Did anyone see this programme last night on Channel 4? It was a real eye-opener for me. I have been aware of the growing mental health crisis of course, but for some reason this seemed much easier for me to relate to the people in the programme.
They followed the progress of a mother of a newborn who suddenly experienced psychosis after the birth of her daughter and tried to drive into a brick wall with her husband and baby in the car. The husband said his wife was an organised, go-getting, clever, mentally strong, switched-on person before her daughter was born and suddenly this illness came out of nowhere within the first few weeks after birth and she became anxious and paranoid and very very ill, whereby she had to be sectioned on a mother and baby ward to keep them all safe. She was recovering and then became ill again, becoming convinced she was going to suddenly become extremely rich - and that was her reality to the point where she was trying to build and buy an expensive car online. Although she is recovering, they wanted to have another baby but are worried it could trigger the illness again.
They also followed the progress of an 11 year old who wanted to kill herself because she was so overwhelmed with life. It was hard watching her writhe in distress on her mother's lap and the parents helplessly trying to take the pain away by hugging her and reassuring her. She was unable to go to school because it would trigger the anxiety. She was eventually diagnosed with being on the autistic spectrum.
Really amazing what the NHS Mental Health crisis team could do for them - but clearly not enough doctors and nurses and therapists to help the increasing number of people presenting with these symptoms.
Next week will be an episode on teenage self-harm. The programme resonated with me because my daughter became 15 a few months ago. As she is a fairly high achiever and gets great school reports, I have become quite slack as a parent, so recently I have had to really get on top of limiting access to social media at home. I explained that when we came home from school as teens we got to have a healthy break from the influences of the outside world - there was the odd phone call and the TV but both of those were in public areas and you weren't interacting with the people on TV.
After hearing from my daughter about what her friends are up to e.g. talking to sex-obsessed adults and teen boys on-line who apparently think nothing of being sexually crude to girls or sending a dick pic (probably not their actual dick but a random image from the internet) to a girl they have just started messaging on a group chat or in a chat room and asking for a selfie in return (and some girls are gullible enough to send their real picture), reading suicidal, masochistic, sadistic fan fiction online, and how they suffer from anxiety, seem to be self-harming, feeling suicidal, taking drugs and they also seem confused and trying on different sexual identities because all of these things seem to apparently be the trend and the teenage norm these days if you want to distract yourself from emotional anxiety or seem cool and interesting and edgy (the same way binge drinking, drugs and going out with older men was the teenage norm if you wanted to seem cool and edgy and interesting when I was a teen), I decided I would have to be an idiot to assume that just because my daughter appeared to be doing well at school, this stuff was not something she was curious about or dabbling in, in order to fit in, and that it was probably a lot of the reason for her less than optimistic outlook. It's worrying that her friends' parents appear to not know what their children are up to, probably because the children, like my daughter, are proficient at presenting a happy facade to their parents in order to hide the dark thoughts going on in their heads.
I used to have my daughter's phone passcode so I could go on any time to check. Also she has Netflix - I refused to sign up for an account but she has been using a friend's login and password for the past 2 years to watch probably totally unsuitable programmes on her phone. I think it's probably time to block access to Netflix on my router at home and only allow access at specific times - where she has to ask to go on Netflix. She has data but it will run out if she tries to go on Netflix for a long time.
Anyway, I've recently done the whole responsible parenting thing which I should have done a year ago - asked for her phone passcode again (she has my passcode and access to my phone so I said it was no different to that) and limited her time on the phone and laptop and not allowed her to use them in the bedroom. I know she could still access dodgy, nihilistic material or people on the internet when she does have her phone but hopefully this will limit the time spent doing that, which hopefully will help adjust her perspective. I can appreciate that she feels the need to access some dodgy stuff in order to feel edgy and interesting and be able to be part of the conversation at school.
It seems really tough for parents to try to compete with the influences of social media and the internet on their children and to help with their children's confusion and anxiety as the children feel pulled in so many different directions with so many different identities available to them - everything from school shooter to extremism to self-harm to victim to saviour of the planet, plus the increasing permutations and combinations of sexual identity. It seems like the wider the choices available, the more confused and anxious children appear to become about where they fit in and who they should be and for some reason they seem to think they have to decide all of this and their future right this minute as for them time feels like it is running out - no wonder it makes their head spin. I feel sorry for them.
