More than 400,000 children and young people a month are being treated for mental health problems – the highest number on record – prompting warnings of an unprecedented crisis in the wellbeing of under-18s. The Guardian has more.
The latest NHS figures show “open referrals” – troubled children and young people in England undergoing treatment or waiting to start care – reached 420,314 in February, the highest number since records began in 2016.
The total has risen by 147,853 since February 2020, a 54% increase, and by 80,096 over the last year alone, a jump of 24%. January’s tally of 411,132 cases was the first time the figure had topped 400,000.
Mental health charities welcomed the fact that an all-time high number of young people are receiving psychological support. But they fear the figures are the tip of the iceberg of the true number of people who need care, and that many more under-18s in distress are being denied help by arbitrary eligibility criteria.
‘Open referrals’ are under-18s who are being cared for by child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) or are waiting to see a specialist, having been assessed as needing help against treatment thresholds. GPs, teachers and mental health charities believe the criteria are too strict, exclude many who are deemed not ill enough, and amount to rationing of care.
“There is an unprecedented crisis in young people’s mental health, further evidenced by these record numbers of young people needing help from the NHS,” said Olly Parker, the Head of External Affairs at Young Minds. “The record high number of children and young people receiving care from the NHS tells us that the crisis in young people’s mental health is a wave that’s breaking now.”
While it was positive that more and more under-18s are receiving psychological support, he said, “the rise in the number of young people seeking help from the NHS is relentless and unsustainable. Over the past two years young people have experienced isolation, disruption to their education and reduced access to support, including from counsellors and GPs. All of these things have massively impacted their mental health, but these figures are only the tip of the iceberg and will continue to rise.”
He said many young people were reaching crisis point before could get the treatment they need.
Worth reading in full.
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These enormous numbers of young people needing some form of help for these problems, inflicted upon them by a Government and a large section of society who apparently were too stupid to consider the possibilities, deaf to any adverse comment on policies, and apparently couldn’t give a stuff anyway, are rightly described as the tip of the iceberg.
What is absolutely certain is that the effects of this cannot be remedied by a few box-ticking visits to whatever now consists of “care” or “treatment”, if such there be. Not all, but many will be scarred for life, and this will in turn reflect in a future generation or two. Heaven help us if the Government colludes with WHO and we have another episode like the last two years. I cannot see that serious societal and behavioural problems will be avoided.
We now live in a form of Bedlam, where the toffs and rulers (which now includes the wretched “NHS”) come to gawp at the inmates, and can stick their fingers in their lugs, so as to avoid hearing the shrieks and imprecations; whilst the warders treat them with disdain, mixed with malevolence..
It will probably consist of two elements:
1) Some brand of empty talk (CBT is the one in vogue at the moment)
2) More importantly, drugs (e.g. SSRIs) – this is of course the ideal outcome for pharma: the Covidian Cult just keeps on giving as far as they are concerned!
The waiting list for 1) will probably be miles long by now, but there won’t be any shortages of 2)!
What may happen is that a “new treatment” is imposed, based on CBT and SSRIs maybe, but new in some sense, coming with fresh new contracts and lingo.
Certainly those responsible for forming the opinions of teachers and medics, and of “educational” and “public health” officials, will be busy.
“Come here, kiddies, get in the back of the van, the lady in the white coat will give you your injection to help you cope with the effects of how nasty things were for you during the pandemic.”
Maybe some of Boris Johnson’s children, assuming he can remember who they are, will be filmed receiving lockdown-syndrome helpy jabs.
In other news, I noticed that monkeypox is more likely to be fatal in children than in adults.
The WHO’s story is that smallpox was “eradicated” in the 1970s. They mean except in biowar labs. So if smallpox arises again, where did it come from?
Their parents should have put down their smartphones during the pandemic. Poor children – essentially treated by their own parents, all day long every day, as if they were less interesting and important than a sh*tty little handheld flashing brain-rotting advertiser-tracker. I chatted with a parent yesterday who said she had a child aged four whom she had taught at home for six months “during the pandemic”. Great, I thought. But what she meant was she had sat the poor lad in front of a screen to get his “kindergarten” provision. Sorry, but that’s not home education. I asked her what kind of stuff he’d been doing and all she said was “kindergarten stuff”. It was obvious she wasn’t really interested.
I saw one article in the MSM – unfortunately I didn’t keep a note of the source – where British schoolteachers were complaining that parents were “looking over their children’s shoulders” at the screens through which the schoolteachers were trying to tell them that some people with todgers and a pair of nads are really “women”.
Was indoctrination into Aryan-themed ideology in schools in Nazi Germany quite so psycho?
Schoolteachers in Britain hate parents. They hate their guts. So do Ofsted. This fact relates to various other big streaks in British culture.
Yes, I remember proud Branch Covidians calling children snowflakes over lockdown, comparing it to the Blitz while ignoring the fact that, during the Blitz, Branch Covidians would have signed a non-aggression pact with those doing the blitzing.
Correct. If you develop Anxiety Disorder as a child, you will never be entirely free of it.
