NHS Referrals for Anxiety in Children More than Double Pre-Covid Levels
More than 500 children a day in England are being referred to NHS mental health services for anxiety, more than double the rate before the pandemic began. The Guardian has the story.
In 2023-24 there were 204,526 new referrals of patients aged 17 or under where the primary cause was anxiety, official figures show. In 2019-20, the year before COVID-19 struck, the total was 98,953. In 2016-17 it was 3,879.
The alarming increase means children are now being referred to NHS mental health services in England for anxiety at a rate of one every three minutes or almost 4,000 a week.
Doctors, NHS officials and health leaders said in interviews that the surge in anxiety referrals was “staggering” and “shocking” and laid bare an urgent need to tackle the crisis in children’s mental health.
Officials said the rise in demand for care was straining the capacity of the health service to provide timely treatment for anxiety, with thousands of children on “unacceptably long” waiting lists. Delays to treatment risked causing further harm at a crucial stage of their development, they said.
A Guardian investigation can also disclose that mental health leaders fear the figures may only be the tip of the iceberg because many children are not seeking help or are unable to do so, despite increasing awareness. …
Experts said the pandemic [i.e., lockdowns] had caused “significant disruption” to children’s lives and amplified all the other pressures they already faced. More than four years after Covid first hit, many children remain uncertain about the world around them and anxious about their future, the experts said.
Worth reading in full.
Notice that in Left-wing outlets it’s always the “pandemic” or “Covid” that’s to blame, never lockdowns – even though the virus didn’t closes any schools or confine the population to their homes. The Government did that. It wasn’t “the virus” that “disrupted” children’s lives. It was the extreme (and ineffective) response.
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Project Endless Fear Porn. Death from a fake flying bat virus, you will die unless you obey…yeah. Lockdowns, 2 weeks to flatten a hat, okay 2 or 3 years…yeah. Wear a face diaper so you can inhale co2, bacteria and carcinogens and we can’t see your face or hear you talking….yeah. Death from globaloney climate thingy caused by plant food, screamed in every class….yeah. You are a boy with a penis, but you want to be a girl. We know you do. So here are some drugs and let us mutilate you…yeah. You are a human and worse than a virus. You evolved from fish shyte. You are without merit and value. You are worse than an ape, you should hang your head in shame for being a human….yeah. If you are White English, you are a Nazi, a racist, a phobe and worse than cow dung. You are the carbon that should be replaced….yeah. 2+2=whatever the ‘Science’ says….yeah. Obey, shutup and if we ask you to go fight in the forever war against Russia, you will….yeah. Get ready for another scamdemic because Science….yeah. I wonder why so many young people are phacked up, disturbed, anxious, with low self esteem… Read more »
Great—–They fill heads full of crap and expect kids to turn out normal.
Given the effectiveness of the ‘authorities’ teaching children to be afraid in the lockdowns, the success of the government’s intention to teach them about all the other fearful things, from Putin (‘who’s coming for us’, apparently) through the original sin of ‘whiteness’, to the demons of the ‘far-Right’ who are always ready to possess the souls of unwary children (unless the British state does so first), must be guaranteed.
Probably The Guardian’s answer will be that more money should be given to the NHS to deal with this. I’m waiting for their grovelling apology for not resisting lockdowns.
ToF, you missed your moment: “There was no pandemic”
Lol
I thought it only fair to give someone else a chance
The Liberal Progressive Virus strikes again. Every human behaviour must now be classed as some malady or other that government must come along and fix, often purely imagined ones that somehow we never suffered from in the past, when people did not have the luxury of being depressed or anxious.
You’ve spotted the culprit. However, it was not just the children that were the victims. Someone I know who was a teacher (now retired) who worked at at school that did not completely shut down, but dealt with the kids of those who had to work etc. She also became somewhat anxious about it all. No evidence that she had any bug that could have been caused by her being at work.
I’m not saying I was ‘of sound mind’ before 2020, but in that year I certainly became very, very aware of my own mental health. I hit a very low point in Jan 2021, yet it wasn’t fear of the virus, it was the realisation what a psychotic, unhinged bunch of cowards run the country / world.
