What follows is the saddest of statistics. You might be shocked. You might not be. It depends if you live with young people. Or know them. And love them.
If you do, you’ll have noticed that for many, life seems to be increasingly joyless, like a burden they’re forced to carry around and carry on with. Worryingly, they’re more troubled and disaffected than we realise.
I have two sons, 20 and 17.
If I’m honest, pure joy doesn’t seem to touch their lives much, no matter how hard we try to bring it into the room.
Playing football, watching football and making music prompt brief episodes of light, although never lasting long enough for the ring of laughter to fill the void.
Fleeting encounters with strangers on social media, bombarded if they want to be by throwaway friends and hollow electronic victories, the more connected they’ve become, the less connected they seem to be.
More of them are troubled and disaffected, riddled with self-loathing and self-doubt, now that EVERYONE seems to be SOMEONE.
Why be a doctor, a teacher, a nurse or a lawyer when there’s more to be earned by being “influencers’”– an inevitably short-term career, all washed up by the age of 30.
So here comes that statistic following research from youth charity The Mix UK: OVER A THIRD of young people say they have self-harmed. A THIRD.
This is truly shocking. It’s nothing less than tragic that a significant chunk of young people no longer see the world as one of opportunity and satisfaction, never mind a happy place.
Instead, 34% are so racked with self-loathing they’re harming themselves by various methods, including cutting, burning and poisoning. This is a huge hike up from previous figures which found that one in 10 self-harms.
So that’s the problem. But it seems there’s no easy answer to this burgeoning epidemic of young people desperate to be noticed in a world where everyone’s on social media, everyone’s lives seem better than theirs and parents are too busy working to have the time to properly care.
Meanwhile, the Child and Adult Mental Health Service is so swamped, it’s nearly drowning.
Sadly, if your child has a sore throat, they’ll be seen by a GP, no problem. If they want to slash their wrists however, they’ll have to get to the back of a long queue for CAMHS (the NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services), which has some waiting lists of up to a year and even longer in other cases.
Mental health breakdown can kill. Until it’s given parity with physical illnesses and broken bones, our young people will continue to suffer.
