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Off Topic Mental Health Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Hull City' started by Steven Toast, Oct 21, 2018.

  1. AlRawdah

    AlRawdah Well-Known Member

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    I know you haven’t kicked it entirely, you fat knacker. :emoticon-0142-happy
     
    #601
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  2. dennisboothstash

    dennisboothstash Well-Known Member

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    Fantastic post.
    Thanks for sharing, as others have said there will be people on here who will read it and hopefully get some comfort, and there’ll be those of us fine at the moment who might need to read it at some point in the future. Who knows
    Thanks again and I hope the job goes well for you
     
    #602
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  3. TonyFinnegan'sCocaineHell

    TonyFinnegan'sCocaineHell Well-Known Member

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    Go on then, who are you? :emoticon-0112-wonde:emoticon-0100-smile
     
    #603
  4. TonyFinnegan'sCocaineHell

    TonyFinnegan'sCocaineHell Well-Known Member

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    Ha, I know now :)

    Thanks for the kind replies everyone, this place is growing on me. Be nice, look after each other and keep ****ing going.
     
    #604
  5. Kempton

    Kempton Well-Known Member

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    This is an amazing post, thank you. Seriously mate, thank you x
     
    #605
  6. Ron Burguvdy

    Ron Burguvdy Well-Known Member

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  7. Chazz Rheinhold

    Chazz Rheinhold Well-Known Member

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    Behind closed bedroom doors, a teenage mental health crisis is brewing
    Gaby Hinsliff
    Britain’s schools shutdown riskscreating a generation of angry, withdrawn young people. Who will pick up the pieces?

    please log in to view this image

    Fri 29 Jan 2021 06.00 GMT
    Last modified on Fri 29 Jan 2021 13.19 GMT

    It’s never been exactly easy to get a teenager up in the morning. But behind many of our children’s closed bedroom doors, something is now unravelling. During last spring and summer, parents of older children worried about them galivanting off for rebellious lockdown-busting parties. In the dark depths of January, the fear is more for kids with all the stuffing knocked out of them; teenagers spending the whole day huddled miserably under duvets, refusing to complete online lessons, or mentally checking out.

    Illicit teenage parties were, of course, a health risk. But sad, withdrawn, angry kids who would rather roll over than face another day in lockdown represent a whole new medical crisis in the making.

    This week, the children’s commissioner Anne Longfield warned that young people’s mental health services were “unable to meet demand” in a pandemic. Last weekend, a coalition of child health experts warned in a letter to the Observer that “children’s welfare has become a national emergency”. But these clinical terms can’t capture how it feels to have a once sunny-tempered child who suddenly won’t even dress or wash, let alone sit through hours of Zoom lessons, facing an ever-longer waiting list for counselling.

    Fiona Forbes of the campaign group Sept for Schools, which argues for education to be prioritised through the pandemic, says the emails she gets from parents are becoming more desperate and frightened. “In the summer it was about juggling – ‘I can’t oversee small children and try to work’. Now we’re getting stories every day of children who, as one mum put it, are ‘crumbling before my eyes’. They can’t sleep, can’t eat, always in their pyjamas.”

    Unlike toddlers barrelling into Zoom conference calls, distressed 13-year-olds prowling the house because they can’t sleep is not the stuff of cute public anecdotes. But ask parents privately how their children are coping, and the floodgates open.

    Michael, whose 12-year-old developed OCD after the first lockdown, thinks that “not finishing primary school properly, missing friends and sport” were all factors in his son’s difficulties. Sarah has three sons, the eldest of whom is in his first year at university and is frustrated that he can’t go back; the youngest, having just started secondary school, is now visibly switching off from learning.

    But it’s the middle one, in his GCSE year, who worries her most. He stays up too late, gaming with friends, angry and sad. “He’s starting to rage against the world. Nothing makes sense any more to him. He misses his teachers and his friends,” she explains. “Basically, for the first time since Covid was a word, I am now worried about the mental health of my children.” Both Sarah and her husband work in education and, as she points out, if they aren’t sure how to help, then families in tougher circumstances must have it far worse. “Every day it kills me thinking of the kids – ones I know, ones my husband knows – who will be having such a dreadful time.”

