UK: Why are so many clever, privileged teenage girls on antidepressants? They and their parents describe the drugs as life-savers - but HOW will they ever get off them?
Depression is indeed a serious illness. It is often fatal. I myself have some tendency to it if I have relationship difficulties. But I solve it mainly by solving the difficulties and not every one is in a position to do that. It is a quarter of a century since I took any pills for it.
And from the stories below it does seem that relationship difficulties are also the main problem for young British women. And the particulr relationship difficulty seems to be competitivesness about social success.
But success is the mantra that feminists preach. They want women to be as successful in their jobs as men are and claim that women can "Have it all". So as feminism becomes ever more normalized, competion to succeed must be expected to increase.
By contrast the Judeo Christian message is one of humility and gratitude, with the admonition against envy being one of the Ten Commandments. So as Christianity fades and feminism becomes the new faith for women what we see is what was to be expected
A slight comfort is that not everyone seems to be equally prone to depression. Some people are more readily thrown into it than others. Fortunately, I am one of those whom it takes a lot to depress.
The fact that it is a physical predisposition can be seen in the difficulty usually experienced when one tries to talk the depressed person out of it. You can point out how lucky they are by world standards or national standards and it does no good at all. The physical inclination remains.
So it would seem that for some people medication is the only way out. It did once help me long ago.
The big problem is of course dependance. The terrible example of that is Jordan Peterson. When he seemed about to lose to cancer a wife who had been with him since his teens, he turned very heavily to medications to cope. But he could not get off them and they were badly hurting him in some ways. Even when the health challenge to his wife went away he was still stuck and needed very heavy therapy to get back to normal health.
So the lesson is to use medications as sparingly as possible. They are not a route to happiness, they just allow life to go on. And Christianity is a great comfort for those who can believe
Every weekday, Ella Wilson wakes up at 7.30am and opens the Instagram app on her iPhone, checking for 'likes' on her latest selfie, before getting ready for school.
After packing her rucksack, the 16-year-old A-level student heads downstairs and picks at a few strawberries from the fruit salad her mother prepared the night before – and takes her daily capsule of the antidepressant fluoxetine.
On paper, Ella would seem to be the envy of many her age – slim, undeniably attractive and a gifted dancer with hopes of studying drama at university. She comes from a secure, loving family, with professional parents and two siblings with equally rosy prospects.
But following an attempt to end her life last spring, the teenager has been on medication for depression for more than a year.
It came after six months of therapy which, ultimately, failed to halt the intrusive thoughts that plagued her. That she'd never be pretty enough, or popular enough, or clever enough, and was destined for a lonely, miserable life.
'I just wanted all the bad thoughts to stop,' says Ella, who lives with her mother Andrea, 52, father Duncan, 52, sister Sasha, 22, and brother Jack, 20.
'The pressure of trying to keep up with everyone else never stops. I never feel good enough. I go on to Instagram and see my friends meeting up together and think: why aren't I there too?
'I used to text them and ask what they were doing at the weekend. They'd say nothing, then I'd see pictures of them together online – I just wasn't invited. I see boys commenting on pictures of girls at school, saying how hot they look, so I think I have to look like that too.'
Exams, of course, are a constant pressure.'Girls lie about their marks, because everyone's in competition with each other, and then we get found out and it causes rows,' she says.
One evening in April last year, while her parents were out, she collected up a cocktail of over-the-counter medicines in the house and swallowed them, alone, in her bedroom.
Three hours later she rang her mother in a panic, who called for an ambulance.
Talking about it today, Andrea is understandably still shaken: 'Ella said she hated herself, and I don't know why. There's nothing wrong with her – she's beautiful and wonderful.'
It is, without doubt, a sad story. But, tragically, it's also one that is increasingly common. Almost 190,000 young people aged between ten and 19 are now, like Ella, on antidepressants, according to the latest NHS figures – over a fifth more than four years ago. Girls are twice as likely than boys to be prescribed them.
Ella's older sister – who previously suffered an eating disorder – and several of her friends have taken them, too.
