telegraph.co.uk
Confessions of a psychologist: 'I'm having to turn away grieving teenagers'
By Eleanor Steafel 16 January 2021 • 6:00pm
5-7 minutes
For the first time ever in my 10 years of working as a psychologist, the number of people coming to me for help has surpassed anything I am capable of coping with. I am turning people away every week – something I’ve never done before – because I’m at capacity. I hate doing it, because there are so many who need help, and mental health provision across the NHS and private sector is bursting at the seams, but often all I can do is give them a list of names and wish them well. The worst thing is that so many of them are parents of teenagers who are dangerously unhappy.
Compared to the atrocities people across the country are facing at the moment, not being able to go to school or see your friends might sound like small fry, but it isn’t. I have seen a huge spike in the numbers of teenagers seeking mental health support, and if lockdown goes on much longer, I fear it will only get worse.
We talk about loss a lot at the moment – for teenagers, the loss of social interaction is profound, and for many it is having a huge developmental impact. The teens coming through my (virtual) doors these past months have been suffering with loneliness, a sense of crippling helplessness, and a total lack of motivation. All of which adds up to make life feel pretty relentlessly bleak. For many of these young people, what I’m helping them with is a form of grief.
The parents who contact me are so worried, because it can be hard to tell if your 14 year old is just “being a teenager” or if they are particularly, notably low. They don’t know what to do, and in lockdown there isn’t a lot they can do. They can’t fashion a social life and a sense of structure and purpose where there isn’t one. What worries me is that the teens I see have at least taken that step - or a parent or carer has - of seeking help.
There will be many, many children out there suffering in silence. In many families the adults are having such a difficult time of it that they may not be fully cognisant of how quiet their teenager has become. In many cases a child doesn’t feel able to tell someone they are so low, perhaps because they don’t understand it themselves or feel ashamed. I am currently helping one teenager who had never suffered mental health problems before this past year, but with the loss of his social group, the sense of disempowerment and helplessness, they became so low they started self-harming. It is so devastating to see the effects of this pandemic on young people like them.
Everyone is different, but the most universal problem behind all this unhappiness is the loss of a social life. In its simplest form, spending time with friends is fun. The importance of fun is too often dismissed, when actually it’s such a crucial part of how we build and maintain a psychologically fit mind. Social interaction stimulates our reward system, which makes us feel happy because it gets the endorphins and happy hormones going. It also gets our soothing response going. When we connect with people in person (not on a screen) it has this very powerful cushioning effect on our psychological health.
Think about all those little moments that used to happen to teenagers every day that they probably weren’t even aware of – the chat on the bus or between lessons, the cycle home from school via the chip shop. They all played a part in bolstering their mental health. They gave them confidence, a sense of themselves and their place in the world. And all of that has been gone for some time now.
Another thing that comes up consistently is the loss of so many milestones. They have missed out on a huge number of things they had been anticipating, things they’d mapped out as part of their little journey through life. They might seem small, but they’re huge to them. That loss then turns to low mood and potentially depression.
Lack of movement is a big issue. The static nature of having to be inside (and constantly on their phones) means there is nowhere for their anxiety to go. If they are feeling worried and stressed, their threat system is online, and if they remain static they’ll continue to feel stressed for longer. We have this thing called the amygdala, a little structure in the front of our brain that detects threat. It was designed to detect physical threats, so if you’re being chased by a lion it detects that and it sets the fight or flight response in motion. The problem we have is that the threat detector now also detects non physical threats. In March, that little threat detector was starting to fire up a bit more than normal. The more it was switched on, the more sensitive it became and the easier it was to switch on. Now, it’s going to find more things stressful and overwhelming. That is what is happening to so many young people. They are overwhelmed and disempowered, and with no road map out of it.
Life won’t, of course, be like this forever. Going back to school, to doing sport and socialising will help. But in the meantime, we have to make sure young people aren’t left to flounder. We have to find some ways of bringing structure and fun back into their lives.
