It’s tempting to look for online causes if those you love are depressed – but in many cases the problem is real life
Nothing turns a parent’s heart inside out like the unhappiness of a child, and your own helplessness in the face of it. When they were tiny, it was all so much easier. Toddlers can turn from sunny to inconsolable in a second, but are equally miraculously restored by a nap or a box of raisins. The unhappiness of an older child, however, is infinitely more frightening. Suddenly adults too are out of their depth, thrashing around for answers, terrified that there might not be any.
Last week, in the middle of an emotive public debate about teenage suicides, the government’s former mental health champion for schools, Natasha Devon, listed the top things that pupils tell her are threatening their mental wellbeing. The order has probably changed over the years – I’m not sure academic anxiety would have topped the list in the 1990s – but otherwise it’s been the stuff of teenage diaries since time immemorial: problems at home, or having nobody to talk to. Striking by its absence, however, was something that increasingly worries so many parents. “Pressure from social media to live a perfect life” scraped in only at seventh on the children’s list.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2RMZLqZ
via
0 Comments