and real-life association that they missed out on in childhood. Paid work should assure basic financial security and non-exploitative employer practices, and where a young person has a special need, help should be made available to them to be able to access suitable work opportunities and support.
State funded, community focused schools for children and young people should engage with their wellbeing to the same extent as their academic learning, working supportively with families where this is needed. A play-based learning introduction to education for three to seven-year-olds is also essential, as are time and safe places to play for eight to 15-year-olds, both in and out of school.
A price we must pay
Will this cost a lot? Yes, of course. Should the older population be willing to pay for this? Certainly. The initial financing should come from requisitioning public money that flowed into private pockets under the previous Conservative government, added to fines imposed on social media giants who have profited from children’s online presence. A small raise in income tax designed to ensure that those who can afford the most, pay the most, could also be enacted.
Whilst older generations didn’t intentionally cause the ‘perfect storm’ that underpins the current epidemic of juvenile mental illness, it happened on our watch. And besides, our only functional future lies in a mentally robust working adult population. Drawing on the old proverb, in retrospect, perhaps the online revolution was always going to impose tears upon human societies – but now it’s time to mend.