Pre-2020, I’d often assumed incompetence/self-interest ruled the day. Since then I see malevolence, incompetence and self-interest everywhere I look.
I’m in my 50s now and I struggled hugely. If I were 15 then, I shudder to think.
So in 3 years (2016-2019) referrals increased 25-fold. That’s not Covid Project Fear. That’s more likely Climate Project Fear.
Bastards.
It could well be that the diagnostic criteria for anxiety (and probably other mental health problems) has massively changed. Whereas 10-15 years ago a bit of anxiety about whether or not a kid thought they were liked, had a few worries about exams, relationships etc. was considered a normal part of growing up it’s now classed as a “problem” that the mighty and good can solve with pills, therapy, more of our money etc.
Some of it will be due to the fear porn years, but part is undoubtedly due to a wholesale lowering of the bar, and the outlawing of the terms “get a grip” and “grow a pair”.
I agree. I’ve done a bit of arithmetic on the numbers.
In 2022 (I don’t have the figure for 2023 to hand) there were 14,150,758 people aged 17 or under (under 18s). In 2023-24 there were 204,526 new referrals. Assuming the population figure was similar that’s 1.45% of the entire age group (or about 1 in every 70) in just that one year. We should assume that only some of the kids who were referred in previous years have now passed their 18th birthday and so the total who have been referred since 2016 will be higher than 204,526. Each year about 700,000 kids are born into this age group and a similar number leave at their 18th birthday. If the rate of referrals continues at the current level we will eventually see about a quarter of kids (26%, or about 1 in 4) being referred at some point in their lives before age 18.
If one quarter of a population exhibits a particular trait it is something that should be considered normal – as in, not unusual – why are we treating ‘normal’?
This is more likely to be caused by the generous extra welfare benefits given to the parents of children with any of the umpteen types of “mental illness”, to the tune of about £400 a month per child. “Anxiety” may have been added to the list at about the time these “referrals by parents” began to increase. Often a child’s bad behaviour comes from “Bad Parenting”—not bad parents, but usually just the opposite: over-indulgent parents, especially mothers. Sometimes the nicest parents have the worst kids. The really sad thing is that, when children are raised to think they are “special” by being “mentally ill”, they gradually become that, and lose all ability or desire to work for a living, or develop into functioning adults with the variety of interests and friendships that come with being part of a team of workmates, or pursuing a career, or raising a family themselves. Tempting people to deceive in order to be “quids in”, and not have to work or contribute anything to society, is all part of the Globalist agenda to weaken, corrupt and enslave humanity. But the real target is Ethnic Europeans, using “mental illness” to take out a whole generation of… Read more »
So the deliberate Fear Porn Propaganda achieved what they intended: a frightened, cowed and easily controlled generation of children ….. who will turn into a frightened, cowed and easily controlled generation of adults.
If you develop anxiety and depression in childhood, you will NEVER be free of it.
Evil b@stards.
2 issues. 1) Totally nuts. The modern world scares the crap out of me. But schools and government allow kids to have online access to it all via computers and smart phones and tablets etc. 2) Advertising ‘mental health’ to everyone especially kids is going to see an increase in mental health referrals in people including kids who are perfectly fine but subjected to all the crap modern exposure to the ills of the world brings. Am I worried about what I see and read every day – yes. Anxious – yes, some. Suffering from anxiety as a mental health concern – no. Remember what it was like when you were an adolescent? Confronting for the first time questions about self and identity and the potential confusions? So now we tell them – in addition to all the other crap thrown at them – they might have “mental health” [what a bizarre rumbunctious term that is] and it is OK to talk about it and go see a doctor. The explosion of interest in having “mental health” surely has nothing to do with the vast profits to be made from peddling prescription drugs to treat kids having “mental health”. A… Read more »
Mental and physicasl ill health are on the increase in the UK with successive birth cohorts suffering more than previous cohorts. It will only get worse.Less focus on lockdfowns and social media and more focus on the microbiome and inflammation is required. It is a biological problem not a social construct. See below:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379311083_The_Microbiome_and_the_Entropy_Paradox_An_Evolutionary_Perspective_Food_Nutrition_Journaling more than previous cohorts.