Mental health of young people cratering, experts declare, but politicians unconvinced

A major spike in mental illness among young people has prompted politicians to claim that fake “fashionable disorders” are to blame.

The Mental Health Bill, currently being debated in the House of Lords, seeks to make provisions to amend the 1983 Mental Health Act to modernise language concerning people with mental illnesses.

The bill comes in the midst of a mental health crisis for young people. The number of children that have been admitted to acute hospital wards has risen to 65% in a decade, according to a Lancet study.

Claire Murdoch, England’s NHS Mental Health Director, told The Guardian that the NHS has had to respond to record breaking numbers of people seeking help in schools and via 111 crisis support.

Despite this, not all Peers are convinced that this ‘mental health crisis’ is based in firm reality.

Claire Fox, an independent Peer who studied at the University of Warwick, argued that there was a “complaints culture” within England

Whilst debating the bill in the Lords, Claire Fox, an independent Peer who studied at the University of Warwick, argued that there was a “complaints culture” within England, and that people were being diagnosed with mental health conditions such as ADHD when in fact they were just in “distress” and not actually mentally ill.

Baroness Fox, who was previously a member of the hard-right Reform Party, furthered her point by arguing that “therapeutic experts, councillors, and psychological practitioners” are “diagnostically trigger-happy for labelling people as ill”. She claimed this was the reason for why there is such a high demand for treatment.

This view, however, was not shared by all. Natalie Bennett, the former leader of the Green Party, emphasised: “It is important not to seek to downplay the mental health crisis that we are seeing across our society.”

She added: “There is a huge shortage of services meeting people’s very clear acute needs.”

Whether this crisis is the result of “trigger-happy” therapeutic experts, or genuinely reflects a tragic increase in the mental illness rate of young people, an escalating number of youths and young adults are decreasingly feeling happy. As such, a solution needs to be found.