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IN AN ARTICLE describing his student days, consultant child psychiatrist Dr Tim Hughes describes a cartoon in Private Eye which showed a male psychiatrist sitting behind his adolescent female patient who was lying on a couch. The patient is wearing Doc Martens, torn jeans, a tee shirt and a smug expression.
The psychiatrist is saying: “So, to recap, your parents are both tossers, your teachers are all idiots and I’m a four-eyed shirt-lifter whose car is being done over as we speak.”
The joke, says Dr Hughes, serves to debunk one of the myths of child and adolescent psychiatry: that the psychiatrist is cocooned in a world of lovable, sweet, compliant children and away from the real world.
In fact, as the Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health points out, the issue of mental health problems among young people is becoming more and more pervasive.
According to the Association: “Statistics from two recent [2009] reports – the Princes Trust Wellbeing Campaign and the Children’s Society Good Childhood enquiry – have identified depression prevalence rates amongst young people...of up to 27%, as well as a number of wide-ranging societal influences which may be contributing to sub-optimal mental health. The conclusion drawn is that, despite access to a National Health Service, the majority of children and adolescents experiencing problems do not appear to be receiving assistance.