According to the most exhaustive time study ever conducted in Britain, the mental health of British 15-year-olds has worsened over the last 30 years. “Time Trends in Adolescent Mental Health,” published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, reports that the chances of British 15-year-olds developing behavioral problems, such as stealing, lying and general disobedience, have more than doubled.

Boys are more likely to develop behavioral problems, while girls are more likely to experience emotional problems, with the overall rate of emotional problems for both genders increasing by 70%. One in five 15-year-old girls is reported to have emotional problems!

Sharon Witherspoon, deputy director of the Nuffield Foundation, which funded the research, said, “We are doing something peculiarly unhelpful for adolescent mental health in Britain.

“This is not a trend which is being driven by a small number of kids who are getting worse. It is a more widespread malaise.”

The study discovered a correlation: The rising rate of 15-year-olds with behavior problems is directly related to increased odds of experiencing a wide range of negative outcomes as adults, such as homelessness and dependency on government benefits.

Andrew McColloch, Chief Executive Officer of the Mental Health Foundation, stated, “The increase in self-harm is one of a number of indicators in the mental health field that show something is wrong.

“It may be visible evidence of growing problems facing our young people, or of an inability to respond to those problems.”

A retired British teacher cites 40 years of overhauling the education system as a contributor to the decline in youth mental health, stating that working-class children have been reduced to “ignorant, illiterate unemployables.” According to her, since the 1960s, youth have been subjected to the trendy teaching methods of socialist theorists—which have failed to provide them the basics necessary to flourish in the workforce. She alleged that the idea of not sitting children in rows became much more important than teaching how to read and write.

Referring to those advancing the new system of education, the former teacher writes, “They were allowed to go into schools and order teachers to sit pupils in tables opposite each other so that pupils could ‘have eye contact with each other’ and to tell teachers that they must not stand up in front of a class and teach, because this gave them too much prominence in the classroom.

“Writing on the board was wrong, giving notes was wrong…written exercises were wrong…and so it went on.”

Of course, there are those who disagree with such assessments. But with more and more studies drawing similar conclusions, it should be apparent that the lives of many British teens are spiraling downward.

Source: IC Wales