The Kiddies are Nuts!

So they say:

The mental wellbeing of children and young people is in decline, with emotional problems and conduct disorders twice as common as they were in the 1930s, according to research.

Studies carried out by NCH, the children’s charity, found that one in ten children now has a mental health disorder to a “clinically significant” level. The charity defines an “emotionally well” child as one who demonstrates empathy, self-awareness, an ability to manage their feelings, motivation and good social skills.

I’d pay a great deal more attention to such nonsense if I thought that anyone in the 1930s was in fact measuring the "empathy, self-awareness, ability to manage their feelings, motivation and good social skills" of children. I might even begin to take the NCH with a smidgeon of seriousness (only that smidgeon, of course) if I wasn’t aware of diagnosis creep. What we today call "lack of empathy" would then have been called "being male".

2 responses

  1. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    “I’d pay a great deal more attention to such nonsense if I thought that anyone in the 1930s was in fact measuring the “empathy, self-awareness, ability to manage their feelings, motivation and good social skills” of children.”
    I wouldn’t be so confident such tests didn’t happen. The 1930s was a boom time for all that kind of thing.

  2. “Conduct disorders”
    aka criminal behaviour …

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