    For parents of children with special needs, meanwhile, life has become doubly difficult. Jane, whose 17-year-old and 13-year-old are both autistic, worries that years of painstaking progress are being undone. “The mental health of young people is a national emergency.”

    Educational provision has thankfully improved in leaps and bounds since the last lockdown, with many state as well as private schools now providing a full timetable of live lessons, at least for those lucky enough to have laptops. But concern over the emotional impact of months in isolation is rising with this second school shutdown, alongside new questions about the pressure-cooker effect of online learning.

    At worst, headteachers fear older teenagers dropping out for good. At best, it’s all the drudgery of school without the fun bits. A Mumsnet survey of home-schooling parents found three-quarters thought their children were now more demotivated or disengaged.

    Jill’s once-sunny year 8 daughter “approaches her laptop with trepidation every morning”, having started to dread the work set online; the teacher isn’t always around to help, so her daughter sobs over things she can’t figure out. Lucy’s 15-year-old daughter, who should have sat GCSEs this summer, is increasingly distressed about not knowing when or how her work will be assessed for the teacher grades now replacing exams. “She said to me, ‘I feel under so much pressure all the time because every piece of work I do could count’,” says her mother, who also worries that her 13-year-old is becoming sad and withdrawn, missing friends.

    For older teens,biologically driven to crave independence, being kettled with their parents is a particular kind of torture. So they bury themselves in gaming or Tiktok, where their friends are. But as any doom-scrolling adult knows, overdoing it on social media simply risks accelerating a downward spiral.

    Plenty of kids will, it should be said, ride all this out having suffered from nothing worse than boredom. For those who are very shy, or bullied, or children who struggle with conventional school, staying home may even be a positive relief. And since adolescence is a famously rocky ride, perhaps some of these teenagers would have struggled even without lockdown.

    But the Mental Health of Children and Young People survey conducted last year by NHS Digital found the incidence of “probable mental health problems” in English five- to 16-year-olds rising from 11% in 2017 to 16% in July 2020. A quarter of children and young people suffered disrupted sleep, and one in 10 often or always felt lonely, with the children of parents who were struggling, financially or otherwise, at highest risk.

    Referrals to child mental health services fell during the first lockdown, when schools were closed. But they rose in autumn, when teachers could once again cast an experienced eye over the kids they had been most worried about.

    This week’s announcement that schools might start returning from 8 March does, then, offer some relief in sight. But almost all the parents I spoke to stressed that they didn’t want schools rushing back in the pandemic before it was safe. What they wanted was to be heard, and helped.

    How best to do so? Longfield wants ministers to speed up the return to normality by using blended learning, with children dividing time between home-schooling and class. Opening up grassroots sport once it’s safe would give some teens a critical outlet too; and some heads are already quietly offering part-time places to teens on mental health grounds.

    But above all, we must prepare for the aftermath of this pandemic, expanding mental health services fast enough to deal with whatever emerges from behind closed bedroom doors. As Jane put it: “We have to plan for when people come out of the darkness, but we find so many young people still stuck there.”
     
    #607
  8. The Omega Man

    The Omega Man Well-Known Member

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    We have a crisis right across the age range. Within my family, I know that there are problems growing. I have family members who have shrunk into their own world and I cannot really reach out to them as they will not talk to me about things as they believe I have enough on my plate. This is the case, but, I just hope that when we have some sunlight and connection, that it isn't too late.
    The younger members of our family are struggling with seeing the future as their plans have all gone out of the window. Last year in further education and looking at employment prospects when still in lockdown is hard.
    We are lucky, we live in big properties, with plenty of places on the doorstep to walk to, but when part time work gets cancelled and there is little face to face contact with their mates, I do worry about the effects.
     
    #608
  9. SW3 Chelsea Tiger

    SW3 Chelsea Tiger Well-Known Member

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    so so sad, 2020/21 & the lockdowns will scar an entire generation of our kids....
     