Andrea says: 'They all talk about what pills they're taking with each other, and they have so much of the information at their fingertips. I worry it's almost become normalised.'
Meanwhile, sleeping pill prescriptions for under-18s have increased by a third in two years, while the number of teens being treated for addiction to anti-anxiety medication doubled between 2017 and 2018. Experts raised the alarm, warning that GPs are handing out psychiatric drugs too freely, creating a medicated generation unable to cope with the usual highs and lows of life.
There's also growing awareness in the medical community about the risk of coming off antidepressants, which alter the amount of mood-stabilising hormones in the brain. At the end of last year, health watchdog NICE changed their guidance for antidepressant treatment, warning that withdrawal symptoms – including suicidal thoughts – may be 'severe and protracted' in some patients.
Of course, teenagers have always suffered angst. So are GPs simply quicker now to reach for the pills, or is there something deeper going on?
A wealth of studies show that deprivation is the leading risk factor for mental illness. Those from poorer families are twice as likely to suffer a lack of support, inadequate education and parental neglect – all factors that contribute towards poor mental health.
And yet teenage girls from privileged backgrounds, with all the odds in their favour, are also more likely to suffer than the norm.
Those with parents on an annual income of more than £100,000 show worryingly high rates of substance use, depression, anxiety and eating disorders, according to a recent study.
So what is it that makes our nation so toxic for our children – and in particular our daughters?
Behind every case of depression – and subsequent antidepressant prescription – is a complex mix of genetic, biological and environmental factors. But as a parenting author who tracks the factors affecting child wellbeing, it seems to me there are several themes that keep cropping up.
For one thing, British children spend more time online than almost any others in the world, according to a survey of more than half a million 15 year-olds from 34 countries, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a global organisation whose goal is to shape policies that foster prosperity, equality, opportunity and well-being. More than one in three British youngsters are 'extreme' users, who spend at least six hours a day online. Tellingly, the heaviest users are girls – more vulnerable to being sucked into a toxic culture of self-comparison.
For instance, on TikTok – a social media platform on which you'll find short videos of youngsters dancing or doing comic skits – videos of users deemed unattractive or with an 'abnormal body type' are suppressed by the app's moderators, according to documents leaked to online publication, The Intercept. Inevitably, images of slim, attractive people are promoted to the top of users' feeds.
It's just one example among so many of how social media skews young users' perception of what's a normal way to look.
Then there's friendships – key for happiness and self-confidence.
Studies show that British children's social relationships are more tense and fractious than any other nation's – in part due to the amount of time they spend online. Research at the University of Sheffield found interacting mainly online increases the risk of cyberbullying and social comparison, which can lead to jealousy and conflict.
Take 18-year-old Lucy Waite, from Surrey, who wrote her first suicide note aged just 12 – and has attempted to end her life twice.
'Even if my mum tells me I'm fine as I am, deep down I'm thinking, no, fine is not enough,' says Lucy, who lives with parents Gill, 52, a human resources manager and Doug, 53, who works in sales, and younger sister Sophie, 14. 'I've got to be the best, otherwise I've failed.'
Lucy's mood first dipped in the first year of secondary school when she was 12, when classmates began picking on her.
'It was weird, they said they were my friends but they were also picking on me. They'd say mean things about the way I looked, throw things at me, or call me a 'suck up' if I did well on a test,' she says.
'I started to withdraw, spent more time in my bedroom after school and would cry myself to sleep most nights. I'd dread going in from the minute I woke up.'
After a year of spiralling depression, Lucy reached her lowest ebb, and wrote of her disturbingly dark feelings – and the lengths she'd go to, to stop them – in a notepad. 'I didn't have a plan, as such, but I could've acted on impulse in that moment. I just wanted it all to stop,' she says.
Thankfully, Lucy's mother Gill found the note and stepped in, taking Lucy to the GP immediately, before she had a chance to act. The doctor referred Lucy to the local child and adolescent mental health service, and she began therapy. Things improved – to some extent.
'I started to really struggle with my appearance. I was too tall. And I had muscly legs, not like the other girls' in my class who were skinny,' says Lucy.
