Helping young people with mental ill-health

May 30, 2025

Most mental ill-health, whoever experiences it, is preventable. That means that it does not have to happen at all. It is not in most cases genetic or neurological in origin, but is instead caused by ambient determinants – anything from bullying to financial and employment distress to lack of hope in a desirable and sustainable future to childhood abuse and trauma, which in all of its foms accounts for an exceptionally high incidence of problems throughout life.

None of this is usually considered, and prevention usually means waiting until somebody needs help, which isn’t prevention at all, but at best, early intervention.

We have systemically failed public mental health systems across the entire country due to decades of government neglect and under-funding. What we should also be seeing much more of is a radical questioning of what is wrong in our society, in our families, in our employment opportunities and conditions, in the behaviour of government and employers, in all of the now permanent stress factors to which we are subjected, and which young children are already suffering from, which are the real causes of so much mental ill-health.

How much of that could be prevented?