Under Pressure

Dr Shaheen Choudray and Dr Diane Cook, both consultant psychiatrists who specialise in children’s mental health issues, discuss how to be aware if the usual mental and emotional growing pains are turning in to something far worse.

- Dr Shaheen Choudray and Dr Diane Coo

Has parenting ever been harder? It is a role without job description or instruction manual and every decision taken in

the first 10 years is only vindicated and validated in the years which follow.

Parents of the 1940s worried about putting food on the table, morality and finding enough sugar and clothing coupons to launch a good marriage.

Parents of the 21st century have a far greater number of foes to deal with in the battle to safeguard the mental health of their children… eating well but not too much and eating enough, making friends but making friends safely, happy at school or being bullied from beyond the playground in cyberspace?

The mental health of our youngsters was actually always a problem but it has now been liberated and brought out into the open. It is a headline with its name in lights, a discussion point and a policy goal for doctors, educators and politicians with royal patronage from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

So what are the triggers and what does trouble look like in this minefield of getting children through their teens?

How do we make sure the normal mental and emotional growing pains of youth don’t turn into something we feel ill-equipped to solve and what do we do if our best efforts are just not enough?

Dr Shaheen Choudray is a consultant psychiatrist at The Huntercombe Hospital Stafford, a children and adolescent mental health hospital for young people struggling with the severest manifestations of mental ill health.

He says the transition from primary school to secondary school is a key time when youngsters are most vulnerable to issues which can lead to anxiety and stress.