'And around the same time, Instagram became popular, so I was in this world of insanely pretty girls, talking about how they stayed really skinny by eating healthily.
'I thought I want to be like that and thought the way to do it is to lose a load of weight. So I got down to an unhealthy weight, until my parents noticed and intervened to get me to eat.'
The GP prescribed antidepressants – first, sertraline, followed by amitriptylin, along with sleeping pills.
Intriguingly, Lucy knows other girls her age on medication, but says: 'It's not really something people talk about.'
Gill was 'hesitant' to put her 12 year-old child on antidepressants at first. But having taken the pills herself in the past, she 'at least knew what to look out for, in terms of side effects'.
Lucy believes the medication has been 'a lifesaver'. She says: 'Everyone is different. But for me, it was the right mix. It allowed me to get me through my GCSEs.'
Lucy and Ella are, indeed, the sharp end of the spectrum of mental ill health.
But sadly, suicide among teen girls and young women is rising fast – almost doubling in just seven years, according to Government figures. And without antidepressants, these figures could be far higher.
The general medical consensus is that giving teens antidepressants should be a last resort.
For Ella's mother, Andrea, medication gave her daughter the 'breathing space' she needed to think rationally again.
'I felt like a failure because I couldn't help her do it through lifestyle and exercise. But the truth is, depression is an illness, and these drugs can help.'
Competence versus style
A medical correspondent writes:
Concerning Donald Trump, I believe my life as an Anesthesiologist has been invaluable in evaluating people I don’t “like”, but are good in their jobs.
Trump - obvious - he is an “asshole” at times, likely difficult to get along with at times. He does not try to hard to be “nice”, but his record as President speaks for itself.
In the surgical environment, there is much gossip about personality, and most of it is not based on logic - it is mostly about “feelings”.
Nurses, especially, can be prime examples of “a little knowledge is a bad thing”. Most are professional, but some can be toxic in their comments about doctors and others. Mostly without basis in truth.
Because of my background, I have had an advantage at choosing doctors for myself and my family. Several were “assholes” by anyone’s observation, but “the best” at their job.
In truth, the same “drive” that makes them “the best” may appear offensive to others, but I look at it as “positive energy”.
This may explain some dislike of Trump that, unfortunately makes people vote “with their heart” and not with “their head”.
Affirmative Action Goes Down in Flames in Deep Blue California
Even in the deepest of deep blue progressive states, it appears racial preferences are unpopular once voters go into the voting booth.
On Tuesday, Californians rejected Proposition 16, a ballot measure that would have essentially ended California’s decadeslong ban on racial preferences for government and public institutions.
This ban was enacted by Proposition 209, which was passed in 1996. It mandated, according to Ballotpedia, that the state of California “cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, and public contracting.”
Proposition 16 would have officially allowed state institutions to return to the policies of affirmative action.
But despite the seeming headwinds in a year of protests, riots, and the 1619 Project—which essentially posits that America was founded on slavery and racism—Proposition 16 went down in defeat.
Its proponents say the issue was defeated because of unclear ballot language and messaging. Even if that was even a little bit true, it’s hard to see the double-digit defeat in one of the bluest states in the union as anything less than a rebuke and a landslide.
As I highlighted in my roundup of ballot initiatives around the country, affirmative action undermines the concept of equal rights.
There is also little evidence it provides a real boon to struggling minorities, and in many cases makes things worse.
There was certainly evidence of this following the passage of Proposition 209, as a Heritage Foundation paper noted of college admissions in 2015:
While minority students did drop from 58.6 percent of the student body to 48.7 percent, white students made up a bare majority, and Asian-Americans came in second at 38 percent. What happened to the other minorities?
They went to institutions like UC-San Diego, UC-Riverside, and UC-Santa Cruz. These schools are all part of the prestigious University of California System, attended by only the top 12.5 percent of California high school graduates.
At UC-Riverside, the results were impressive: African-American and Hispanic student admissions skyrocketed by 42 percent and 31 percent, respectively. Failure rates collapsed, and grades improved.