    #609
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  10. Chazz Rheinhold

    Chazz Rheinhold Well-Known Member

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    Covid is an existential crisis that comes from an awareness of your own freedoms

    Book extract: A lot of things will change as a result of this pandemic and it’s clear the recovery won’t be marked by a discrete event


    Fri 29 Jan 2021 21.00 GMT

    In 1844, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “Whoever has learnt to be anxious in the right way, has learnt the ultimate.”

    I’m no Kierkegaard, but I think he may have been on to something. The anxiety we may be experiencing in these coronavirus times might be something that feels different, deeper, and beyond perhaps your usual fear or anxiety about day-to-day troubles. This feels more existential.

    Existential usually means feelings of unease about meaning, choice, and freedom in life. Whatever you call it, the main concerns are the same: the idea is that life is inherently pointless, that our existence has no meaning because there are limits or boundaries on it, and that we all must die someday.

    That may sound pretty bleak, but it’s not an uncommon experience. It’s just that we don’t talk about it very much, and when we do experience it, we feel like we might be alone in our experience, so we keep it covered up.

    An existential crisis often occurs after major life events, such as career or job change, death of a loved one, diagnosis of a serious or life-threatening illness, a significant birthday, experiencing a tragic or traumatic experience, having children, divorce or even marriage.

    For existentialists, an existential crisis is considered to be a journey, a necessary experience and a complex phenomenon. It comes from an awareness of your own freedoms and how life will end for you one day. That journey may reveal to us that where there was structure and familiarity, now there is mystery, unfamiliarity, a sense of discomfort and a feeling like somehow, things don’t fit so well any more.

    Where there was certainty, there is now uncertainty and unpredictability, meaning that we need to find our way again, in a place and time that feels unfamiliar to us. What served us well as navigation points in our lives perhaps don’t serve us well any more, and we find ourselves wondering what happens now, without much in the way of a script to help us.

    Strangely enough, this sense of existential anxiety could have become worse with the easing of restrictions and re-entry into some form of regular life. During lockdown, the structures provided by the government gave us some sense of certainty, at least in New Zealand and phrases like the “team of five million” helped people band together. Research shows that connecting, especially through collective action, can mitigate the impact of disasters on our mental health and sense of agency.

    In many places in the world, you may be uncertain about the coronavirus itself – how it is tracking, whether it will continue to spread and whether you yourself or your loved ones may fall ill with it, or worse.

    But what if you didn’t have to solve this anxiety? Existentialists would argue that anxiety is an inevitable part of life that everyone will experience, so it isn’t something that we aim to eliminate, but it might be something we need to learn to live with instead.

    Around the world, many people have found that the Covid-19 crisis has helped them realise what is truly important in their lives. The basics: like health, relationships, a safe and warm place you can call home, dignity, freedom from persecution and discrimination. Being able to feed yourself and pay the bills.

    In this way, an existential crisis might move you towards greater authenticity, which may also bring anxiety as you struggle for meaning. Now that the familiarity of your life has been stripped bare, what is your life really about? You might have thoughts about the fleetingness of your existence and how you are living it. When you stop taking for granted that you will wake up each day alive, you might experience anxiety, but at the same time deeper meaning too. These are actually two sides of the same coin.

    Because of this, each of us must find a way to “live with” this anxiety rather than try to eliminate it. Experiencing an existential crisis can also be positive; it can guide you to question your purpose in life and help provide direction.

    There is no specific treatment for dealing with existential anxiety, but there are treatments that can be helpful. For example, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and medication can help to address symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues that may accompany existential anxiety, including thoughts of suicide.

    In the end, the process of learning to live with this existential anxiety should possibly be framed as adaptation rather than recovery. Adaptation means being able to constantly move as conditions change, rather than trying to recover to some imaginary fixed point which may or may never happen. Recovery implies that this will all be over at some fixed point in time and we can somehow make our way back to where we were before, in terms of our lifestyles, our goals and dreams, as well as broader aspects such as the economy and what it was focused on.

