Youth mental health
For mental health campaigner Dr Alex George and the rest of his family, life changed tragically during the pandemic after his 19-year-old younger brother died by suicide. Alex shared this story to highlight the far-reaching impacts of this issue. Until 1961 it was illegal to take your own life. He said this is why you often hear that someone “committed suicide” – the same way they might commit arson or theft. This legislation created shame and stigma around not just suicide, but also poor mental health, which has bled through the generations to today.
Alex has used his platform as a popular TV personality to campaign for young peoples’ mental health and spent four years advising the UK government. He is keen for us to end stigma and collectively work towards what he calls “mental fitness”. For him this means not just the absence of illness, but positive mental health that enables people to be resilient in the face of the inevitable challenges life brings. His work has shown him some of the biggest obstacles we face trying to build mental fitness in the younger generations.
The problems facing young people
“Young people sleep eight hours a day and are in school for eight hours a day – so they’ve got eight hours to play with. The average under 25-year-old spends six hours a day on their phones. That’s time where they’re not with friends, not with family, not in nature or exercising or moving, being creative or even just resting. There’s a huge issue of displacement”
He said that it is not just what young people are missing out on when they are online, but also the kinds of things they are seeing. People post on social media highlight reels of reality. When young people see these polished snapshots of other peoples’ apparently perfect lives, it creates a huge amount of pressure to achieve the unattainable. In addition there is increasing climate anxiety in young people. “Young people are feeling huge, huge amounts of pressure,” he said.
Alex’s solution
“The school system was built a long time ago for a different time. There’s so much children are going out to face that we’re not really preparing them for”
Alex’s view is that the UK’s school system needs to move away from focussing on academic achievement towards building “well rounded, resilient young people who are capable in many environments”. He also sees a gap in terms of community spaces and has been part of trialling “hubs” for under-25s to find walk-in support and space for connection and creativity. His hope is to scale this project across the UK and reduce pressure on the NHS.
“I think it really is for all of us to realise we do have an opportunity, not just to reduce mental illness, but to genuinely build good mental fitness in young people. It really is within our grasp.”
The community-based healthcare changing lives
Alex is not the only one to view the community as a key factor for health. Dr Linda Mizun, a Ukrainian-born A&E doctor, shared her vision for a new health and social care system.
An athlete and doctor, she developed a chronic illness in her 30s. She was encouraged to change the way she approached her own health and wellbeing. She trained in evidence-based lifestyle medicine and returned to A&E excited to share her findings with her patients and change some lives.
“I tried hosting virtual talks with world-renowned doctors every Sunday and I learned something: of the people who joined week after week, the ones that had at least a family member or a bit of a community around them, they started making the changes, and they started reversing their heart disease, their diabetes. But those who were literally housebound and isolated, regardless of how many times they came and listened to these doctors, they never got better.”
Linda had discovered the power of community in shaping health outcomes.
The hero of health model
With this knowledge, she went on to trial an app that took regional public health data to create a virtual neighbourhood in South Yorkshire. The results were extraordinary. The people who took part saw not only a 78% reduction in symptoms of anxiety and depression, they also saw real improvements in their physical health. One participant reversed his diabetes; there was a 16% reduction in major vascular events; and overall, a 44% reduction in GP visits from the group.
The impact of diet
The other big change we have seen in the way we live in the past 30 years is the increase in processed food we consume. According to Tim Spector OBE, “60% of our diet is now made up of highly processed foods”. This is having an adverse effect on our gut microbiome, which has wide ranging consequences.
“There are trillions of these little microscopic organisms in your gut: bacteria, archaea, you got viruses, you got fungi, you got some parasites in there, and they are like mini pharmacies. They are pumping out chemicals all the time that are incredibly valuable for our immune system and our nervous system and our metabolism”
His extensive research has found that increasing variety in what we eat, as well as incorporating fermented foods and reducing the window we eat in during the day to 10 hours can help us boost our microbiome and in turn our mental health.
“In all our studies, we see mental health as the first thing that improves when people change their diets, and it’s something that in the past, hasn’t been recorded. Nutritionists have either not been interested or not linked with the people working on brain health, and people on brain health have not been in the slightest bit interested in diet, but the two are so clearly connected!”
“Food is the best medicine, and the choices you make every day for your food are probably the best way you can improve your health”
The one main theme
The one common thread from all of our health experts is that we should be moving towards a more integrated model of health and social care. The human body is complex and deeply interconnected, and we in turn are deeply connected to one another – whether we like it or not. If we want to reduce pressure on our NHS and boost the nation’s productivity we have to push for a more interdisciplinary approach to medicine.