8: Teenage Psychology with Mental Health Expert, Rachel Kelly

Cathy (00:11)

Hi there and welcome to Rachel Kelly, who is an author a journalist and a mental health advocate is that right Rachel is there anything else you’d like to

Rachel (00:23)

Yes, I get

a bit of imposter syndrome, is it the one being introduced? But yes, I have. I’ve been very involved in mental health since 2014.

Cathy (00:33)

we’re discussing your book, The Gift of Teenagers, where you start the book by documenting some of your own struggles with mental health, which gives you a bird’s eye view into something that, for people who haven’t suffered from depression, for example, find it very, very difficult to understand. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read this book, ⁓ Matt Nakes.

Rachel (00:56)

It’s fantastic.

Yeah.

Cathy (00:58)

reasons

to stay alive. It was very illuminating for me because I mean, I’ve never been depressed. I’ve been very unhappy at various periods of my life, but depression is something that you don’t necessarily understand. And in fact, even when you’re depressed yourself, you don’t understand it. And

Rachel (01:15)

Mm hmm. No, it’s almost like

you’re sort of given a passport to a foreign land. And if you haven’t had that passport, as you say, and I think I myself was very surprised by some aspects of having a severe depressive episode. The first one which found me hospitalized. But one thing that I think I hadn’t fully understand was the physicality of the illness and how very

physically unwell, you feel, well as psychologically, you know, traumatized. But I had a lot of very unpleasant physical symptoms. It started with severe insomnia, which is a kind of physical manifestation, but ⁓ feeling.

Cathy (01:57)

Did it come from

nowhere? Or was there a cause?

Rachel (02:00)

Yes, it’s so funny,

isn’t it? Because at the time, if you’d asked me, it seemed to come from nowhere. But I had two of these very severe depressive episodes

in my 30s and if you’d asked me at the time, they seemed to come out of nowhere. But after the second one, when I decided to really dig deep more into understanding mental health and mood disorders, I looked much more closely at my own story. And actually, I had been quite an anxious child. And I’d come quite close to a depressive episode in my adolescence, which was interesting when I came to researching and looking at teenage mental health.

And if you go on the Royal College of Psychiatrists website, They come up with six possible reasons for depression and mood disorders. And one of them is a hormonal link. And obviously adolescents are having huge hormonal changes. And then I became very depressed after, having small, bringing up small children. And there’s a big link there, sort of postnatal.

which by the way isn’t just immediately after children but can run for quite a few months even years after that kind of huge bomb as it were going off of having small children and then menopausal women and indeed men there’s another big hormonal shift and there’s another big link with a more prevalence and vulnerability to depression. So yes I suppose that’s what I thought at the time and what I now realize.

Cathy (03:30)

Do they, one of those six things, do they mention epigenetic trauma, i.e. potential for inherited trauma through generations?

Rachel (03:39)

Yes, I think that’s become a really interesting field of study. think stress is one, as you know, periods of very high stress. seems to be a genetic link on some things, certainly depression and maybe schizophrenia. They’re thinking there’s a genetic link. So yes, your point about the epigenetic, so which genes kind of get switched on and off, depending on what you’ve experienced

childhood experiences and childhood trauma being very relevant. But there is, I would say, still a lot of uncertainty exactly why people succumb. And they have a phrase, think they called it endogenous depression. And that means there’s no obvious reason why it happens. And we’re woefully behind on research more broadly into the reasons.

and the answers and we just still know so little about the brain but people are trying to figure this stuff out.

Cathy (04:40)

I can’t remember who said it but someone very bright said only an idiot will tell you how the brain works.

Rachel (04:47)

Yeah,

yeah, and when I was researching the adolescent brain, because obviously, clear idea is that we want to try and connect and understand our teenagers. So we understand what’s going on in their brains, we’ve got a better chance of doing so. And amazingly, research about the adolescent brain only started about 15 years ago. So we used to think that there was this huge kind of growth spurt in the brain, sort of naught to two, which there is.

all this sort of synaptic pruning and big changes, but the same thing happens during adolescence. But we’re very new to that party of understanding exactly what’s happening. There’s a great neuroscientist called Sarah Jane Blakemore, who’s doing a lot of sort of pioneering research about what’s going on and this idea of, as I say, the synaptic pruning, but particularly the development of the prefrontal cortex, which you probably know about, which is the,

reasoned and taking responsible decisions and impulse control and what’s happening to that during the teenage brain. But yeah, so it’s interesting how new that research is and again, how little we know.

Cathy (05:52)

Well,

it’s not a surprise to me because teenagers are so busy they actually don’t have time to offer themselves up as guinea pigs for researchers. You know, there’s so much going on.

Rachel (06:02)

Yes, and

you make a really good point as well because one of the reasons there has been little research is that you have to get confidentiality agreements and you have to get parents to agree and you know as you say one of the main things I found when talking to teenagers over the last five years and parents and teachers is this feeling of overwhelm. They’ve just got such a lot on.

Cathy (06:13)

exactly.