”Too stupid to consider the possibilities…”? So we have to give them that ”incompetence” let-out clause again, do we? Perhaps it’s time everyone began to admit that these people have allowed themselves to be coerced by an EVIL agenda, and that there IS no excuse for them.
Woke, virtue-signalling parents and guardians colluding with a Government that seeks to damage our economy and physical and mental well being.
650 MP’s have voted FOR this horror.
And BBC announces in its headlines today something called the ‘great social care reset’ (don’t you hate this use of the word reset everywhere?) to provide “early intervention” which from my reading of it sounded like an excuse for social workers to step in and remove children from “failing families” – reading the piece through my “WEF/GR” lens it sounded like a Davos ordered policy to break up families, which is, after all one of the aims of the GR and build back better, as strong family units are seen as one of the threats to the achievement of their aims.
These people are mentally ill. And unfortunately in positions of authority.
They’re not ”mentally ill”. That’s just another excuse for them. They are EVIL. This is deliberate, cold and calculated evil, for their own ends, whatever they may be.
There are about 12 million children aged 18 or under in England.
400,000 receiving mental health support works out at about 1 in 33 children.
This is horrifically high — children should be spared the sorts of stresses that can cause mental health issues.
But at the same time it is surprisingly low — mental health issues in adults are higher.
I’d say that it is all part of the larger picture of the UK having a societal structure that creates mental health issues, and then doesn’t deal with them very well (either as society itself (friends/neighbours) or via professional support).
Around 15% of the adult population of the UK are on antidepressants at any one time. Sure, they have their place, but 15% merely suggests that we’re ‘solving’ our problems using medication to treat the symptoms, rather than trying to reduce the problems in the first place.
Most people pick their smartphones practically all day long when they’re not doing paid work or defecating.
The Guardian has more …..
The Guardian has been one of the great whatever-we-do-we-need-more-and-sooner cheerleaders. Bunch of f*****g hypocrites.
It’s been one of the worst – the only question is whether it or the BBC was the worst of all.
the “B”BC is the broadcasting arm of the grauniad.
As usual, the factor in determining “Cui Bono” in the case of these two is money. I think both receive Gates and other money, in some form or another, and the Guardian, along with other media, have been bribed or bought with our money, by the Government. The BBC, as usual, runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds. On the one hand, it is fundamentally Left Wing and biased against the quasi-Tory Government, yet it will do as bidden and ingratiate itself, in order to maintain its status quo. Both are idols with feet of clay.
The BBC is not biased against the government. It’s a government ministry. That it’s not called that is just window-dressing. The courts aren’t called that either. Nor is parliament. The “separation of powers” is illusory. There are just different roles in “pluralist democracy”.
Agreed.
That’s exactly the sort of “opposition” that most governments (with only a few exceptions, such as in North Korea) appreciate.
Obviously would have been much worse without the vaccines.
Or without the masks.
Really, the fact that schools were closed and children forced to take part in futile sanitary rituals – months after it was absolutely clear they weren’t at any appreciable risk – tells us everything we need to know about the ‘pandemic’. I think children were involved for the same reason that there was a Hitler-Jugend – in any successful totalitarian system, children must be indoctrinated. For one thing, this created upwards pressure on the adults whose behaviour the planners wished to change; children are of course very easy to manipulate and frighten.
I do think children are very resilient and I’m optimistic that the mental health problems many of them developed can be overcome (provided the bullshit stops now); then, as Amanuensis often says, we will await their revenge!
I wish I shared your optimism.
But more likely, the rulers are coming for the children in a very big way.
There has been some research into how people cope with famine. When bodyweight first drops below what’s healthy, they often resist and fight. But once it decreases a bit further, they tend to give up, and as part of this, loyalty to family members including to children often goes out of the window.
Smartphonery is emotional famine.
Then add that to what may soon be literal famine.
And stir in the fact that it’s far more cost-effective cull-wise to aim at children than at elderly residents of care homes.
Government policies that are supposed to be about protecting children tend to be respected, even if they are psycho sh*t such as banning parents from taking photos at school plays because the photos might get into the hands of paedophiles if the parents aren’t paedophiles themselves. (Never mind what kind of jobs actual real-live paedophiles who abuse children outside of the family tend to try to get, i.e. jobs that involve access to children [duh!], such as schoolteaching, nursing, medicine, child psychology, child sports training, etc.) It’s true that many are cynical about such policies, but only in a superficial way, in the sense of muttering together in twos and threes when they’re sure nobody above them in the social (and administrative) hierarchy can hear them, but mostly people are resigned. “You can’t fight the system”, “That’s how it is – there’s nothing we can do about it”, “What do you expect me to do about it?”, etc.
‘mostly people are resigned. “You can’t fight the system”, “That’s how it is – there’s nothing we can do about it”, “What do you expect me to do about it?”, etc.’
That is all I ever hear when I attempt to push back. Resignation to whatever our fate is, however bad it is.
