Some thoughts for Children’s Mental Health week

Our Clinical Lead, Jill Guppy, shares her reflections on how the natural world teaches us about change and adaptability — helping us navigate anxious pressures. We invite you to read and take in these thoughtful and heartfelt insights.

Children and young people are growing up today in an anxious world. The acclaimed Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his book called An Anxious Generation, reveals how the decline of free play in childhood and the rise of smartphone use among adolescents are changing our world.

It is no surprise then when we read about children and young people’s services being overstretched, underfunded, and having long waiting times. There are no easy answers. I recently heard about an Anthropologist who went to visit an indigenous tribe in Africa. The Anthropologist was keen to learn about their culture and spend some time living among them in order to inform his research. Not long after his arrival, one of the elders in the tribe asked the Anthropologist whether he could hear the Song of the Stars in the night sky. The person concerned was taken by surprise by this question and said he was not sure that he had ever listened to the Song of the Stars. The elder replied that he must be quite unwell and there was probably a lot of sickness in the culture that he was living in (the anthropologist was from a white western culture).

Perhaps there is something about our disconnect from the natural world that might be leading to a more profound sense of unwellness.

The natural world can teach us something also about adaptation. Birds learn to migrate in order to find food; often they use the stars in the night sky as navigation. Plants learn to grow towards the light or away from it to stimulate growth. Many species slow their breathing and conserve energy so that they can survive the winter months.

The natural world shows us that change is possible—but it may take time. We humans may have to learn to listen a bit more to the Song of the Stars and to allow our natural environment to teach us a little bit more lessons in adaptation.