When we give children the label but no tools to challenge it, their worlds grow smaller. My life’s greatest moments involved facing my fears
I was an anxious teenager. For me, the issue was always worry: excessive, awful, irrational thoughts that started when I was about 10 and reached their crescendo when I was an undergraduate, when things fell apart entirely and I needed a lot of treatment to be able to function again. Before I got help, I had no language to describe how I felt and no adults around me who understood what was happening.
As the public conversation about anxiety continues to swell, I’ve been asking myself: would I have been better off as an anxious teenager today? Despite all the recent awareness-raising efforts, the reduction in stigma, the lessons in schools – and despite how hard it was navigating my own anxiety in silence – I find myself answering “no”.
Dr Lucy Foulkes is an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford, leading research into mental health and social development in adolescence, and author of What Mental Illness Really Is (and what it isn’t)
In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111
