Declarations of war on yob culture won't solve this mushrooming crisis

It is adults who have made teenagers' lives a misery

A strange and dangerous fallacy seems to be running riot in government thinking. It is that young children matter most. Like secular Jesuits, ministers are going around promising that if the state gets its hands on a child for the first few years, with good free childcare and support for parents, then that child will be fine for life — a model citizen in the making. This is obviously nonsense; while no one disputes the importance of good care in the early years, there are many critical times in young lives when people are faced with radical choices. Above all, those of us with teenagers know that the teens are a time of particular danger and stress. I know many adolescents who had impeccable early upbringings, in secure families and with good teaching, who then erupted with more than spots. Depression, eating disorders, addiction, self-harm and the experience of frightening street violence ... these stories are all around me, as if they are now normal rites of passage for young adults. At times it seems there is hardly a single family unaffected. This child, so bright and optimistic so recently, is sunk in grey depression and won't go to school. That one, so athletic and cocky, has been violently mugged and now avoids walking anywhere, lurking inside his bedroom. Another cuts herself. Another suffers extreme bullying and has ballooned in size. Another was stabbed while walking the dog. The papers are full of stories of the extreme edges of teenage trauma — the 12-year-old fathers and the child mothers; the suicide pacts made on the internet; the very young binge drinking; those who walk out and never come back.

Yes, old bores have been huffing and puffing about the feckless, violent young since Roman times. More recently, parents of teenagers in the 60s found that no generation had been so rebellious; in the 70s they had to cope with punk and daughters coming home with pins through their cheeks. A few years ago it was the plague of E-popping. Or perhaps it is even simpler. Maybe as a mother of teenage children, it just so happens that I know lots of people also going through the trauma of teenage parenting just now? Is the sense of a current teenage crisis as banal as the sudden discovery of childbirth issues and young children by journalists in their early 30s, writing as if this was a general novelty? Numerically, it seems that my impression of widespread depression and other mental problems among teenagers is not coincidental. The Mental Health Foundation estimates that nearly half a million teenagers are self-harming. According to the Office for National Statistics, some 10% of children aged between 11 and 15 have a clinically recognised mental disorder. Among 16- to 19-year-olds, it is even worse — 13% have neurotic disorders. And the problems have increased in the past 50 years.

Nor is this simply a middle-class concern:
14% of those in social class five suffer, compared with 5% in social class one. Gary Bayliss, of the mental health charity Young Minds, says starkly: "What we are doing to our teenagers is a question we must find the answer to." There are almost as many theories as there are unhappy teenagers. Some highlight a single issue, from the growing evidence of a link between cannabis, particularly the modern super-strength varieties, and psychosis. Others focus particularly on the ready availability of high-proof alcohol and the now notorious culture of binge drinking. Then there are the broader stresses — the intense pressure to perform in endless exams and tests; worries about student debt; the pressures on girls, in particular, from a highly commercial and competitive consumer culture. Perhaps the move of more women into the labour market in recent decades, with fathers not compensating for the time lost with children, is also a factor. That is not something government could or should try to reverse. But it doesn't mean that government can turn its back on the teenage crisis, and pretend that declaring war on "yob culture" will solve it. A few specific problems are government-made, such as the intense competitiveness between schools about exam pass rates and worries over student debt. Others are the result of public policy failure: in all the talk about the rise in violent street crime, hardly anyone seems to notice that it is teenagers who are often the scared-witless victims. Adult society moans about the fashion-model waifs, but nothing is done and it is teenage girls who suffer the consequences.

At last, perhaps late in the day, some ministers are speaking out. Margaret Hodge, previewing the government's forthcoming green paper on youth issues, said recently: "It has always amazed me that we are generous with support and advice in the very first days of a child's life but we ignore the demands of parents when we get to those teenage years, when it's so difficult to get things right." She points out too that most teenagers are not yobs, binge drinkers or addicts, and they work rather hard at school. Hodge ends by talking about the need to offer better youth facilities, and admits "much more needs to be done". Well, amen to that. Yes, it matters to improve the early experience of the youngest. But alongside this huge focus, it is time for Labour to produce a manifesto for teenagers and young adults. Some of the remedies are pure common sense. More bobbies on the beat at school are needed at let-out time to curb the explosion in casual mugging and bullying; more sports facilities and more money for youth centres are essential. But what about getting teenagers involved in a major new initiative on how to prevent drug abuse — "just say no" just doesn't seem to be working. Why not a new look at college education, perhaps offering a cheaper and quicker option than conventional courses? What about more support for mentoring and volunteering?

Andrew McCulloch, of the Mental Health Foundation, speaks of "a crying need to reform children's and adolescents' mental health services". Hundreds upon hundreds of children and parents have complained that "they are the wrong services in the wrong place at the wrong time". McCulloch suggests services in schools and GPs' surgeries, not just nine to five, and a renaming of mental-health help: "Children might go and see a counsellor, they wouldn't dream of going to a psychiatrist," he says.

These are only a handful of ideas that should be considered. The most important thing is for a package of policies aimed at making teenagers feel a wanted, respected part of British public culture, rather than a fringe problem. They are a problem, of course - that's the nature of the beast. But they are also the country's quite imminent future and they deserve a better deal from politics.

Jackie Ashley
3 February 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1404546,00.html

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