BRITAIN is in the grip of a youth depression epidemic – with 68 per cent of 16 to 30-year-olds saying they have a mental health problem.
Last year alone there were 700,000 referrals of youngsters under 19 for mental health services, a 45 per cent increase from two years ago.
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Demand is at an all-time high, as revealed in a shocking Channel 4 documentary on TV tomorrow.
It airs as tributes continue for troubled schoolboy Sam Connor, killed after being hit by a rush-hour train this month at Chertsey Station in Surrey.
The “bright and popular” 14-year-old was said to have been bullied at his Roman Catholic comprehensive school.
Just days after that tragedy, an inquest was held into the death of Joel Langford, 17, killed by a train in March after recording a goodbye video for his family.
The grade-A student, from Marlow, Bucks, was described as “exceedingly intelligent”.
But he was left feeling lonely when his friends left the school, with bullies branding him a “weird, loser and retard”, his mum Susan said.
‘NOT GIVEN SUPPORT THEY NEED’
Worryingly, the Dispatches documentary reveals that while more and more youngsters are now asking for help, many are not being given the support that they need.
Between 2017 and 2018 only three out of ten young people with a mental health condition got NHS-funded treatment.
And with waiting lists for therapy growing ever longer, GPs are increasingly prescribing ANTIDEPRESSANTS for youngsters as they wait.
Parveen, 18, from Solihull, West Mids, has been waiting six months for talking therapy after she experienced repeated suicidal thoughts.
Her GP prescribed her antidepressants — but three days later she tried to take her own life.
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Now three months on, she tells Dispatches about her despair when she heard her therapy had been delayed — yet again — to an indefinite date.
Speaking about her depression, she says: “It was just like constant thoughts of not wanting to be alive.
“I was saying I don’t feel good in myself, I don’t want to do anything.
“I just felt like I needed to speak to someone about how I was feeling. The therapist said to me on the phone, ‘I’m not going to lie to you, the waiting list is five to six months’. I went back to my GP.
“She was just sort of like, ‘OK well, I’m going to prescribe antidepressants’.
“I was thinking, ‘Why am I being given antidepressants, because I just want to talk to someone’.
“But I didn’t have that and I wasn’t getting access to it.
The waiting list has gone longer, you’re not going to get therapy any time soon.
Parveen
“So I took them for two days and the second day, I remember that was the first time I self-harmed. And it was self-harm with, like, the intent to take my own life.
“My mum found me and then called the ambulance.” Holding up an NHS letter, well-spoken Parveen sums it up: “The waiting list has gone longer, you’re not going to get therapy any time soon.”
She adds: “It’s just, like, heartbreaking.”
A Freedom of Information request shows that in 2017-18 half of children needing specialist treatment waited more than 18 weeks for help after an initial assessment.
And according to Dr Rachel Preston, lead GP at Lakes Medical Practice in Penrith, Cumbria, antidepressants are often used to plug the gap between demand and NHS services.
She said: “There are times it might be the right thing to do for a young person, but that’s really tricky, particularly given current guidance.
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“Obviously the ideal is for them to get appropriate mental health support.
“I think one of the difficulties is, as everybody knows, GPs are perhaps more under pressure and so have less time than we would really need, and it’s sometimes easier to prescribe than it is to sit and listen and to try to sort through complex emotional problems.
“What you would want is the psychological support and therapies to help that person improve. If that’s not available, one of your options is an antidepressant. And that may be the option you have to go for.”
Only one such medicine, Fluoxetine, can be prescribed to under-18s.
A survey for Dispatches found that of the 39 per cent of GPs who prescribe the drug to under-18s, only one per cent thought it was the best treatment.
Dr James Davies, who is conducting a study into the effects of antidepressants, found that withdrawal can last for months after a patient stops taking them.
How to help children
IF your child is suffering from depression, follow these tips from charity Young Minds:
- Decide whether they are simply “being a moody teenager” or suffering from depression. This is the difference between bouts of grumpy behaviour and deep sadness over time, with a lack of interest in anything.
- Don’t ignore worrying symptoms. Talk to your child about the signs of depression you’ve noticed in a non-judgmental way.
- Trust your gut feeling. You know when something is not right.
- Avoid asking too many questions, trying to give solutions or glossing over their pain. Just listen and empathise.
- If they don’t want to talk about it, try again another day.
- If they don’t want to talk to you, encourage them to talk to a school counsellor, teacher, GP or advice services.
- Combat isolation by making opportunities for them to meet up with their friends. Do stuff such as sports, activities or have silly fun with them.
- Try to ensure they get regular activity, good nutrition and regular sleep.
- Seek professional help if the symptoms worsen.
- Involve your child in treatment choices. If they don’t connect with a therapist, for example, find another one.
- Be open with younger siblings, who will know something is wrong.
- Remember to look after and support yourself, too.
And he warned that in extreme cases, the symptoms are so severe that they can LEAD to suicide. He said: “About half of people who take antidepressants have experienced withdrawal.
“In the most severe cases we’ve seen people commit suicide as a consequence of not being able to bear the severity of the symptoms.”
Peter, 22, told the programme that he “felt as if he was going to die” when he began withdrawal after three months.
With one in eight five-to-19-year-olds now reported to have a mental health problem, the crisis threatening the next generation has never been more acute.
However, one light at the end of the tunnel is that the stigma around mental health problems has never been lower.
MORE MONEY INTO MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
Campaigns such as Heads Together — spearheaded by royals Wills, Kate, Harry and Meghan — is credited as a driving force for helping young people open up about their feelings.
But Dispatches calls for more to be done to make sure there is adequate support available for when those young people make the decision to speak out.
Teenager Jenny tells the programme: “These campaigns are asking people to reach out for help, saying, ‘It’s OK to feel this way, there’ll be help there if you reach out’.
“There isn’t. There isn’t help. So I actually think it’s dangerous that we’re telling people that.”
Dr Marc Bush, of mental health charity Young Minds, is calling for the Government to pump more money into young people’s mental health services.
He said: “What we need is every government to prioritise mental health.
“There’s been historic under-funding of children’s mental health.
“Lots of young people and families we talk to say that they wait far too long to access a specialist service and sometimes they’re turned away because their level of need isn’t deemed great enough.
“That’s really worrying, because we don’t want people to end up with complex needs and we don’t want them to end up in a place of crisis.
“Fundamentally, in the future we really need to have a system that doesn’t wait for diagnosis.
“It recognises distress, it recognises crisis — and it gives people good quality support when they need it.”
- Dispatches: Young, British And Depressed, tomorrow, 8pm, Channel 4.