Exactly. So who’s got time

to be a guinea pig? know? ⁓

Rachel (06:29)

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah. And actually that was a big feeling I had. I remember interviewing an adolescent psychiatrist and I was very struck. So she said when she’s working with a troubled teenager, she would make stick models to kind of work therapeutically. So you’d have, you know, mom, dad and teenager. And because teenagers, as you say, are so overwhelmed and they’ve got so much going on for them.

that if the stick figures of the mum and dad collapse, teenagers are completely freaked out, which is a big message in a way of my book, The Gift to Teenagers, is that how can we stay calm through this and not be overwhelmed ourselves so that we’re in the best place to kind of connect and support our teenagers.

Cathy (07:15)

Well, it’s true. your first chapter really focuses on how, you know, you have to look after yourself before you’re in a position to look after anybody else, which is obviously really common sensical. And, you know, they say it on the airlines, you’ve to put your own mask on before you help anyone else. but as a parent, that often just flies out the window because you, especially if your child’s unhappy or miserable you have this

Rachel (07:26)

Yeah.

Cathy (07:40)

overwhelming urge to step in and fix it and actually much of the time that is the wrong response you have to let the kids work it out for themselves.

Rachel (07:50)

That is a

really, really key message of the book. And it came from sort of talking to quite a lot of psychotherapists and indeed my own experience as a mother of five. But one thing is that when we suggest that somebody has a big problem and that we’re going to jump in and fix it, it makes them out to be broken and only we can sort them out. And actually, if you think about it for a moment,

What we actually want to do is help them lean in and believe in their own strengths because much as we would like to fix everything for them, we can support them but really the person that’s going to fix them is them. And that is such an empowering message and it gives teenagers such a feeling of agency and power rather than they’re going to have to rely on us or they’re going to have to rely on

you know, the medical professional, somebody else to sort them out. It’s not to say that there are times when we don’t need to be very present and supportive, but it’s a sort of different lens of how we look at the situation. One exercise that I use in workshops with parents is just to pause and before you even interact, just like take a few breaths and then just bring to mind all your teenager strengths and all the good things about them.

And so what we focus on expands. And it’s from that position that we’re like clear to have a better interaction than, my God, they’re a problem, they’re broken. You know, we’re the rescuers, we’ve got to fix them. So it’s the difference between assistance and rescuing. So we want to assist, but not jump in and make them out to be broken.

Cathy (09:26)

Yes.

Although without question, there are times where parents absolutely have to step in, for example, and you have to obviously use your common sense to figure out which is which. And common sense ain’t that common, especially when emotions are involved. And it is very tricky. So… ⁓

Rachel (09:36)

Yes. Yes.

Yeah, I mean, most most

of what I’m writing about is everyday ups and downs. But my last section of the book is about more serious mental health problems. And as you say, navigating. So Freud had this expression, ordinary human unhappiness. So that’s what we’re all dealing with. You you yourself said that you’d had a very unhappy period, but that’s not necessarily the same as clinical depression. And it is really tricky. It is really tricky because we don’t have a blood test.

We don’t have an MRI scan, things are self-reported and it is hard to know how serious is this. And also because crucially with adolescents, they’re changing so fast. So what might be really serious one day, they could be sunshine and laughter the next. So it is tricky and you may…

Cathy (10:34)

Exactly. And also two

teenagers will have completely different responses to the same event and it will affect them in different ways.

Rachel (10:41)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean,

what I would say is having worked with lots of professionals in the field, think that, parents can also feel confident that, a good clinical psychologist or a good psychiatrist should be skilled at trying to navigate that. The problem that I think a lot of parents have is that they’re not getting to see those specialists. They’re getting to see their GP if they’re lucky.

And it’s not a GP’s fault, but they’ve got eight minutes on the clock. And it’s very difficult to have that kind of sophisticated understanding. So I think that’s the real problem right now.

Cathy (11:19)

Also don’t you think there’s been such an explosion recently of diagnoses for various conditions that I mean I did an online test and according to the test I have severe ADHD. ⁓

Rachel (11:33)

Yeah.

Cathy (11:34)

But you know, I have, I’m 54 years old now, I’m certainly not gonna do anything about it. And if it’s true, then you know, I’ve learned how to live with it. And do you think we’re over medicalizing what are actually normal ranges of human emotion?

Rachel (11:43)

Yeah.

way,

before I answer, you do not look 52. So whatever you’re taking 54. Well, you don’t look 54 either. Yeah, no, look. So so I started working in mental health in 2014. So I did a memoir, which I was lucky because it was a it was a Sunday Times bestseller. And because of that, I was able to get involved with lots of different mental health organizations. And I became an ambassador for SANE and

Cathy (11:56)

54 actually. ⁓ thank you very much.

Rachel (12:16)

rethink mental illness and worked with quite a lot of people in the field. And I think what’s happened is we’ve sort of over-corrected. So when I started in 2014, people said, you’re really brave, by which they meant bonkers to write about having severe depression.

Cathy (12:32)

Well, actually,

I think your bonkers should have had five kids, but that’s a whole other story. I’ve only got one.

Rachel (12:37)

Well, I did have surprise twins.

