Kids tragic victims of Western culture

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Mental health problems among young people in Britain are a public health crisis, says Dr Max Pemberton, who works full-time as a psychiatrist in the National Health Service. This is his assessment of what life means for incredibly high numbers of young people:

An epidemic of mental health problems affecting the young is becoming a full-scale public health emergency, with new data showing that more than a million children needed treatment for serious mental health problems in the past year.

The data also showed a startling increase in the number of under-18s admitted to hospital with serious eating disorders — a jump of 82 per cent in two years.

As an eating disorders specialist, I have seen first hand the increase in the number of patients being referred to my clinic, as well as those increasingly unwell patients for whom hospital admission is now the only option.

 As to the main cause for what he calls "this terribly sad situation" he identifies a lack of parental control and guidance of young people's use of social media:

The first [cause] is the rise of smartphones and social media. According to a survey conducted in 2021, 58 per cent of children aged from eight to 11 have smartphones — and 89 per cent of UK children aged eight to 17 had their own social media profiles.

We all know that images of models and celebrities in adverts are airbrushed in order to sell products, but increasingly this is also now the case for images posted by individuals, some of whom tweak and alter pictures using filtering and editing apps.

This means young children and teens are being bombarded with images that appear to have been taken spontaneously but, in reality, have been manipulated to create impossibly perfect faces and bodies.

No wonder young people feel under increasing pressure to copy these unrealistic images — with the result they are more likely to diet or work out to change their own body shape. In those who are susceptible, often due to underlying psychological and emotional difficulties, this can develop into an eating disorder.

I worked in eating disorders for ten years and many of my young patients told me they'd become obsessed with images they saw online, particularly things such as 'thigh gaps' (a space at the top of the thighs) on people's Instagram accounts.

Yet they entirely failed to realise that only a tiny fraction of the population naturally look like this, and that many of the images had been digitally manipulated.

Young boys need fathers

Eating disorders are not a minor matter. Dr Pemberton highlights heartrending statistics:

 ... [E]ating disorders have the highest mortality of any mental illness, and one in five of those with a disorder will die from it.

That is a horrendous statistic — yet people are having to wait years in order to get the treatment they need. 

Therefore, it is a mark of shame for British society that attention at government level, nor within the public as a whole, is not given to this emergency. Dr Pemberton emphasises that health resources provided are inadequate, with "shamefully long waiting lists for those who need help the most".

It is a scandal that clinicians working in services for the most unwell patients are powerless to do anything except watch as they deteriorate to the extent they need hospital admission.

  Back to the role of parents in this social catastrophe. Dr Pemberton offers advice:

So what can parents do? Find out who your children are following on social media and why; and encourage them to unfollow those people who aren't portraying real bodies positively.

Parents who suspect a child is affected by this disorder should push as hard as they can for referrals to specials services. He suggests getting support from eating disorder organisations such as the British group BEAT.

Finally, there is an excellent book, Getting Better Bite By Bite by Professor Janet Treasure, which can also help.

But the question also arises as to why increasing numbers of children have "underlying psychological and emotional difficulties", to use Dr Pemberton's words, which make them susceptible to unbalanced influence by social media, and thus, to eating disorders.

He goes some way to answering that question in another item in his newspaper column, where he features actor Hugh Jackman's affection for his father, who had recently died. He reports:

Jackman said: 'My mother left when I was eight, so my father raised us. He taught me really great values. A lot of who I am today is because of him.'

I've no doubt that it must have been incredibly painful to lose his father, but I hope he can take some solace in having had such a wonderful relationship. So many other men, unfortunately, cannot say the same.

All too often, families split up and the father drifts off, but the damage caused by this loss of a role model can last for ever.

I'll probably get pilloried for saying it, but after seeing troubled young men for years, my conclusion is that young boys need a father. 

Despite the fashionable antifamily sentiment that Dr Pemberton refers to, hands-on parenting by a male and a female parent are certainly the foundation of a society that is truly protective of its children, providing them, by means of a strong attitude of social solidarity, the resources and safeguards that healthy physical and mental growth demands.

Conversely, it is becoming increasingly plain to see that the so-called progressives of Western society are not the heroes of the era, but are cowards who prefer to militate for soft, culturally virtuous, goals rather than do the heavy lifting of confronting the corporate and political powers over the creation of conditions that support family life, and over the removal of conditions that perpetuate inequality.

To my mind, the economic and social injustice prevalent in US society that should be the progressives' target was made vivid by the scandalous fact that railway workers, who in November had declared strike action over stalled negotiations on pay and conditions, were left after the legislated settlement without any paid sick leave. Any self-respecting social movement should hang its head in shame at that state of affairs existing in the 21st Century.  

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