BTW – loved your excellent description of
tracking devicesmartphone in post above!“I’m optimistic that the mental health problems many of them developed can be overcome (provided the bullshit stops now)”
I am sure you are right CG – it’s just the caveat I have a problem with. I don’t see the BS stopping now – which would be what is needed for children’s brains to detoxify from all they have been put through over the last 2 and a half years. I am afraid that they are going to try all over again, though maybe in a different way, with moneypox and lack of food and poverty etc etc. I fear that this generation of young people is in for a torrid time of it.
John Waters wrote a substack article linked on here last week where he says that even if TPTB fail, and he believes they will because what they think is nirvana and achievable is nothing short of totally daft, they will still leave the entire world in a state of complete chaos.
‘Fear of social disapproval’ is what made most people wear face masks and take the jabs. Another punishment for refusing to co-operate was the removal of freedoms, and fines if you dare disobey the commands.
NHS still providing the jabs:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/find-a-walk-in-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-site/
“Next review due: 28 October 2022” – looks like they’ve already planned to keep it going!
Just how much more evidence is needed to prove that unwarranted house-arrest, more commonly known as ‘lockdowns’ was a societal, psychological and economic disaster.
And of course our simplistic government is about to hand over authority to the unelected body known as the World Health Organisation, who can then order yet more lockdowns and other restrictive practices, as and when they please…
I could weep for our children. We have failed them.
Would it be fair to say that you think the reason the rulers imposed mass long-lasting house arrest during 2020-21 was because they were stupid and simple-minded, and that in their own terms it was a failure and they were too stupid to realise it would be?
I hope that’s just badly worded. Obviously it would be better if we hadn’t f***ed them over in the first place.
would not surprise me if they did welcome it, after-all, the funding for these mental health charities depends on more people having problems and therefore they have a vested interest. If there were few people classified as mentally ill then these charities would shrink in comparison.
And they’ll be lucky if they don’t end up by being damaged by the treatment as well.
SSRI medication for ‘depression’ (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors):
“It’s thought that SSRIs work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain.”
But no-one really knows.
All kinds of horrible side effects from these ‘anti-depressants’. Not locking people up and not making them depressed could be a better substitute!
Just normalise mental health problems by classifying them as trans and non-binary – problem solved.
At the end of the day parents handed over the well being of their children to the dictator Boris Johnson
They got what they paid for
Serves them right
Schools are atrocious child-damaging institutions, but the proportion of parents in Britain who “electively” home educate is probably no more than about 0.5%.
There is a lot of “slack” left as regards government oppression of children. We can expect developments that are at least as shocking as the March 2020 lockdown – measured from the base of the “new normal”, that is.
In general, and not only concerning children, it’s not as if the current amount of oppression represents some kind of “armistice” line, determined by a committed fight between two well-organised and comparably “conscious” sides. If that were so, we’d be in a much better position. The truth is that it simply hasn’t been convenient for the enemy to conquer more territory. Much of “our” territory isn’t even defended.
I exaggerate and simplify this, but the basic picture is accurate.
Didn’t realise the Guardian did self parody/irony.
Maybe they’re just too dim to join the dots.
Bastards – you were a large cause of the Fear Mongering Clown World we now live in.
At Christmas we had a family get together and a member of the family is head of family social services (or something like that) for her county council. She said that in a normal year they see 5 or 6 youth suicides a year. At Christmas time they were seeing 3 or 4 youth suicides a week.
The youths who were committing suicide tended to be high achieving males who had given up hope and couldn’t see a future.
Thanks politicians and MSM for screwing over the youth, but you managed to save granny. (How many grannies would prefer their grandchildren to have long and happy lives rather than them having an extra year or two (not that any of the initiatives worked anyway))?
They didn’t save Granny though, don’t grant them that undeserved sanction.
Add the adults and you will eventually get to 70% of the population!
“It would all have been so much worse without the vax!”
In part, this is the result of Fart Hancockwomble telling children and teenagers not to ‘kill Granny’, ignoring the fact he did kill Granny.
Lockdown is an assault on the human mind so this is the result.
Matt Hancock and Gina Coladangelo…. whose brother is Robert Coladangelo…
“Roberto Coladangelo’s firm was awarded £28m contract last year to carry out work for South Central Ambulance Service NHS Trust”
Money for ‘old grope’?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9726425/Gina-Coladangelos-brother-healthcare-executive-company-got-NHS-contracts.html
That’s a symptom, not a cause.
Fart reveled in intervening in every aspect of private life, he’s a totalitarian bag of shite.
Funny, just in Bath this past weekend, the uni kiddies out en masse having a grand old time. We did not witness a bunch of young people dragging their feet in despair. To be honest it worried me a bit that they weren’t given the state of their futures.
I’d believe The Guardian is seriously concerned about this when they admit their part in generating it …… by enthusiastically supporting 2 years of lockdowns/restrictions and ruining their education and life chances.
SAGE and The Establishment have created a generation of children who will be weak, drug dependent and therefore easily controlled throughout their lives.
How convenient for them.