I had three and then I had these two sort of late lambs. But yes, that’s another that’s another topic. but yes, just rewinding to overdiagnosis. I think that there’s been this sort of overcorrection and obviously social media has had a role to play in terms of everybody can go online and, you know, dot Google and

By the way, the overdiagnosis thing isn’t just happening with mental health conditions, it’s happening across the board. But as I said, the problem with mental health problems is that people make this false comparison, which is, we should not have any stigma around it because it’s just like breaking your leg. It’s just not like breaking your leg.

Cathy (13:20)

Yes, it is subjective, isn’t it?

Rachel (13:22)

It is subjective.

that’s a problem. And when it comes to young people, that’s a whole other area because they are digital natives in a way that perhaps we weren’t. there is this huge development in the teenage brain well, autonomy is a big thing happening for them, but also peer pressure. this sort of thing about, ⁓ so for example, if you take eating disorders, people talk about social contagion whereby,

if one person has it or is diagnosed, then that becomes something within a group. and because of the online world, that that feeling of overdiagnosis is probably even stronger among young people than it is with adults, because, you know, they’re all at school together, etc. So I think probably is beginning to slightly move back again, because it has got out of hand and

I think the really powerful argument why even young people and lots of people in this field are beginning to adjust is because people who’ve got really serious problems aren’t getting the help. And it’s almost like a sort of moral, a moral thing that actually, okay, I’m anxious, I’m a bit up and down. So the number one mental health condition is anxiety, way above anything else. And there’s a huge range within

Cathy (14:24)

Yes.

Rachel (14:37)

you know, I’m stressed about my exam, which is obviously the case for lots of young people and their parents right now.

Cathy (14:41)

But that’s perfectly

normal to be stressed about your exams, isn’t it?

Rachel (14:45)

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And then what you would call, you know, generalized anxiety disorder, which would be considered a mental health condition. But I think within that very broad range, is, there’s a very interesting sort of ethical conversation that’s happening now among young people about actually, you know what, other people might need serious help and assistance as per our earlier chat and

maybe I can manage this and there are good ways to manage it.

Cathy (15:13)

there definitely are. and going back to your book, one of the things you’re keen to stress is you don’t have to be a super parent. You don’t have to be super mom or super dad. Being good enough is really all that’s required because the expectation is that a brilliant mom will just step in and solve every single problem. Whereas being good enough often means just listening to what your child

Rachel (15:24)

Yeah.

Cathy (15:36)

has to say rather than always rushing in to offer a solution. ⁓

Rachel (15:40)

Yeah,

so there’s been a huge, huge trend along with the over diagnosis to this sort of perfectionist tendency. again, we see, perfect influences on social media and, what’s interesting is it’s among young people, especially teenage girls, but it’s also prevalent among parents, but it’s

a relaxing approach for young people if parents fess up and say, you know, rupture and repair, I’ve made a mistake, because it allows them to make mistakes. And in fact, we could even reframe that one step further, which is there’s no such thing as mistakes. There’s just learning opportunities. stumbling blocks can be stepping stones. And for example, there’s little areas where this approach is so helpful. So for example, lying.

So, you know, teenagers, we all lie actually.  Some bits of research said that we lie around 30 to 40 times a day.  It does seem very high, but well, yeah, okay, so a few. Well, that includes all those white lies and, you know, whatever. ⁓ But back to that idea of not being perfect. So what do we really want? We want connection.

Cathy (16:35)

Really? So, so few? ⁓

Yes absolutely yeah.

Rachel (16:52)

And the whole book really is how can we have this connection? So we want this connection. And if teenagers feel ashamed, shame is a huge thing, that they’re wrong and they’re judged as wrong, as opposed to learning and growing, know, We’re likely to have a much more honest conversation with them and they’re likely to be able to

be more truthful about what’s really happening for them. And we can do the same and put our hands up and say, yeah, you know what, I was exhausted, I had a long day at work, I wasn’t my best self. And it just dials down that.

Cathy (17:23)

Well, shame

is a very corrosive emotion, isn’t it? unfortunately, it’s one of the most effective ones to get people to change their behavior. And I think now there’s a blurring of the boundaries between the generations. certainly when I was a teenager, there was a lot more of a hierarchy and authority, which obviously was there to be pushed against, but

we had to do it in very sneaky ways. We were actually horribly dishonest as kids. And, you know, we had a drinking culture, smoking was rife. whereas this generation of teenagers don’t really go for that. Maybe they’ve learned some lessons and when it does happen, you know, if kids get involved in it.

substances or you know it’s usually very marked and  so things have changed but now a lot of parents are constantly told you know you shouldn’t be your child’s friend you’re the child’s parent and in fact you write quite honestly about this it because as women we’re brought up to be people pleases it’s difficult to be authoritative with your

Rachel (18:11)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Cathy (18:31)

your child, whereas I don’t think previous generations had that issue at all. Do you ⁓

Rachel (18:36)

No,

mean, well, just so many interesting points there. But yes, so this idea that every generation is different. I mean, it would be fair to say that the differences are really huge now because of the way, as you say, changes in how we view people that are less of a hierarchy, are less of a sense of authority, teenagers finding other sources of authority online and having…

relationships away from the family online so there’s that option which didn’t exist before so how do we stay kind of important?

