Mental health services

And that I accepted in my post above vsmpirequeen (live the name ?). It’s not those mental issues I am talking about over which we have little control (except possibly chemical) yet.

There are many aspects to the (can I say without being deliberately misunderstood) lack of mental well being and resilience afflicting our younger people these days. There are illnesses brought on by the expectations and stresses of today which we ought to be helping them with before they take hold.

Surely?

Come on luckygirl get a grip!!!!!

If you don’t recognise the picture I paint of how many of this younger generation have been encouraged to think the world revolves around them, the little princes and princesses, the ‘you can have it all’ generation, and recognise that this has done them no favours at all, then we will just have to agree to differ.

Look at what I’ve said - I reiterate it is not their fault, but the fault of the society who has pitchforked them into this identity and then left them to flounder when they eventually discover that they can’t ‘have it all’ and they are not little prince and princesses in the eyes of would be employers.

I have children and GC, and know well their many friends and I do not recognise the stereotype of young people who think the world revolves round them.

I have worked on many projects with young people and again do not recognise this attitude at all. The majority of young people were kind and caring - and fun! A bit mixed up sometimes, but who wasn't at that age?

Scratch the surface and they are much like the rest of us I find.

The ill young people that I saw were mentally ill because they were mentally ill - not because they were spoiled and had unrealistic expectations.

Labelling them in this way is a bit like the let's blame the Baby Boomers approach!

Anyway - back to topic. I am deeply concerned about the shortage of funds and skills in the mental health services.

Neither do I lucky - I wish in some ways it were that simple. I’ve never known one mentally ill person that was ill because of not being able to have it all. Many of the ones I’ve met have made me feel enormously sad at the deep seated, intractable and complex range of needs they have which overall are not being met and in some cases seem unmeetable. And I’ve also been moved at the love, support, despair, heartbreak and isolation that their families experience whilst trying to care for them. I know it was fiction but the recent Sean Bean set of plays Broken had an episode that dealt with this in a very realistic way.

I don't know this series maryrliza - I will see if I can find it.

I can see your point, Friday. I worked with mentally disturbed young people in the '70s-90s, and the types of problems they had were different from those which seem to be prevalent nowadays. Going back even further, in the '50s and 60s there were many mentally ill folk as the result of WW2. Which I saw as a student.
So apparently the underlying causes have changed, and we need to take into account the social factors which lead to psychiatric problems.
As well as that, I think there have always been the types of problems which other posters have mentioned, probably genetically and chemically linked.
It's an area of health which has never been fully understood ,or well-funded.

Thank you Fennel you have understood the point I was making and how we do indeed need a new and proactive approach.

Let me put it like this, even if we can’t agree on the reasons/cause, then mental illness is on the increase in our young people, particularly those we might call ‘millennials’ (for lack of a better term) and we need to identity ways to help prevent this rise in future generations.