Confessions of a psychologist: 'I'm having to turn away grieving teenagers'
By Eleanor Steafel 16 January 2021 • 6:00pm
5-7 minutes
For the first time ever in my 10 years of working as a psychologist, the number of people coming to me for help has surpassed anything I am capable of coping with. I am turning people away every week – something I’ve never done before – because I’m at capacity. I hate doing it, because there are so many who need help, and mental health provision across the NHS and private sector is bursting at the seams, but often all I can do is give them a list of names and wish them well. The worst thing is that so many of them are parents of teenagers who are dangerously unhappy.
Compared to the atrocities people across the country are facing at the moment, not being able to go to school or see your friends might sound like small fry, but it isn’t. I have seen a huge spike in the numbers of teenagers seeking mental health support, and if lockdown goes on much longer, I fear it will only get worse.
We talk about loss a lot at the moment – for teenagers, the loss of social interaction is profound, and for many it is having a huge developmental impact. The teens coming through my (virtual) doors these past months have been suffering with loneliness, a sense of crippling helplessness, and a total lack of motivation. All of which adds up to make life feel pretty relentlessly bleak. For many of these young people, what I’m helping them with is a form of grief.
The parents who contact me are so worried, because it can be hard to tell if your 14 year old is just “being a teenager” or if they are particularly, notably low. They don’t know what to do, and in lockdown there isn’t a lot they can do. They can’t fashion a social life and a sense of structure and purpose where there isn’t one. What worries me is that the teens I see have at least taken that step - or a parent or carer has - of seeking help.
There will be many, many children out there suffering in silence. In many families the adults are having such a difficult time of it that they may not be fully cognisant of how quiet their teenager has become. In many cases a child doesn’t feel able to tell someone they are so low, perhaps because they don’t understand it themselves or feel ashamed. I am currently helping one teenager who had never suffered mental health problems before this past year, but with the loss of his social group, the sense of disempowerment and helplessness, they became so low they started self-harming. It is so devastating to see the effects of this pandemic on young people like them.
Everyone is different, but the most universal problem behind all this unhappiness is the loss of a social life. In its simplest form, spending time with friends is fun. The importance of fun is too often dismissed, when actually it’s such a crucial part of how we build and maintain a psychologically fit mind. Social interaction stimulates our reward system, which makes us feel happy because it gets the endorphins and happy hormones going. It also gets our soothing response going. When we connect with people in person (not on a screen) it has this very powerful cushioning effect on our psychological health.
Think about all those little moments that used to happen to teenagers every day that they probably weren’t even aware of – the chat on the bus or between lessons, the cycle home from school via the chip shop. They all played a part in bolstering their mental health. They gave them confidence, a sense of themselves and their place in the world. And all of that has been gone for some time now.
Another thing that comes up consistently is the loss of so many milestones. They have missed out on a huge number of things they had been anticipating, things they’d mapped out as part of their little journey through life. They might seem small, but they’re huge to them. That loss then turns to low mood and potentially depression.
Lack of movement is a big issue. The static nature of having to be inside (and constantly on their phones) means there is nowhere for their anxiety to go. If they are feeling worried and stressed, their threat system is online, and if they remain static they’ll continue to feel stressed for longer. We have this thing called the amygdala, a little structure in the front of our brain that detects threat. It was designed to detect physical threats, so if you’re being chased by a lion it detects that and it sets the fight or flight response in motion. The problem we have is that the threat detector now also detects non physical threats. In March, that little threat detector was starting to fire up a bit more than normal. The more it was switched on, the more sensitive it became and the easier it was to switch on. Now, it’s going to find more things stressful and overwhelming. That is what is happening to so many young people. They are overwhelmed and disempowered, and with no road map out of it.
Life won’t, of course, be like this forever. Going back to school, to doing sport and socialising will help. But in the meantime, we have to make sure young people aren’t left to flounder. We have to find some ways of bringing structure and fun back into their lives.
