September 3 2026 - 4:00pm
In 1621, Robert Burton published the encyclopedic medical treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy in response to what he saw as a growing epidemic caused by the turbulent political and religious world of the time. Burton took a surprisingly modern and holistic view of mental well-being, advising that the best cures for low moods are maintaining a good diet, sleep regulation, plenty of exercise, spending time in nature, and, crucially, to “be not solitary” and “be not idle”.
Four centuries later, it appears little has changed — and yet still people are unhappier than ever. What is most concerning, however, is just how unhappy the youngest people in society now are. Doctors have noted the sharp rise in children and young people attending A&E units in England in a mental health crisis, with the fastest rise among six- to nine-year-olds, whose attendance rose by 62% between 2019 and 2025. The increase in the number of children turning up in significant distress for self-harm and eating disorders far outstrips the overall jump in attendance at A&E more generally, while a record one million children were referred to mental health services last year — a 10% increase on the year before.
The typical reaction when trying to confront this avalanche of anxiety is to blame Covid lockdowns, especially when considering that today’s six-year-olds were born during the pandemic and so may have missed out on crucial socialization in their formative years. There have been plenty of studies on the deteriorating emotional well-being of this age group since the pandemic, with medical experts such as Dr Jatinder Hayre, author of The Lost Generation of Covid-19, arguing that the pandemic inflicted “psychological wounds” which “may define a generation: permanently blocking some children from realizing their potential”.
It is true that school closures, physical isolation, fear-driven narratives and the normalization of increased screen time caused lasting harm to many children. Yet children are much more adaptable than we give them credit for, and this does not mean that we can continue to blame Covid in perpetuity. Indeed, if we keep focusing on what happened then, we can’t focus on what we are enabling now.
Instead, it’s worth looking at the habits that may have been formed in the pandemic, but which still persist today. First is the pathologization of normal experiences, in which everyday struggles and challenges are misdiagnosed as “abnormal”: the belief that every feeling matters, that there is little difference between trauma and discomfort, and every emotion is diagnosable and treatable. This medicalized narrative is seen in our adoption of therapeutic language. GCSE students are not just “nervous” but are said to have “exam stress” or “exam anxiety”; gentle parenting now involves “co-regulation”, “breaking cycles” and “healing your inner child”.
Secondly, children have suffered from the loss of “play-based” childhoods, and a safety-obsessed culture which means they are missing out on crucial character-building opportunities: for example, not being allowed to walk home by themselves, or failing to develop an evaluation of risk because so-called dangerous features have been removed from playgrounds.
Thirdly, there is the rise in screen addiction at a younger age — 60% of four-year-olds now have their own tablet — and the overstimulating effects this has on the developing mind. Finally, there is the normalization of avoidance — half of secondary school pupils in Britain missed school because of anxiety last year — with parents inadvertently rewarding such self-limiting behaviors and decreasing their children’s tolerance for risk. The more students avoid school, the more they build negative associations around it.
We need to address these current behaviors, not past ones. There is already a record number of young people not in education, employment or training; a record number of people on disability benefits for anxiety; and a record number of children and teenagers being prescribed antidepressants. All of these problems will worsen if we continue to ignore the real causes of this youth mental health epidemic. The best thing to do is return to Burton’s advice: pursue meaningful activity. Having a sense of purpose, learning new skills, engaging with creativity and connecting with other people, he believed, were the best antidotes to melancholy.
