Another concern recently in the news was the serious impact on children’s mental wellbeing of the Covid lockdowns and the closure of schools. Not only have children missed out on education, but there are claims their social development has been harmed and they have suffered difficulty forming relationships and other negative consequences as a result. This, in turn, might have driven further social media use. Four years after the lockdowns ended, there are claims some children have not returned to school and are now missing from the system.

The BBC recently analysed NHS figures to chart the steady rise of antidepressant prescriptions for teenagers in recent years, and have produced a graph illustrating the trend over time. That makes interesting study.

The first thing that struck me about the graph is that, despite reports children’s health has declined since Covid, the graph seems to show something different. The rise in antidepressant prescrition is steady from 2016 to 2022, but then plateaus off. In other words, there is no noticeable increase in prescription since Covid; it was before then the use increased, and that increase was linear, from around 40,000 in early 2016 to nearly 120,000 by March 2022. There was no change in the rate of increase during the pandemic period, although brief dips can be seen during the lockdowns, possibly corresponding to difficulty obtaining consultations or possibly the result of enforced lifestyle changes.

The second thing I noticed was the regular dip in prescriptions every August and the smaller dips in December and April. These coincide with school holidays. Schools were also closed during the lockdowns. Could this suggest school is bad for children’s mental wellbeing? That raises an interesting question: is the rise in teenage anxiety and depression a result of increasing mobile phone use, or could it be increasing pressure to achieve at school? Would that pressure come from peers or teachers? Over recent decades the public attitude to education has evolved from a view that knowledge is good and worth having for its own sake to the idea education is a route to better jobs. Society has become less idealistic and more utilitarian, and that might have increased pressure on children to perform, which would be particularly uncomfortable for those finding it harder to achieve good standards.

Naturally, it is not possible to draw a firm conclusion from a single analysis. For that we’d need far more data, including the perceived source of children’s anxieties, where they feel inadequate, and why they struggle to cope. We lack that information, so my speculations above can go no further and might even be on the wrong lines entirely, but it is interesting to see while prescriptions continued to rise during the pandemic, they did not rise any faster than before. We appear to be looking at a long-term trend the reason for which is currently unknown, and seems to have steadied off for now, for reasons also unknown. As these analyses always end, further study is needed to know any more.