Are children more anxious now than in the past?

Here’s something scary: “I am acutely aware of the increasing levels of emotional ill health, including anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders and depression, among children in our primary schools.” The quote is from testimony given by Enda McGorman, who is principal of a Dublin primary school, last week to an Oireachtas education committee. He was representing the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN).

Just let that sink in: he is talking here about primary school children.

The Minister for Education recently announced a €5 million pilot programme of counselling supports for primary school children. It is overdue not just by years, but by decades.

Are children more anxious now than in the past? The answer, I think, is yes because of the disrupting effect of pandemic lockdowns. Children missed out on opportunities to expose themselves to challenging situations, an exposure which helps to reduce the anxiety attaching to future challenges. And, in any case, mental health problems were growing in the decade before the pandemic.

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In the past, by which I mean when I was going to school, mental health was not talked of. I cannot remember ever hearing anything about anxiety, stress or depression inside or outside the classroom. Certainly, if you were depressed, you would keep it quiet for fear of a stigma, which I suspect has still not entirely gone away.

Still, we had the nuclear threat which felt real enough for the government to issue a booklet, Bás Beatha (Death Life), to every household in the country, we still had plenty of economic hardship though the modernisation of the country was under way, and we had corporal punishment at school which must have been a source of anxiety for those children who regularly got a lot of it.

So it was there, even if it was not spoken of.

To return to the present, research quoted by the American Psychological Association has suggested that, worldwide, about 21 per cent of young people have mental health problems, mostly anxiety and depression. It also suggests that the pandemic, with the loss of normal social interactions, is responsible for a significant proportion of these problems.

In Italy where it’s been reported that one child between nine and 17 years of age now attempts suicide every day, a spokeswoman for a paediatricians’ organisation told la Repubblica that the pandemic had been “an atomic bomb from the social point of view for the very young”.

It would be a mistake to attribute everything to the pandemic, though. In November 2019, months before the first lockdown, The Irish Times reported a UCD study, funded by the Jigsaw mental health service, which found that 22 per cent of 12-18 year olds reported severe anxiety and that this was double the 2012 figure.

This suggests that well before the pandemic, things were not good with the mental health of young people. We were failing to invest sufficiently in an area which is vital for the whole future lives of children. The financial collapse of 2008 and onwards brought cuts in spending on career guidance counsellors, who are also mandated to provide emotional support.

That’s all very gloomy. On the positive side, treatment of young people for anxiety is effective – this often involves targeting unhelpful thinking habits (like “catastrophising”) through approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy. In doing so, the young person is given skills that will stand to them for the entire rest of their lives.

Mr McGorman told the Oireachtas education committee that “The services providing mental health support to children, while excellent when you can access them, are completely inadequate and understaffed. Children are suffering and getting worse the longer they have to wait for expert help. This has to change.”

Yes, it has to change. We are not only talking about blighted childhoods – and childhood is a precious thing – but about issues which, if not dealt with now, could blight the whole future lives of these children. The value of the right interventions now cannot be over-stated.

- Padraig O’Morain (Instagram, Twitter: @padraigomorain) is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His books include Kindfulness – a guide to self compassion; his daily mindfulness reminder is available free by email (pomorain@yahoo.com).