Any parent reading today’s report in this newspaper on mental ill-health among young people would be worried. But for someone like me, who has battled with depression, the survey makes for sickening reading.
My stomach lurched as I read of plummeting levels of happiness, self-esteem and satisfaction among children aged 11-16 as they grow older. For the pressurised world that teenagers are experiencing is a fertile breeding ground for depression. As the veteran of two breakdowns I wouldn’t wish this harrowing illness on anyone, least of all our vulnerable young.
Once depression has planted its insidious taproots, for some it can prove a lifelong battle to recover. Having a history of depression makes you more likely to have another bout. The pattern is that subsequent depressive episodes tend to be worse, not better, and more difficult to recover from, like the layers of paint on a watercolour that darken slightly with each successive wash.
What is so frightening is how similar the stresses are for youngsters and adults. It’s as if childhood didn’t exist: forget any notion of schooldays being the happiest of our lives.
The reasons for depression will always be complex — even the Royal College of Psychiatrists covers all bases on its website by identifying seven different factors that predispose you to depression. Sometimes it can strike for no apparent reason at all. But the report identifies key triggers that certainly resonate with me.
I enjoyed my days at St Paul’s Girls’ School in London, but it was a highly competitive environment and at times short on praise. It increased my hunger for reassurance. I typically felt I was not good enough, however well I might supposedly have done.
Being fearful of rejection and needing constant reassurance translated into trying to garner more and more outward measures of success as a bulwark against such uncomfortable feelings. It meant applying high standards, at times ridiculously high, and being constantly busy.
The patterns I had laid down as an adolescent continued into my early working life as a Times journalist and working mother. There were a lot of boxes to tick and I, like so many others, was trying to tick them all. In the end, supposedly having it all turned into having a breakdown — twice.
During the first major depressive episode, as psychiatrists describe them, I was bedridden for six months. The second time I was ill for a year.
Bone-tired, I would lie outwardly still, worn out by the effort of clinging on for dear life, but inside my body was furiously busy. I had a permanent headache, as though dozens of vicious, heat-maddened wasps were massed behind my eye sockets stinging my soft, unprotected brain.
My rancid stomach fiercely knotted and reknotted itself, spinning in a sharp-pointed pirouette. Often I would throw up. It was as if I was on a plane that was about to crash. I had to have something to hang on to, either my mother or my husband. Their arms were livid with bruises, such was the fierceness of my grip.
Mercifully, I recovered, but such memories mean I worry deeply about the pressures that our own five children face today. If anything, the academic pressure in particular is even worse for this generation of schoolchildren, who are the most examined and tested in history. As if it weren’t enough to get an A at A-level, now you can jump even higher and get an A*.
In addition, they must battle a new foe I didn’t have to face in my own youth: the internet — particularly when it comes to girls and body image, not to mention cyberbullying and trolling.
We worried about looking good when we went out. Our daughters now experience non-stop pressure to present an idealised, waxed, buffed, partying image of perfection 24/7.
This is how one teenager put it: “I compare myself to others, but it’s impossible as they present an unattainable image on social media. It’s exhausting.”
Yet technology can provide answers. It has allowed the mapping of mood to be far more accurate than when I was first ill: there are apps and websites that allow you to track your ups and downs and share information with others, as well as the possibility of online help.
Technology has also helped to break down the stigma about mental ill-health by allowing people to share their experiences. And yes, stigma still exists. The most common reaction since I wrote my memoir about my own experience of depression has been “You’re very brave” — and not in a good way.
I wrote the book partly because I wanted to share some of the strategies I adopted to get better and now use to manage the illness. Thanks to drugs, therapy, careful diet, exercise and the healing power of consoling poetry, I have my black dog on a tight-ish leash. The more we strive as parents to lead balanced lives and nurture our own emotional wellbeing, the better able we are to help our children.
There is no denying the sadness and suffering that my depression has also brought and the sense of wasted months and years, particularly with my children when they were young.
As a mother, one obvious implication for me is how important it is to try to bring up our children to enjoy good mental health. One approach could be to teach children CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) so they are equipped to handle anxious situations and to introduce more wellbeing classes of the sort pioneered by Anthony Seldon at Wellington College public school.
Another approach could be to try to equip parents with more skills to help their children’s emotional wellbeing and to spot depressive tendencies early on. (Perhaps in my case it was my perfectionism and how I demanded too much of myself.)
For those like me, who seem to have a genetic tendency to depression, the need to teach our children is even more urgent.
Black Rainbow: How Words Healed Me — My Journey Through Depression is published by Yellow Kite at £16.99. All author proceeds are going to the charities Sane and United Response
I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments of concern about the pressures facing our teenagers. We have written a book to help parents understand and support the teenagers: their vulnerable brain, their social world and spotting the early warning signs that things are not OK. We have been running courses in London and all over the country for about 5 years. We teach teenagers (and staff) in schools too and was shocked by levels of stress in the girls I saw this week preparing for GCSEs - I know that perfectionist tendencies and unrealistic expectations are the driving force, but it feels like fighting a rising tide. I connected with you on Twitter. Our book launch is at Daunt Books Holland Park on 10th June, please come it would be good to meet you.
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