    It’s clear that a lot of things will change as a result of this pandemic. It is also clear that the recovery will not be marked by a discrete event. More likely it will be a much messier adaptation. First, we must await the delivery of effective vaccines that have been proven to be both effective and safe. We will have to determine who gets priority access and iron out any inequities of access both between and within countries, as well as the inevitable ethical dilemmas that will arise, as well as both vaccine hesitancy and the deliberate spread of misinformation. From my work as Vaccine Policy Coordinator for the UK government during the H1N1 (swine flu) epidemic of 2009–10, I know that all of this takes time and is a vigorously contested space, not always fought on facts.

    Meanwhile, the virus will continue to travel across the world, and within communities, exploiting any gaps in protection measures. We don’t yet know how this will play out, but we can be certain of the uncertainty the pandemic will continue to create, and of our need to live with and adapt to it safely, while taking measures to protect both health and livelihoods.

    Excerpt from Steady: A Gu
     
    #610
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  11. Kempton

    Kempton Well-Known Member

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    My nephew who I look on as my own Son (he's aways lived with us, along with his Mam), is home educated, so missing school isn't a problem for him, but there are still many activities that he's missing out on.

    He used to do rock climbing, drama classes, gymnastics etc, but hasn't seen his friends in months, all that has stopped due to this virus.

    I do think he has an advantage though, he's never been to school so of course he doesn't miss it.

    When his Mam first started to talk about home educating him, I was worried about about all sorts of things, but it turned out wonderful for him, he's as bright
    as button.

    If anybody has the time and the inclination I highly recommend it.

    The thing is though, even he is missing out on a lot of the things that were shaping him in his formative years.
     
    #611
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2021
  12. tigerscanada

    tigerscanada Well-Known Member

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    "I get up every morning and read the obituary column. If my name's not there, I eat breakfast."

    George Burns

    Edit:
    "... and light up another cigar !"

    tigerscanada

    please log in to view this image
     
    #612
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  13. Chazz Rheinhold

    Chazz Rheinhold Well-Known Member

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    To the person who stole my anti-depressant pills: I hope you're happy now.


    love daft jokes like this
     
    #613
  14. Steven Toast

    Steven Toast Well-Known Member

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    There’s a great interview with former Hull City Youth player Thomas Beattie on BBC iPlayer. He recently came out as gay in 2020 and he talks about how his life has changed since. Hopefully gives strength and confidence to others thinking about coming out, both inside and out of football.
     
    #614
  15. Tentotwo

    Tentotwo Well-Known Member

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    Good honest post mate.

    Life is both difficult complicated for many but the effects of Alcohol and Opioids are hugely underestimated.
     
    #615
  16. RTID

    RTID New Member

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    Yesterday Doncaster Rovers wore a kit designed by James Coppinger & his kids & sponsoring the charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) which is close to Copps’ heart & mental issues are something he is heavily involved in.

    I can understand how you may not have realised the purpose of this thread, so I have deleted a couple of paragraphs from your post accordingly. - Admin.
     
    #616
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 21, 2021
  17. The Omega Man

    The Omega Man Well-Known Member

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    If you took the time to read what this thread is actually about, you would realise just how misplaced your post is. We do not point fingers on this thread, make judgements or judge people. Please feel free to edit or delete it. You have already posted on the match day thread, just leave it there.
     
    #617
  18. Ron Burguvdy

    Ron Burguvdy Well-Known Member

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    This section is not a points scoring part, please see previous posts.

    paragraph 1 gets my applause paragraphs 2-4 are simply unnecessary and irrelevant.

    You have posted the second elsewhere if you are trying to get a reaction. Please respect the reasons behind this area
     
    #618
  19. DMD

    DMD Eh?
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    please log in to view this image
     
    #619
  20. Kempton

    Kempton Well-Known Member

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    I think you got this one wrong, mate. Don't you?
    JC's free kick was a screamer BTW.
     
    #620

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