Skip to main content
Children’s mental ill-health: a symptom of poverty and inequality
Rather than individualising kids’ problems, they should be looked at in context, says STEVEN WALKER
Mental health child

THE prevailing narrative about children’s mental health is the way it is often individualised. 

So we are provided with individual case studies which make good television. Producers reckon that bringing a human interest story into the news agenda makes for compelling viewing, enabling parents and children to empathise and identify with the individual in focus. 

But the danger in this conventional media approach is that it unwittingly ignores the wider class, structural and health inequalities that produce mental health problems among the poorest communities. 

Donate to the Fighting Fund
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Woodcraft Folk
Features / 15 January 2022
15 January 2022
The Woodcraft Folk was founded as a different form of youth organisation, with its founding principles rooted in co-operative, pacifist socialist ideas, writes STEVEN WALKER
childcare
Features / 28 November 2021
28 November 2021
When it comes to care homes it’s the same cynical Tory tactic of cutting public funding for the state-run service so that privateers can swoop in to provide a degraded service, writes STEVEN WALKER
LG
Features / 19 November 2021
19 November 2021
Profiteering while being an elected MP is a practice as old as the hills, particularly for the Tories, writes STEVEN WALKER
Keir Starmer wind farm
Features / 29 September 2021
29 September 2021
People are facing a triple whammy of rising energy costs, a national insurance hike and a cut to universal credit — but with Starmer’s failure to step up, it’s now up to the unions to fight back, writes STEVEN WALKER
Similar stories
normal
Books / 3 April 2025
3 April 2025
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
A stack of British one pound coins
Britain / 27 January 2025
27 January 2025
A woman showing signs of depression
Features / 14 October 2024
14 October 2024
PROFESSOR LINDA GASK spoke to Ruth Hunt from her home in Orkney about her new book, Out of Her Mind: How We Are Failing Women’s Mental Health and What Must Change
20hilarycass
Interview / 27 April 2024
27 April 2024
GP and co-chair of the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender LOUISE IRVINE tells Ros Sitwell what the group would like to see in terms of implementing evidence-based healthcare and safeguarding for those experiencing gender issues in the NHS and beyond