Cathy (19:07)

I don’t know if that’s

true. I certainly had lots of relationships. don’t think my parents would have been very happy with and we and I certainly didn’t grow up with social media. Thank goodness. But you know, this is an additional pressure we were able to make pretty huge mistakes, which stay in our teenage years. whereas now this can, you know, it can potentially follow you forever. You know, the ⁓

Rachel (19:17)

Yes. Well, yes.

Well, certainly,

yeah, I mean, that’s one of the great kind of illusions about the online world is that somehow it’s temporary and it will go, but it can stay with you forever. And teenagers live with a lot of fear that they, will be cancelled or they’ll make a mistake online. And as you say, when we were growing up, we were making lots of mistakes, but there was no record of the fact that you, you know, puked behind the bicycle shed or got off with six people one night. And, know, I was doing sort of plenty of that myself.

By the way, you also made an interesting point. Yeah, no, no, certainly, you know, they were fun days as well, weren’t they, in a way? mean, I sometimes feel that, you know, just…

Cathy (20:00)

Delighted to hear it, Rachel.

But I wouldn’t repeat them

not if you paid me. That’s the thing. There was lots of fun, as you say, but there was so much anxiety. And I don’t mean the medicalized kind. I mean the normal kind. was a very, there were lots of anxious moments as teenagers. I just think when you don’t know yourself and you’re experimenting and you get it horribly wrong sometimes, and it’s…

Rachel (20:20)

Yeah.

Yeah, I

I do think that these kinds of open conversations and the fact that we can be more open with our own teenagers, that mental health is a topic, that psychological health is a topic, how to manage their thoughts, how to manage their feelings, these are all things that are more widely talked about now. And that would have been terrific growing up. I don’t think I ever had this sort of conversation with my own parents. mean, and I had absolutely no way of

managing very strong feelings, which, as we were saying earlier, is such a feature of teenage life, and also for parents. mean, I sometimes think that, when people get very upset about phones, and I so understand that because there’s some terrible things that you can see online, but I think a lot of it is a very strong feeling of rejection among parents themselves that their teenagers would rather be on their phones. And, you know, you feel very deeply that, ⁓ you know, you don’t want to talk to me.

but you know you’re sort of addicted to your phone before we even get to parents being addicted to your phone. I’m slightly rambling here but you also made that point of the sort of rebellion being different so and that’s absolutely true so things like drinking, drug taking, lots of I don’t even you would call them markers of adult life but having relationships

Cathy (21:30)

Mm.

Rachel (21:46)

first jobs, this is sort of obviously kind of younger people, there’s an academic in America called Jean Twenge, T-W-E-N-G-E, and she’s done, yeah, and she’s done lots of really interesting work about this idea that a lot of these developmental stages are happening later. And one reason is this idea of we’re sort of tiger parents on top of our children and, ⁓ overly trying to kind of control them and that actually we might be better.

Cathy (21:54)

You mention her in the book, don’t you?

Rachel (22:13)

stepping back alongside with this kind of adopting, know, there’s no such thing as perfect, but just stepping back and trying to be less controlling.

Cathy (22:22)

really difficult to do that. In fact, I remember reading in the paper once about these parents who were trying to instill resilience in their children. They wanted their kids to walk to school. And I think one child was about seven and the other five. And they taught the kids how to walk to school. And actually, other parents complained so much and there was a social media pile on and these parents found they couldn’t do and this is so neurotic of other people.

decide how you should parent your child. I personally think those parents should have been free to make that decision and shouldn’t have been, I mean you’re free to have an opinion about it but it’s not up to you to change it you know it’s

Rachel (22:56)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well

look, I think a couple of points there. think that because we have got such a problem with so many miserable teenagers and really quite a lot of miserable parents, it’s almost like sometimes things have got to get really bad before we change the zeitgeist. So the zeitgeist has been what you might call safetyism, overprotective parents, know, not letting your child kind of navigate their way home from a party, being there sitting in your car for half an hour is a sort of…

taxi driver, whatever we’re doing, we’ve got some really difficult outcomes right now. And I think when I talk to parents, it’s interesting that it’s almost like, okay, well, maybe we should try something a little bit different now, because whatever we’re doing, we have a real problem. People use that word epidemic, and I don’t really like it. But there are very high anxiety rates among teenagers. I think that…

you probably come across the Jonathan Haidt book, The Anxious Generation, which is talking about young people. But for me, but for me, it’s parents themselves that have gone absolutely overboard on this worry thing. And it’s almost like if they’re worrying, they’re doing something. And I get that. But actually, that isn’t a very great place to come from in terms of interacting and connecting to your teenagers, being super worried yourself. So, as you said, that’s why I sort of structured the book about

Cathy (24:01)

haven’t read it, heard of it.

Rachel (24:22)

How can you manage your own emotional regulation, your own thinking styles to dial down that worry and slightly step away from the competitive worrying at the school gates. I did a workshop recently in a school and I was talking about this kind of worry culture and a parent said at the end, but aren’t we supposed to worry? Isn’t that what parents are supposed to do? And we sort of got into this sort of Socratic dialogue and I said, well, how does that feel worrying? And she said, well, it feels crap.

