Editorial: NHS - '35% of pupils in England are expected to have access to a mental health support team by 2023'. Are we all going mad?

We were giving children a crappy childhood even before Covid came along

‘Experts in the teams will offer children one-to-one and group therapy sessions while helping to improve the whole school’s communities awareness of mental health through training sessions for parents and workshops for teachers’

Peter Limbrick writes:

This is a disastrous step forward into medicalizing childhood and converting education into mental therapy. This move will bring untold numbers of quack therapists into the school domain and habituate very many pupils into prescription drugs. While a small minority of children need effective and timely psychiatric support, this predicted 35% is a symptom of a bankrupt society that is content to give the coming generation a crappy childhood. In this bankruptcy it is easier to treat children for mental illness than to organise their lives to be healthy, happy and meaningful. My ideas for a healthy, happy and meaningful childhood include:

Making sure children have enough healthy food to eat

Providing decent homes for families to bring children up in

Children sleeping without a smartphone under the pillow

Proper provision to minimise online bullying and indoctrination

Increased contact with the real natural world

Reduced academic pressure

Putting music, dance, drama and art back into the school curriculum

Funding councils properly so they can provide play, sport, social clubs and other meaningful activity outside school

Reducing toxins and radiation in the environment

Allowing children to feel valued, respected and equal without stigma and oppression

On the other hand, it is probably easier to give them antidepressants. And why stop at 35%?

Peter Limbrick, June 2021