Youth Mental Health Crisis in Britain

News:

A record 1.4 million children and young people sought NHS help for mental health problems last year.

The disclosure sparked concern that mental health turmoil could be becoming “the new normal” among under-18s.

Worries about money are the most common reason why young people (58%) suffer damage to their mental health.

Separate data collected by the Young Minds charity show that the main reasons parents call their helpline are that a child is struggling with anxiety, self-harm, anger or aggression, problems with school, including them refusing to attend, and behaviour management.

Young people do not always get the support they need from the child and adolescent mental health services, with some being refused treatment altogether. (The Guardian)

Comment:

Britain is ill equipped to deal with crises in mental health in young people. As a secular liberal society which has adopted and promotes an ever more hedonistic and materialistic standard for happiness, it is little wonder that existential worries exist en-masse.

Gone is the sense of security that young people were raised to depend upon. Financial stability is a thing of the past now that capitalism’s economic system is being exposed as incapable and rotten to the core. The State cannot look after its citizens, and everyone knows it.

The facade of moral authority has been revealed as a lie. Foreign policy is evidently geared towards servicing the greed of a minority elite; all justified by flimsy hypocritical excuses.

Even security in one’s own identity is very much questioned today, with overt bullying used to silence anyone who dares to use their own mind to question the imposed warped ideology.

Such a society that lacks a firm intellectual foundation for its beliefs and values, and that has mocked all religion and spirituality to the point of open rejection, has no basis upon which to build the personalities of the next generation. The young have been abandoned to a dystopian future, although that future is now.

Islam does not endorse such materialistic goals for life. It does not pitch the old against the young in a battle of ever decreasing morality. Islam does not abandon people to the doubts and insecurities of materialist thinking. Islam builds the personalities of the young on a firm foundation: the Islamic Aqeedah.

Islam explains the role of humankind, the roles of men and women, the mission of the young, the meaning of personal and collective responsibility, and the correct attitude to matters outside of our control.

Without such clear thinking Western societies are plummeting into ever deeper mental health crises which the state is incapable, and now unwilling, to take responsibility for, let alone fix.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Yahya Nisbet
Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in Britain