Mental health, work and history

[Biggles50]

Its the young Gaming Generation that I fear for with all the hours in the fantasy world of the roll play games that have been very popular for the last 20 years.

Especially where there is just the one person at their home or where they are roll playing whilst walking down the street.

IMO a lot of the stress has been placed upon society in the last twenty five years with the advent of the smart mobile phone and the must respond immediately attitude to messages and texts.

Society is being dumbed down and that does not bode well for the planet.

I spent 12 years working in mental health and the NHS system is a joke, badly management and inappropriate treatment regimes abound.  Our Direct of Finance was very critical of the Government a few years ago when they announced extra Billions for Mental Health, what the media did not report was that 3x the increase had been cut in the prior five years and the extra would not even cover the cost of inflation.

Its not just the Tories, the Blairites did exactly the same when they were in Government.  In the 25 years in total that I worked in the NHS I saw a deterioration in standards and excessive cost cutting and staff reductions.

[pharmaT]

I can't really agree with the idea that young people today are underoccupied.  I have a 16yo and 10yo.  They may only be at school from 9 until 3/4 but they have hours of homework in term time and other activities.  For example my 16 year old regularly has over 20 hrs homework a week.  She has a part time job, trains and competes in athletics and does charity work through a school group (the work is done outside school hours).  The majority of her friends have part time jobs, compete in sport or play in orchestras, do charity work.  Actually to the point I worry they're doing too much.    I think big damaging factor is that they are constantly being told that they're not doing enough.

I guess I was talking more your average kid who barely has any homework, plays xbox soon as they get home and spend the evening scrolling facebook and snapchat or instagram (yes, that is most kids today, might come as a shock?)

Your kids are obviously very well brought-up and are shining examples of what youngsters are capable of when given the proper support and guidance. Well done But you seem to think that is normal, or average, it certainly isn't, they are exceptional.

Yes, I do think it's normal. Yes some kids are as you describe but not as many as you may think.  I'm just a scummy single mum on a council estate.

My kids don't get more homework than their classmates. This is a state school that serves a catchment area with statistically a high level of poverty.

The majority of kids get a part time job as soon as they can. I know kids who compete internationally in snow boarding and athletics. That bit is exceptional but I know many more who train and compete in karate, Tae kwon do, athletics, rugby, football, and dance. I see the older teens act as assistants to the coaches to help with the younger ones. I've listened to many of the kids sing and play music in concerts. The school has a large charity group, many more than just my kids participate.

People do tend to assume that they're just lazing about irresponsible. For example: one evening my daughter was coming back in from work as I got a late supermarket delivery the driver told my daughter she needed to learn some responsibility and stamina to work longer. He still didn't get it when I pointed out she may have only worked 4 hrs but that was after doing 6 hrs at school that day and as an under 18 there were legal restrictions on how many hours she could work.

[Jed59]

To  shove my 2p worth in, folk used  to say the same about my generation...  then  it was TV i think to blame lol.  I've always said that   by and large  young people   are  brilliant ..they are, like it or   not  the future!
 Im not saying they dont want a foot behind them sometimes  but so did we!
When Im coming home from a concert  about 10.30, in January, me :-hat, gloves, thick coat, scarf....them :- girls practically naked, lads in  short sleeves...   I have to stop myself asking if they have a  vest on, or does their mother  know   theyre out like that.
Then I smile behind my hand and think get home you silly old fool, get your milky drink and bed LO
Like it or  not....  they are the future!

[Biggles50]

Grandson gets home.

Spends 1/2 an hour doing the Grammar School Homework.

Grandaughter gets home, goes on mobile and chats whilst dancing in her room, homework is consigned to last gasp Sunday.

Grandson goes on his Xbox until their now single Mum comes home, she is a Nurse so arrives home shattered.

Is anything ready, no.

Asked why when they visit, they answer that they have had a hard day at school or dunno.

Weekend and football, Grandson practices for an hour, Sunday has a game. After showering they come to visit where he promptly falls asleep on the sofa because he is shattered.

So not all kids fill their time usefully.

[pharmaT]

Didn't say all do, I said that young people do more than people give them credit for.  More young people are hard working than people seem to think they are.

One thing I will say is we do need to stop seeing having some down time as a waste.  Having rest time helps consolidate learning, actually promotes good mental health  and helps keep us physically healthy

[Maiden Stone]

One thing I will say is we do need to stop seeing having some down time as a waste.  Having rest time helps consolidate learning, actually promotes good mental health  and helps keep us physically healthy

Also helps creativity.

               "Leisure" by W. H. Davies

          "What is this life, if full of care
           We have no time to stand and stare"

[Maiden Stone]

Today many new mums get depressed, 'back in the day' being a mother wasn't the 'be all and end all' of their existance, they still worked to survive even while raising the children - far too busy to even contemplate their situation existentially. Even today in 3rd world countries, you see women with babies strapped to their backs pulling rice in the fields, are those mothers depressed?


 But still, I am wondering whether mental health issues could have been much less common back then, mainly due to the fact that people were too busy working and trying to survive, rather than worry about 'other' things that weren't directly related to surviving/living.

Many mothers today need to earn. Some are as stretched, in time and money, as women in the past. This leads to stress.  Advantages now are welfare state, improved health and labour-saving appliances.
 Some people don't have good quality, affordable accommodation with security of tenure or are paying high rents or mortgages. These factors may cause stress.   

[Maiden Stone]

Having looked at my own family tree, and as a result, through lots of historic newspapers, I think mental health issues were just as common back then as they are today. If not worse, for those living in extreme poverty - which will always make these things more likely to develop.

Suicide was pretty common and it's not rare to find people being admitted to mental asylums.
 

Some survivors of An Gorta Mor, the Great Irish Famine of 1840s suffered poor mental health.
"Madness, Migration and the Irish in Lancashire c.1850-1921"
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/research/archive/irishmigration
and a related work "Emaciated, Exhausted and Excited: The Bodies and Minds of the Irish in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire Asylums" by Catherine Cox, Hilary Marland & Sarah York
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4326681/

I once idly searched for my name which is Irish on Lancashire Online Parish Clerks website. Top of the list of results in 19th century was a woman who died at a mental asylum.   

[Tickettyboo]

Its the young Gaming Generation that I fear for with all the hours in the fantasy world of the roll play games that have been very popular for the last 20 years.

oddly we had a conversation at dinner this evening about a similar scenario.
Substitute the time frame as the 1950s. I spent most of that time in hours and hours of 'fantasy worlds` still do and still love it.
Back then the fantasy was from books, I read voraciously, still do. I enjoyed the 'role play' that you seem to think is a bad thing:-) Getting me to put the book down to have meals, do whatever it was my Mam wanted me to do must have driven Mam crazy.

My grandchildren do both the traditional fantasy worlds like Granny did, and the more modern versions using technology. They have fun with both.
I'd probably have done the same had it been available but back then my only brush with technology arrived (for us) in the 1960s in the form of a very small tv screen  Again my imagination was captured (though books stlll remained a favourite) , it was different to my book fantasy worlds, people moved and talked!

I'm never quite comfortable reading 'generalisations' about any easily identifiable section of society, be it young folk, old folk, any section that doesn't totally conform to whatever demographic we are trying to say is 'better'. 
In any one section there will be shining examples of either what we personally perceive as a 'good scenario' or what we perceive as a 'bad scenario'.

Boo