And I said, well, is that when you’re then interacting with your teenager, because you’re feeling rubbish, how does that interaction go? Well, she goes, well, not very well. We just sort of shout at each other. And so what we actually want is a good relationship and connected relationship and good communication. So, we want to start, if we possibly can, from dialing down that worry.

Cathy (25:12)

But don’t you think part of the issue as well with teenagers is this remorseless expectation that they’ll achieve all the time. and part of this is, I suppose it started in the 80s where everyone must have prizes and the idea that competition was a bad thing and that it was a sort of lowest common denominator effect, which actually I think has really not served kids well at all because the world

Rachel (25:20)

Yeah.

Cathy (25:40)

is competitive but within that furious rat race there’s time and space to find your own way and we don’t communicate that well enough to teenagers that if they’re not brilliant at school they can they can they help they’ll have an opportunity to shine afterwards in fact certainly in my school days the the top achievers aren’t necessarily the ones who’ve done best in in life although that is such a

Rachel (25:51)

Yeah.

Cathy (26:06)

Difficult thing to measure isn’t it?

Rachel (26:08)

Yeah,

no, I think that’s right. mean, I think the academic school system and getting a string of A stars and lots of people are going through that right now with the sort of exam season, it obviously sets, it tests a specific set of skills, which have, you might say, almost randomly being set as important. I think the message.

Cathy (26:29)

And actually, where girls,

funnily enough, do better than boys, they do better in exams generally than.

Rachel (26:32)

Yes, because of exactly,

⁓ exactly because the, well, we don’t quite know how their brain works, but the difference between, know, sprinters and marathon runners and people who are better at coursework and all those sorts of things. I think the message to share with teenagers and your children is that actually we have lots of gifts. All of us have lots of gifts and the game in life is just to find your gift and line up with it as best you can. And school will judge.

certain gifts, but it certainly, to your point, will not judge all the gifts that you have. And so the more we can kind of encourage a kind of spaciousness and what other things might, you know, be fulfilling. And a really simple rule of thumb is, do you feel good when you’re doing this? So I think in that sense, it was useful to have a large family because some of my children were more…

suited to enjoying academic work, and some of them really weren’t. And you didn’t have to make it up. You could just see the ones that were thriving in that system, and the ones that were absolutely floundering. And it wasn’t a right wrong thing. It wasn’t a judgment thing. It was just that’s who they were. So I think I kind of feeling of, as you say, kind of the world is a bigger place. And any way you can

introduce that concept and in quite practical ways as well, introduce them to other things that may or may not be on the curriculum. Because as you know, with the sort of back to the Tory education reforms, schools on the whole lost a lot of extracurricular things and became more narrowly academic, which obviously, as you say, it is a competitive world. But there are other ways of being and achieving which have gone by the wayside quite broadly.

Cathy (28:15)

I was a pretty terrible student because I was too busy reading Jackie Collins and Virginia Andrews and all those really gripping books that came out. I certainly was hopeless at studying and was really bad at revising. But, when I started working, I got it. I suddenly saw how important it was to be reliable, to turn up for work on time, to be committed, to work as part of a team.

and I bet you someone could have shouted at me until the cows came home about all those things when I was a teenager and they wouldn’t have made a single bit of headway and it’s only by

Rachel (28:53)

Yeah.

Cathy (28:54)

You know, so I really do think that, you know, kids should not despair if they don’t do well at school. There are online courses, there are all sorts of ways you can navigate your way to leading a good life.

Rachel (29:06)

And you

make a really good point there, which is even though I’ve written a whole book full of thoughts and strategies and advice, but if somebody doesn’t ask your advice, especially your teenager, they’re not going to listen. So how you navigate when to come up with ideas or philosophies. Sometimes you can be really have very sort of simple things like would you like

me just to listen to you right now, or would you like some advice or some ideas about what you might do? So it’s almost sort of stealth advice, not, well, that’s obviously direct, but also sort of modelling it in yourself of different ways you can find fulfillment or step into your gifts, which is sort of less narrow, really, than, as you say, than a, kind of school thing. I, one thing I’d say, which is, I love the research.

was about more broadly helping teenagers and young people have a more compassionate voice to themselves so that if they are in the system where they’re not particularly flourishing, they don’t beat themselves up about it. And one really good way to do that is some of the volunteering work or working with charities or working with local kind of community groups, which allows you to see other kinds of people who maybe have other kinds of struggles.

And I love the idea that that helped you in turn be gentler on yourself and not beat yourself up about, you know, I didn’t get the string of A stars.

Cathy (30:34)

Oh, I probably beat myself. • I I didn’t get a string of A stars, but I did all right. And actually, that’s that’s the thing, isn’t it? Being good enough is really half the battle, isn’t it? I remember my my dad saying to my brother, my brother once got 53 % in a maths exam and my dad said, you’ve done 3 % too much stuff.

Rachel (30:40)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cathy (30:57)

Studying my boy.

