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I was very surprised to hear that young women in London are happier with their looks than anywhere else in the country.
According to a recent survey, 15 per cent of London girls said they would not change a thing about their appearance, compared with eight per cent in the rest of Britain.
I would have thought that given the emphasis on fashion and looks that seems to pervade London the opposite would be true.
The explanation is that London has such diversity that it is easy for young people to fit in.
Results that did fall more in line with my expectations showed that stress was a big worry, with half of 11- to 16-year-olds saying they had suffered it severely.
Shockingly, some children as young as 11 are so depressed that they have considered suicide. I suspect the true extent of the incidence of mental illness among young people may be higher than we think.
There are many reasons why this might be. Young people now have such an extensive access to information via the media and the internet that they know all about the threats and dangers of life but don't yet have the skills to assess and analyse them. This comes with maturity.
Rather like a hypochondriac reading lists of symptoms on the internet and coming up with the worst possible diagnosis, so kids see and believe the most skewed, extreme or sensational side of stories.
The actual diagnosis of depressive disorders in young people can be hard.
Teenagers tend to exaggerate their feelings, a minor row with a friend at school being described as a massive fight, and feeling down or unhappy about something may well be described as being "really depressed".
Working out what is genuine and what is just teenage angst is tricky. Normal teens have tantrums, sleep a lot and can become obsessive about certain things but these can also be depressive symptoms.
Similarly they can also be aggressive and threatening, can bully and vandalise, and these may be just personality traits, or signs of depression, which hints at the large numbers of unhappy youths causing problems on estates all over the country.
The good news is that because youngsters for the most part have not yet had time to build up the defences that make treating adult depression so much harder and because they are often not stuck in rigid adult behavioural patterns, they can recover from depressive illnesses in months or even weeks, instead of years.
But it's also important not to over-diagnose depression.
A child having difficulty at school or during a family crisis and who is therefore acting up is probably not depressed.
An "easy solution" could be to give them a label of behavioural or depressive problems, stick them on tablets and send them on their way, but this will reinforce the mistaken belief that sadness is not part of a normal life, and create a dependence on medical intervention when life gets tough.
Perhaps we should be teaching our young people how to manage stress and share their problems with others, and to accurately recognise when they are genuinely not coping.
Reader views (4)
So much information available, so many conflicting ideas, such flawed research: aren't we lucky to have Dr. Jessen's guiding hand to steer us through and open our minds to both sides of the arguments? I like the way he gives his opinion but leaves us, armed with the facts, to make our own decisions. His grandmother sounds great too, any more anecdotes?
- Morag Halifax, London,
Being the parent of a teenager, I can assure you that parents DO try very hard to communicate with them- that's when they're not at college/in their pt jobs/out at parties/have headphones/iphones/something stuck in their ears whilst online/listening to music, playing on X-box & writing endlessly on Messenger..
When WE'RE not too exhausted from our demanding jobs whch require US to spend 8-9 hrs a day stuck to computer screens, we do try & have chats..most of the time they don't want to talk us to US, but to their mates.
Teens are faced with non-stop media reporting of
a) how awful/scary they are to other people
b) how there are no jobs for them even if they do go to university
c) going on to uni will earn them a massive fee debt to spend the rest of their lives paying back
d) they are priced out of any chance of ever buying their own homes, unless they work in the City/become MPs
No wonder they are fed up, but I wouldn't say its as serious as 'depression'.. That's the illness caused by all wrung-out, work-consumed 40 & 50-something parents.
- Mum-Of-Teen-Alwaysonline, Essex
It's not just the overflow of information, there is also a lack of nature, lack of communication/attention from parents, lack of physical activity, lack of sleep etc etc and especially LACK OF A HEALTHY NUTRITION. We all know about this, read it daily in the paper but there appears a major lack on taking action to change the situation. Why?
- Petra Gericke, London
IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME...... or if you name it they will develop it, which coincidentally has occured since pharma launched their new wonder drug SSRI;s, we name a disorder claim the population is depressed, anxious, stressed pushing it down the same media streams that sell us fashion and useless appliances so of course as soon as somebody is stressed anxious or feeling blue, they are DIAGNOSED with depression which is HOGWASH. The legitimate feelings of depression are clearly linked to circumstances of abuse and neglect and tradegy and nothing more, better parenting and community involvement can solve this. STOP selling this man made Syndrome as real and start focussing on more real and significant issues
- Nicola Holden, melbourne australia
