We live in a confusing, contradictory, lonely, pressurised, complex world where it is becoming increasingly evident that the pressures, wherever they come from, are causing an explosion in mental health problems for young people. As someone who has struggled against depression for most of my life I want to say: if you are one of these people then I feel for you. The question is: does your school, or your family, or your best friend really help you? Or sometimes do they make the problem worse?

Just as ethics is the study of what your do when no-one is watching, so mental health problems are often the reality which we experience when no-one is looking, or if they are looking, they do not see. How often is the depressed person told to pull themselves together, or ‘snap out of it’, the bulimic told they need to eat more, the self-harming person told “but you’re so lovely, so why don’t you love yourself?” But there is the paradox: it is not about being told to do anything. It’s very often about changing a culture, a home culture or a school culture which is making a solution to the problem harder to find, and even impossible. In this process often well-meaning advice can be completely counter-productive.

Consider the culture of your school. How much testing is there? How is the testing handled? What kind of pressure are teachers under to get better results? What is the real care like – is there someone you can talk to confidentially and with complete honesty? Do you feel judged because of how you perform or even how you feel? Schools are set up these days to compete – on results tables, value added or Ofsted reports – so they are under pressure to comply with expectations (much as many of us may feel under pressure to comply with parental expectations). But of course, this is not the same thing as generating a flourishing, open, supportive, caring school community.

Consider your family culture. It can be the hardest thing to admit to those close to you that you have a mental health problem. As an example, I heard the other day of a student who needed to go home from University because he was suffering from depression. The problem was, the parental background didn’t admit that such a thing exists. They came from the ‘pull yourself together’ school of parenting. The doctor, of course, couldn’t share the problem with the father who rang up rather aggressively asking to know what was wrong – the student is an adult after all and patient confidentiality has to hold. I felt for that young epson – for the prospects of home care that was appropriate seemed slim.

Finally there is a need to do proper philosophy – clear analysis of our culture and its big moral faults. We could start with newspapers – today the Sunday Times has launched a mental health campaign and at the same time the Style magazine is full of photoshopped, skinny, digitally enhanced anorexically-thin models. The connexion between anorexia and the fashion world and its portrayals of a particular false ideal of teenage good looks is well known. But here’s the point : the Sunday Times appears to do nothing about that (I assume for commercial reasons) and so to my thinking it becomes guilty of moral hypocrisy – a lack of integrity. It’s not about what we speak or write its about what we do or the images we publish that matters.

I want to finish with a ray of hope. As we approach exams the pressure builds up and the mental anguish and anxiety can become acute. But you can still find wisdom in unexpected places. My advice is to use your intuition. If you feel the pressure of mental health issues bearing down upon you, then look around you – is there a relative, an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent, a friend, one particular teacher who has the natural gift of empathy and wisdom? Is there someone you can think of who doesn’t think in terms of dictating solutions, but in terms of exploring origins? All mental health problems start somewhere and can also be, in the end resolved – with the right sort of help. Find a person who can listen and hold your hand through difficult times and you will maybe discover one path out of the darkness.

Peter Baron