Rachel (30:59)

I love it, he sounds fabulous, your dad. I like all that stuff about the tennis players, know, the fact that even Wimbledon champions, they only get 51 % shots in, 49 % of the shots go out, which is, think again,

Cathy (31:11)

Yes.

Yeah, but because

you have to be a risk taker in order to win, you got to learn to take risks. And that is another thing we do not allow our kids to do. And we really should, we should allow them to risk and we should obviously not, you know, bungee jump without a rope or things like that. But we should allow them to try things and to fail as well. should allow them to fail so that overall they become more resilient. And I think we’re really bad at doing that, you know. ⁓ So.

Rachel (31:17)

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now I like that

line from the American Lebanese poet Khalil Gabran. He’s got this lovely line about being the bow that is stable from which the arrow shoots forth. But it’s actually not our job to oversee that arrow and whatever it’s getting up to. And as you say, that’s how we learn is, you know, not, you know, this quote of getting sort of everything right. But I think that control is everywhere. And ⁓ it’s interesting, I think,

Cathy (31:49)

Yes.

Rachel (32:06)

Quite a lot of parents, again, with good intentions, they have a very strong feeling that they need to control, which actually, if you think about it for a moment, is quite silly in a way, because it’s very hard to control somebody else, especially a teenager, especially when they’re up against this huge surge for autonomy. And I suppose the best you can say is that parents are trying to be controlling for good reasons, because they feel that that’s how they’re going to keep teenagers.

safe. But sometimes when they’re controlling, they do it by doing the right wrong thing. So you’re wrong if you do that. And I think a really useful thing is to step away from those kind of judgments and notice when you’re making them and just come back to sort of idea, well, people can see things differently. And our teenagers are going to see things very differently to us. And just having more respect for that.

Cathy (32:58)

think if they’re allowed to take small risks and often get it wrong, it teaches them more about risk taking in general. Whereas if you completely coset a child, they might get it spectacularly wrong, in a life-changing way, which is obviously…

Rachel (33:13)

Yes.

And that is exactly what’s happening if you look at the studies. So basically, people talk about 14 to 18, much more control. And then children, teenage, where young people arriving at university and absolutely not being able to cope with being. Yeah. And I mean, you know, putting, putting their clothes in the microwave because they’d never.

Cathy (33:31)

just going bonkers, right?

Rachel (33:38)

washed their own laundry. I mean, yeah, so actually helping out at home is another way of stepping away from this sort of infantilizing, you know, we do everything for them. We take away all the risks. But smoothing the road actually may be counterintuitive. Well, it is a problem.

Cathy (33:58)

Yeah, I think I was doing quite well on all the things we’ve talked about except for the helping out at home. if I try and get my kid to help me make supper, she’ll chop a mushroom and then she’ll quietly sneak away. So, yeah, she’s pretty lazy, that little moo.

Rachel (34:09)

Yes. Yeah, yeah. I quite like, yeah,

there’s quite a nice sort of supper trick, which you can do, which is just like one night a week, it’s like you’re not going to cook supper at all. And then just see what happens. And then

Cathy (34:23)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, she made the most delicious

sausage rolls the other day, so you know, it’s not all bad. Yeah.

Rachel (34:29)

Yeah, or a sandwich night, you know, you just put out

some bread and people can help themselves but people say, well, then my teenager wouldn’t eat. Well, have you ever heard of a teenager who isn’t hungry? You know, at some point, they’re going to eat. ⁓ But it’s just having that confidence that, you know, we’re not the absolute be all and end all. They are able to cope much more than we think.

Cathy (34:39)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

and fish and chips every now and then is really not gonna kill you as well. So yeah.

Rachel (34:54)

Yeah, absolutely,

absolutely. But yeah, it sounds like we’re on quite similar sort of ⁓

Cathy (35:00)

Yes, it does.

Although, you know, I have to say one of the one of the things and I’m sure you’ve had this question before, you know, the people who would read this book are probably the kind of parents who are better than they think and are doing okay. Whereas how do you reach the people who really need help who are actually very unlikely to pick up a book like this? It’s

Rachel (35:07)

Yeah.

Yeah,

well, I know what mean.

Cathy (35:27)

It’s a self-selecting

readership, isn’t it? And I say that with the, I really enjoyed reading it. ⁓ but it’s, you know, it’s a very reassuring read. It’s very, and you bring up some really interesting points, how do you reach the people who are in much more precarious situations, who are really struggling and how do we better support, for example,

Rachel (35:46)

Yeah.

Yeah, I I think,

yeah, I think, well, in my own life, so after I first wrote my memoir in 2014, ⁓ working with the charities helped stay kind of much more grassroots and traveling around the country and running workshops for mind or rethink and going to God forsaken places, because there’s a complete overlap between mental health problems and social deprivation.

because so much of it is life circumstances, poor housing, unemployment, family breakdown. So you’re absolutely right. is hard to reach these people, parents who might not naturally read a book. I mean, my own answer is to stay grassroots and to run workshops alongside charities and things like that, which is a way to just talk to people. And I think…

Some of the messages in the book resonate, especially this sort of stepping away from judgment, this sort of the good enough, you know, even things like, you know, 80 % of the time trying to have something decent to eat as opposed to kind of beating yourself up about all the times that, as you say, you know, you get the fish and chips. I like to think is there’s a kind of warmth and a sort of authorial kind of arm around your shoulder, which, know, does connect.

with parents of all sorts. But no, you’re right, probably those sorts of parents are hard to reach and they’re hard to reach actually. for mental health services. And in fact, there’s more of a effort to try and go out directly in the community rather than wait for people to come when there are problems. But it’s a very valid point. It is difficult.

