Concerns and platitudes about mental health is all the rage for children these days. Over the years, with my three older children at school, I have seen offers of yoga (which is not exactly in keeping with Catholic teaching), therapy dogs, counsellors, assemblies on mindfulness, well-being week, “all-about-me” posters and much more.
Granted, some of this has its place in certain circumstances, but it increasingly appears that we are reaching a tipping point now where there is too much focus on the mental health of children resulting in, ironically, a detriment to their mental health.
This possibility is addressed by Abigail Shrier in her book Bad Therapy, Why the kids aren’t growing up, which raises the alarm about the medicalisation of childhood and teenagers. Shrier is also the author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, which exposed the huge increase in the number of teenage girls identifying as trans.
In Bad Therapy, Shrier turns her equally unflinching gaze on America’s latest malign social trend: a bastardised form of therapy that’s making its youth more fragile and sadder.
Shrier is not alone in asking questions about the poor mental health of youth nowadays. Jonathan Haidt in his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness lays out the shocking state of the mental health of teenage girls in particular, and places the blame firmly at the feet of tech companies, social media and mobile phones especially.
But perhaps there is something far bigger going on here than the ever-expanding mental-health-industrial complex and the ubiquitous and addictive nature of mobile phones and social media. Because these things are filling a void. They are filling the infinite void than has been left in the life of a modern child that is being raised without God.
More and more children are being raised in Godless homes. The mental health industry and the damage cause by mobile phones are a symptom of the emptiness generated by living a life without God. So should we be surprised at the research telling us that many young people are profoundly unhappy? No, we should not.
More and more parents – millennials in particular – are raising their children without God. This is something without precedent and a dangerous experiment.
Jonathan Haidt found that boys raised in a religious home are less likely to succumb to poor mental health, notes a recent Spectator article that comments on how it is striking that boys who have religion in their lives seem to be less susceptible, before quoting Haidt: “If you’re a kid who’s a religious conservative, on average, your mental health is not really much worse than it was ten years ago. But if you’re a secular liberal girl, you’re probably more than twice as likely to have a mental health problem.”
In a God-free childhood, phones and social media have emerged to fill the void left behind. The resulting mental health fallout has in turn been worsened by the mental health industry that is pouring fuel on the fire and which, along with its participants and cheerleaders such as media, advertising and business interests, is only too eager to keep the focus on the child, their internal monologue and emotions, even suggesting to them feelings and emotions such as self-harm and suicide that they “may have deep down inside”.
All of this leads children to focus far too much on themselves, which does not make them any happier. “If you thought less about yourself and more about others, maybe you wouldn’t be so miserable,” my mother would admonish me when I was growing up. Wise words, indeed.
Social media puts the focus on you. How good are your clothes, your looks, your holiday? Do you hold and share the latest fashionable opinions? Haidt argues “that the tools of social media are just too sharp for young minds”, explaining that “on digital platforms teens parade themselves, often to an audience of strangers, and this is leading to addiction, paranoia and despair”. For girls, he says, “the effect is especially acute”.
Children nowadays are increasingly being deprived of God, and deprived of the opportunity to raise their thoughts higher: to the worship of God, to the appreciation of beauty, truth and the service of others. Too often now, children and teens lack community, support networks and the opportunities of developing friendships with those who have similar values to themselves.
Is it any wonder that a child deprived of knowledge that they are sacred, that they have been created in the image of God and are loved by God, can grow up to become depressed? They can also become locked into an odd dynamic of being over critical toward themselves while also endlessly told how great they are. All the while they must promote themselves to an audience. They are a product to be consumed.
A child raised in a home where worshipping God is, if not the focus, at least not off limits will come to a better understanding that they are beyond value, and also that they must serve others. While a young child raised in a Catholic household might not immediately understand that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, the child will gradually gain an appreciation that his or her body is not to be abused, rather respected as a gift given to one by God.
Is it any wonder then that children raised without this truth are so easily manipulated by transgender ideology, super charged by social media and pushed even by their teachers?
Any child brought up in a purely rational and non-mystical world is far easier to control by the State and even to be manipulated and turned against their parents. Then, distanced from their parents (and the religious faith that parent might have or once have had and shared) such children are easily susceptible to the evil notion that their body can be changed and manipulated at will, sometimes in the most brutal fashion.
A child needs not just their basic needs taken care of alongside kind loving guidance within the family, but also needs community traditions and a sense of that higher realm of spirituality and the God head. The Catholic faith is rich in such traditions and offers a child stability, ritual, community and love, as well as the Sacraments and rituals of First Holy Communion and Confirmation to assist a child in growing into their faith and religious understanding.
Children raised without such traditions will struggle in a world of ruthless competition and degrading values. The need for therapy is evidence of this loss of religion, though it doesn’t offer a genuine solution.
“Ye are not your own: for ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” It’s a powerful message, and, yes, it’s a complicated one to get over to a child. But at least try and convey some of its mystery and help that child develop some sense of faith and religious curiosity.
Just starting with prayers at bedtime, in that quiet, loving moment before lights out, could go far further than many “well informed” and progressive parents would ever dare consider.
As the bishop-elect of Clifton recently told the Catholic Herald, parents are the “first heralds of the faith” for their children. He was referring specifically to Catholicism, but his point applies to any religion and to religiosity in general.
If parents aren’t willing to introduce their children to that special realm, who else will – especially in these secular times that appear increasingly anti-Christian.
Photo: Iraqi Chaldean Christian children hold up an “Eleusa” icon, depicting the Virgin Mary holding up the infant Jesus nestled under her cheek, as they attend a First Communion Mass at the Apostles Peter and Paul Chaldean Catholic Church in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, 13 July 2018. (Photo by SAFIN HAMID/AFP via Getty Images.)
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