Young, Gifted & Depressed

Young people who thought they’d left home for good are back and getting more family time than they ever had - or wanted. And it’s depressing.

It’s depressing for them and it’s anxiety-inducing for their parents who’ve now realised that they’d much rather worry about how their offspring are misbehaving at university than know that they’re on their best behaviour because there’s NO-BLOODY-WHERE TO GO.

Every day we’re getting more calls from parents about their adult children, wanting to know more about “depression counselling” - most of the time they want us to tell them whether or not they should be worried.

An impossible question to answer from the end of a phone (not to mention based on their ‘third party’ viewpoint) so we can only suggest that their son or daughter contact us directly for a conversation so that we can assess their general state of mind and their coping mechanisms.

On the whole it’s about 50/50 in terms of those needing some sort of ‘reactive’ support and others who, despite everything, seem to be doing ok with the resources already at their disposal.

Regardless of which camp they fall into, hearing the opinion of a professional seems to be helpful and we’re pleased to be able to give them our view and, in many of the cases of those who are given the proverbial all-clear, at no cost to them.

For many of the others needing some sort of intervention and being unfamiliar with what we do, they get to discover that talking therapy is neither scary nor, conversely, flaky (the two most common misconceptions in our experience). So in more ways than one, we get to change minds for the better.

We’re not really going to know the long-term mental heath impact of the pandemic until we’re looking at it from the rear view mirror.

It’s easy to speculate that our collective sanity won’t be fully restored ahead of our economy and that could take years, but on the other hand, perhaps the last day of tiered restrictions will be like VE-Day, with people flooding into the streets, and NHS staff deliriously leaping into the fountains at Trafalgar Square.

Our young people will never forget it.

We live in hope.