Children's mental health and neoliberalism

The Children’s Commissioner has reported that many children who need mental health support are not receiving the help they need,  even after a suicide attempt.  This is shocking, and deeply disturbing, but it should not come as a surprise. Since 2010, funding for children’s mental health services has been steadily cut, whilst demand has increased. This, coupled with huge cuts to other local authority services, has led Dr Peter Hindley of the Royal College of Psychiatrists to say that vital services are "effectively being starved to death at a time when all the evidence suggests that children and young people's mental health is deteriorating".

But why is the mental health of our children and young people deteriorating? Well, a few weeks ago in a classic case of shooting the messenger, the government sacked its own mental health champion for schools, because she spoke out and placed much of the responsibility on  government policies.

Natasha Devon cited five main causes of the growing mental health crisis amongst our young people, the top one being poverty. For the government to accept this, it would have to acknowledge that perhaps our economic recovery was not as comprehensive as it claims, and perhaps its reforms of social security have not liberated people from so-called ‘welfare dependency’, but simply made them poorer. Has anyone in government ever given a moment’s thought, for instance, to what it feels like to a child when their Mum or Dad receives a benefit sanction, and they have to resort to a foodbank – the stress this must create in a home?

The second cause of distress in young people cited by Ms Devon is academic pressure, but again, she found this concern was ignored. David Cameron is very fond of talking about the ‘global race’ in which he believes our young people must compete.  Our main competitors, we are told, are countries like China, South Korea and Japan, so we must urge our young people to match their academic achievements. What is not explained is that the education systems in these countries are so demanding, so competitive, that suicide rates amongst young people are devastatingly high. In Japan, 1 September is renowned as the peak day for suicides of children under 18, as that is the day they return to school. Do we really want our children and young people to be competing on these terms?

Cuts to support and care, coupled with a strong belief in competition, are all part of the same philosophy that has dominated our politics for several decades: neoliberalism. The global banking crisis, far from discrediting the philosophy amongst its adherents, simply gave them the excuse they needed to pursue its recipe of cuts and privatisation more vigorously. Yet as George Monbiot has pointed out in an excellent article: "Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that 'the market' delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.” He continues, “In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.”

Neoliberalism is promoted as bringing freedom, but “Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.”

And despite this philosophy having such a dramatic impact on our quality of life and wellbeing, it is rarely mentioned.

 “So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power."

The prevailing political philosophy that is shaping our society is almost guaranteed to bring distress and unhappiness to all but the strongest and fittest. Children taking their own lives and inflicting self-harm  is the most shocking example of the price we are paying, but evidence abounds of how adults too are struggling. It really is time to call a halt. There must be a better way. And we must demand it.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. You can follow her on Twitter: @BernaMeaden