Cathy (37:25)

You know, PTSD, for example, is a real issue with, people who returned from the military, from war zones, etc. But I remember reading a really interesting study which showed that actually a lot of these people go into the military with PTSD because of very, very tough home backgrounds. Because a lot of the time, you know, the soldiers the cannon fodder, if you like, have come from, you know, poverty stricken back

Rachel (37:43)

Mm-hmm.

Cathy (37:49)

backgrounds

with family breakdowns and so it makes you think of it in a completely different way, doesn’t it? And, there should be more support as I think there’s systemic failure in the set. For example, the the grooming gangs in Oxford and, you know, and Rotherham and other places in the UK, where some of the parents were crying out for help and yet they were ignored. And so, you know, these are the how do

Rachel (38:11)

Complicit. Yeah.

Cathy (38:16)

we change this about our society? And I realize that’s a such a tricky question it’s not all on you to solve I have to say that quickly but you must have given it a lot of thought.

Rachel (38:22)

Ha ha.

Yeah.

Well, we do need to work with the institutions where people find themselves. So whether that’s schools.

Cathy (38:38)

But that’s the

problem, the institutions broke down and this is where resilience by itself doesn’t help you. It’s a perfect storm if you like. Do you think we’ve actually learnt any lessons from this? Do you think it would be different if it happened again?

Rachel (38:41)

Yeah.

Well, I’m a very sort of optimistic person and I do think that since I’ve been involved in this field, so since 2014, there have been massive, massive changes in terms of awareness and support. So if you think of most adults, actually, where are they spending most time? They’re at work. And I would say that something to be optimistic about is that employers are

really trying to move the dial about being more supportive and encouraging and advocates for mental health and looking after their employees more effectively and making workplaces less stressful. And it’s not really rocket science working with HR and allowing for flexible working. For example, young mothers who are wanting to work but also got small children, how can they make workplaces more supportive?

There’s just no question that when I was working in the newsroom at the Times, it just was no comparison to the awareness and the support that workplaces can provide. So I think that’s something to hold on to, to be optimistic. Yes, of course, there will always be, appalling pockets of, systemic failure. And, mental health is still the poor relation.

on every metric, if you take the NHS, so far less spent on research. If you take adolescent mental health, we’ve only got around 800 adolescent psychiatrists in the country, and we’ve got around 800,000 people waiting for treatment on CAMHS, on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. we have got a way to go, but…

Cathy (40:25)

It’s astonishing, isn’t it?

Rachel (40:38)

I do remain positive because so much has happened in the last 10 years.

Cathy (40:42)

It’s true that workplaces are so much more supportive now, not only of mental health issues, but of family life in general. whereas, you know, 20, 30 years ago, it was very rigid. You turned up at nine and you left at five and now things have completely changed. ⁓

Rachel (40:46)

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think there’s another

optimistic thing that’s happening is that I think that, there’s still this idea that women take the greater sort of parenting load and that’s probably still the case, but there’s no question again that has transformed in terms of more father’s involvement. And I think if anything, that’s only going to increase. And one of the strong themes in the book is kind of the absolute centrality of fathers to this process.

this idea of maternal gatekeeping when we keep fathers out of things. And I think if I talk to younger parents, it’s really interesting to observe how different they are in terms of both fathers and mothers being involved in a new way. Yeah.

Cathy (41:41)

Well, there’s an expectation they’ll be involved now, whereas

previously it was just, an optional extra, wasn’t it? I only have one daughter, but my husband has four daughters. So, you know, I’ve got three older step kids. they’re all in their late 20s, 30s now. And, you know, so my daughter, aged 13, there’s no problem she has that he hasn’t seen before.

Rachel (41:52)

Right.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that is a big societal shift, which again is optimistic because all the research shows that two parents are better than one for all sorts of reasons. So that involvement of fathers is something very positive to hold on to. I probably

Cathy (42:05)

Sorry.

Well, it is, also

the ability of teenage girls in particular to have quite personal conversations with their fathers, which would have been impossible for us.

Rachel (42:32)

Yes, unthinkable. And I think possibly

the third reason for optimism is that I think that a little bit like that correction on diagnosis, I think that we are now possibly getting to real understanding of the dangers of smartphones and the digital world. And We’re not yet.

there, but I think there is a very strong feeling now and there are networks all over the country of parents getting together, you know, banning smart smartphones. And I think that that is new as well. And it’s interesting because if you look at the research in America versus the UK, so in America, elite families never did let their children have smartphones, the tech titans. Exactly.

Cathy (43:17)

No, the Silicon Valley tech giants don’t

let their own kids have smartphones, which is all you need to know really, isn’t it?

