• Question: How much do you think the mental health of children is affected by the pressure put on them at a young age, or is it based more on biological factors?

    Asked by anon-182391 on 22 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Joanne Sharpe

      Joanne Sharpe answered on 22 Jun 2018:

      I’m in no way an expert on this, but I think although some people are more susceptible genetically to mental health problems, the environment in which children grow up is a massive factor.

    • Photo: Laura Hemming

      Laura Hemming answered on 24 Jun 2018:

      Jo’s right – mental health issues tend to occur as a combination of lots of different things in people’s lives. This approach in Psychology is called the biopsychosocial approach and suggests that there may be biological things which contribute (e.g genetics and chemical imbalances in the brain), psychological things (e.g low self-esteem, traumatic events) and social things (e.g like you have suggested pressure put on children from family or friends). Usually a person experiences a combination of these things which ends up in experiencing mental health issues.

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 24 Jun 2018:

      I think your environment can play a major role in your mental and personal health, so much so that people are now studying many factors related to this in both children and adults to find out what things could be improved on to allow for the better well-being of people

    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 26 Jun 2018:

      I think this is an excellent question! Psychology is my background and I find it incredibly interesting. Mental health is, as my colleagues have said, a complicated mix of different factors; genetic, social, and environmental. It can also be dependent on the coping mechanisms we develop when younger. But, mental health illnesses are varied, there are sometimes more direct causes (such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD), others could have a number of factors that lead to it (e.g. Schizophrenia).
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      I do think that children nowadays are having more pressures put on them due to social media and parents may place extra pressure due to the current job worries and as such we have seen a rise in a lot of common mental disorders in young people recently. Hopefully, with the right support and coping mechanisms, they will be able to channel this and won’t be affected when older, but that is something only time will tell.

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