When affirmative action became a popular issue in the 1960s and 1970s, it was billed as a way to give black Americans a leg up following the passage of the Civil Rights Act. But over time, many Americans concluded that swapping out racial discrimination with more racial discrimination was the wrong way to go about things.
But with the left moving away from equality to “equity,” which switches out equal rights for the concept of equal outcomes, it seems that issues like affirmative action may be back on the table.
It certainly works well with the ideology of so-called anti-racists like Ibram X. Kendi, who has received an enormous amount of press and money in the last year to preach his ideas to the American people.
Kendi has been quite open about the fact that he thinks racial discrimination is a good thing if, in his judgment, it levels modern and historic inequities between races.
Proposition 16 was a perfect example of a convergence between the so-called anti-racist social justice warriors and “woke” corporations.
It makes perfect sense that in a year of nonstop sermonizing by the media that America is a structurally racist country that affirmative action would be back on the menu for state policy.
The proposition received backing from a slew of corporate entities. This list includes Facebook, Uber, Lyft, United Airlines, Wells Fargo, Kaiser Permanente, and many more.
Twitter was also on this list. No surprise since Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has given millions to Kendi’s center of anti-racism at Boston University.
Proposition 16 even got endorsements from most of the San Francisco Bay Area’s professional sports teams, like the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, Golden State Warriors, and Oakland Athletics.
Believe me, as a native of Oakland, it pains me to see my beloved A’s on this list.
But even with all that backing and support, Prop 16 went down by a pretty wide margin. It was deeply unpopular outside of only the most far left-wing bastions.
There can certainly be many reasons for this rebuke. Perhaps even many left-leaning Californians worry that a law allowing racial discrimination will ultimately hurt themselves and their children.
But as we’ve seen in many parts of the country, despite the nonstop drum beat from the press, and protests and riots around the country, a huge number of Americans still reject the poisonous ideologies of critical race theory and anti-racism.
They still cling, even if tenuously, to the principles of 1776.
The Wokery vs. profits
Every so often the myth that corporations adopt woke policies because it is ‘the right thing to do’ is punctured — this time thanks to comedian, podcaster (and Biden critic) Joe Rogan.
The Joe Rogan Experience podcast interviews celebrities, politicians and sports stars, and has over 2 billion views, and 10 million subscribers on YouTube.
After Rogan announced he signed a $100 million deal with Spotify for the exclusive rights to his insanely popular podcast some employees expressed disquiet.
The Spotify snowflakes were concerned about some of Rogan’s previous guests and “some …asked for editorial supervision of Mr Rogan’s podcast.”
One executive claimed, “It doesn’t matter if you’re Joe Rogan…we do apply [content] policies and they need to be evenly applied.” You must wonder if he said this with a straight face — of course it matters if you’re Joe Rogan.
Amidst the flurry of recent successful cancellations, it is easy to forget companies have one priority goal: profit.
Since Rogan announced the deal, Spotify’s stocks have increased 50% and his podcast is now the number 1 show on Spotify; as his millions of fans have followed him to the new platform.
If Spotify thought people would abandon their platform because Rogan’s podcast was now there, they would not have embarked on the deal. If people had actually abandoned the platform because Rogan was hosted, Spotify would have cancelled it.
If any business leaders thought changing the name of Coon cheese, Eskimo Pie, Redskin lollies or Colonial Brewing; kicking out a Boeing executive for what they wrote three decades ago; removing Chris Lilley’s back catalogue of shows or axing the Coco Pops monkey would lose them money, they would not do it.
This is why the attempted cancellation of J.K. Rowling was quite amusing. It’s laughable to think any publisher would refuse to work with a woman whose novels were so successful she became richer than the Queen because some Twit heads were upset.
It is quite easy for companies to jump on the woke cancelling bandwagon if they think they can earn money through their wokery – or at least not incur any losses.
As was written in The Australian recently about ANZ’s intervention in the climate change debate: “They are better at sanctimony than morality.”
Like a child finally learning the truth about where the tooth fairy money comes from, woke employees are going to get a rude reality lesson — profit does not care about their feelings.
https://www.cis.org.au/commentary/articles/the-wokery-vs-profits/
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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