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

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. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Young Woodcraft Folk hiking in the country
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
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
MASTER PROFITEER: Lloyd George in 1922
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
Has Starmer got answers to the energy crisis?
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
RADICAL: Greta Thunberg urges MEPs to show climate leadershi
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 (picture posed by a mode
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