Children and Young People’s Mental Health

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, Sir Gary. I thank the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) for setting the scene so well. She obviously has a passion for the subject. I love to engage with the debates that she is involved in, because I usually find I am on the same page, so I thank her for securing this debate.

I like quotations, and John F Kennedy had one that is appropriate for this debate. He once said:

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”

I think that sentence captures this debate. The years march on, and for those of us of a certain vintage, they march terribly quickly—at least, they seem to. But that’s the way it is. I understand these things more than ever. My mum is 89 years old. In four weeks’ time, almost to the day, she will be 90, and she is very fit in mind and body. She reads the Minister’s novels, by the way—the Minister knows that—and she finds them very enjoyable. That is the sort of mind she has, but she is the first to tell me that she does not know how young people are coping at present. Long gone are the very simple times. Our children live in an age where the world is at their fingers, which sounds great. It also means that when they are at home, in a place that should be safe from the world, the cyber-bullies are still at play, information is still at hand, and the anxieties of the world are never too far away.

I am always amazed when I look at my two oldest grandchildren—Katie, who is 12, and Mia, who is seven. They are so active and so capable on their iPads and laptops. Their grandfather, unfortunately, has not caught up with them at all. I am thankful for the wonders of the internet and all the possibility it brings, yet it also brings a world of uncertainty and fear. Information is truly available, but so too is information that is false and that could really harm, corrupt and do a great deal to the health of our young people.

During home schooling, we told our children to access school online and do more on the iPad and the computer than ever before. At the same time, young children were scared and frightened by the seismic shift in their lives because of covid, watching informational programming that was not designed for them and that caused fear and upset. We were isolating them from their support systems at school, from their friends at church and even from their neighbours. Little wonder our young ones are struggling now, fearful of this bug and not sure what that normal is any more. I am not sure what the normal is any more either—it might be what we used to have.

YoungMinds, a charity that the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and others referred to, is doing tremendous work. In its recent survey, which I quote for the record and to focus our minds, 75% of respondents agreed that they found the current lockdown harder to cope with than the previous ones, with 44% saying it was much harder, while 14% said it was easier and 11% said it was the same. Some 67% believed that the pandemic will have a long-term negative effect on their mental health. That includes young people who have been bereaved or who have undergone traumatic experiences during the pandemic, who were concerned whether friendships would recover or who were worried about the loss of education or their prospects of finding work. Some 19% neither agreed nor disagreed, and 14% disagreed, but the figures we need to focus on are the 67%, the 75% and the 44%. Some 79% of respondents agreed that their mental health would start to improve when most of the restrictions were lifted, but some expressed caution about restrictions being lifted too quickly and about the prospect of future lockdowns.

The statistics speak volumes, yet the issue is the silent, solemn children who carry burdens that their wee shoulders were never designed to carry. How heartbreaking it is to imagine that one of my precious grandchildren could be feeling that; it is a feeling felt by too many children. I know that from speaking to parents, teachers and ministers back home in Northern Ireland. The question on our lips is, what can we do?

As a grandparent, I know that Katie and Mia are old enough to understand much of this. They have perhaps observed loss and watched their parents and grandparents grieve. As a Christian—I always say this if I get the opportunity, and I know it is something that resonates with you, Sir Gary—I will be seeking that the perfect peace that comes from God descends on our young people. But as a parliamentarian, I ask my Minister and my Government to put in place funding to enhance the counselling available, to encourage schools to carry out Mental Health Day events, and to work with churches to enable them to signpost children to help. We must act, lest the message that we send to the future be nothing other than an apology for our failings.