Rachel (43:25)

All you need to know, but we in the UK

were very unusual. We let everybody pretty much do what they wanted. We were very liberal about smartphones but also we are a more regulated kind of environment. So there is a possibility that that will change. I mean, I think you’ve got to be careful because my own view is, you know, if you ban something, people are more drawn to it, especially teenagers who want to be autonomous.

but an understanding of the dangers and the fact that young people and teenagers themselves are beginning to realize how dangerous.

Cathy (43:56)

Well, that’s

really the thing that’s changed is their own understanding that actually it is, you know, and so.

Rachel (44:00)

Yes, yes, yes. And, you know,

quite often now you’ll find it’s more that mums are addicted to Instagram and lots of young people have come off it, including my own daughters. And I notice that they’re actually ahead of me. And I think that’s quite interesting. And that’s even before you think about what schools are up to. so I think there are some causes of optimism, but as you say, there’s still some dreadful pockets.

Cathy (44:28)

Yeah, and actually my daughter’s school does not teach with iPads or smart, it’s all pen and paper still and I’m all for that. really do not support electronics in the classroom other than for computer studies, because I think it’s really important that hand-eye coordination, writing, I think it’s very important for thought as well.

Rachel (44:41)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And I think the key thing,

so it’s interesting, I’m sure you watched Adolescents, but I thought it was sort of

Cathy (44:56)

I didn’t watch

it, I think I’m the only person on planet who hasn’t.

Rachel (44:59)

Well, I just thought that

Keir Starmer’s response was misguided because what he said, I better watch the time. But basically he had this idea that, you know, put it out in loads of schools. But young people know all this stuff. I mean, the people who didn’t know it was us, adults. yeah, but which is also the reason why I do think there’s this sort of cause for optimism is they’re not stupid. And they can figure out, you know, even if you

If you’re with a room of teenagers and you ask them how they’re feeling and how do they feel when they’ve been on smart, you know, on social media for five hours, they’ll tell you they feel awful. So I am optimistic on that.

Cathy (45:33)

Yeah. And actually, ⁓

just going back to adolescence, and I haven’t seen it. So it’s unfair of me to pronounce on this, but I read a very interesting article about it, which said there was a fundamental dishonesty about adolescence because middle-class boys who come from two-parent families are not the ones committing knife crime in this country.

Rachel (45:44)

Yeah.

100%. We know from the figures, it’s, I mean, it’s black children.

Cathy (46:00)

And yet no

one will tell the truth about it because we’re so fundamentally dishonest about cause and effect and until that changes these problems can’t be tackled.

Rachel (46:13)

Yeah, well, knife, knife,

knife crime is overwhelmingly people you know, in difficult circumstances, social deprivation in gangs, and there are overwhelmingly black. And that’s just that’s the facts. It’s a bit like you can, you know, actually having Yeah, I mean, people skirt round as well. You know how important it is to taste a stable married

Cathy (46:28)

Exactly. Black or mixed race or yes.

Rachel (46:39)

family remains every bit of data but it’s you know it’s difficult for people to say that.

Cathy (46:43)

and the importance

of role models, male role models to young, especially, well, not just young teenage boys, it’s so important for girls to have male role models too.

Rachel (46:46)

Yeah.

Yeah, and we don’t have nearly enough

male teachers and that’s a real problem and we do need good male role models to counteract the Andrew Tate. I think I ought to probably go just because I’ve got to go, but I’m very happy to talk more. It’s been so interesting.

Cathy (47:04)

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, it has been super interesting and we could bang on forever actually. So and I know you’re running off to a funeral. Is that right? But I hope the fact that you’re wearing polka dots means it was a good innings for.

Rachel (47:13)

We could actually.

I’m afraid I’m, yes, I’m in my sort of dark, garb.

Yes, that’s a whole nother discussion. I suppose having looked a lot around stigma and mental health, there’s also a stigma around death and it’s always a loss, but actually it can be a celebration as well and I’m trying to approach it. This somebody was a very, a life very well lived and it wasn’t a tragedy. Yeah, no, you’re right.

Cathy (47:43)

That’s hence the polka dots, that was really my question, a life well lived. And

those are always the most fun funerals to go to. ⁓

Rachel (47:51)

Yes, yes,

absolutely, All right, well listen. ⁓ Well, thank you so much. I mean, let me know if you want to do any more or whether you think you’ve got enough, but we can adjust around that.

Cathy (47:54)

I love a good funeral.

That would be great. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. And actually, I think we’ve touched on pretty much, you know.

Rachel (48:11)

I think we

did range quite far and wide. Yeah. Yeah.

Cathy (48:14)

We did, we did indeed. I’d

always be happy to chat to you again maybe about your other books another time. ⁓

Rachel (48:21)

well that would be lovely, yeah. I mean,

I’ve written about nutrition and mental health and I’ve written about poetry and mental health. So all my books are trying to find good practical answers to things.

Cathy (48:31)

Okay, brilliant. Well, thank you so much and

Rachel (48:32)

All right, well listen, thank you so

Cathy (48:34)

Thank you.

Rachel (48:35)

Bye.