‘As I sometimes say to parents, I wish I had a dollar for every time I have read, in the last ten years, the words "children" and "crisis" in the same sentence. I'd be set for life', writes psychotherapist Dr. David Anderegg in Worried All the Time: Rediscovering the joys in parenthood in an age of anxiety.
In her book The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids clinical psychologist Madeline Levine tells us that the US is facing an epidemic of depression, anxiety and substance abuse among children and young people. And this is happening not only among the disadvantaged but in affluent families, too.
Her claims seem to be backed up by a number of reports. The World Health Organization (WHO) 2001 report entitled Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope claims that between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of young people suffer from mental health or behavioural disorders. Hans Troedsson, WHO director for child and adolescent health, later warned: ‘The international health community is concerned about the mental health status of our young. It is a time-bomb that is ticking and without the right action now millions of our children growing up will feel the effects'.
These are frightening figures. But, looking beyond the press releases to life as it is lived by young people, I wonder how we can possibly be in the grip of an epidemic of misery and self-abuse on the scale implied by today's reports and campaigns. It is far from obvious to me that today's youth are any more miserable or badly behaved than my generation were; and when studies set out to quantify the depths of this misery and the extent to which it has grown we should hardly be surprised if they find what they are looking for.
What is true is that many more children and young people are on anti-depressants and other forms of medication today, particularly in the US but also in Britain and other parts of Europe.
But the evidence for an actual increase in emotional and behaviour disorders is questionable. As I argue in Reclaiming Childhood:freedom and play in an age of fear higher reported figures can be explained by doctors stretching the label of depression to cover an ever wider range of unhappiness. In addition, parents are today less willing to tolerate variations in how their children behave, often overreacting to peculiar behaviours and mood swings.
Sami Timimi, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist said: ‘[M]ore childhood behaviours previously considered normal are now seen as problematic, and problematic behaviours are more likely to be medicalised ... The increase in rates of childhood depression in Western society may reflect a lowering of the threshold for the diagnosis'.
The fascinating book Shyness: How Normal Behaviour became a Sickness, by the Chicago-based research professor Christopher Lane, shows how everyday emotions have become increasingly medicalized. Lane has taken shyness as a test case to show how society is being over-diagnosed and over-medicated.
The argument in Reclaiming Childhood is that this depressing depiction of modern childhood is not just flawed and inaccurate but potentially damaging to both children and adults. It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy should some children (though by no means all of them) become depressed, anxious, isolated and stressed.
