Children's Mental Health in the UK: The Alarming Facts
By Sensory Integration Education, 9 February 2022
To raise awareness of Children’s Mental Health Week, Rehab 4 Addiction has designed this sobering infographic illustrating the alarming facts about the state of children’s mental health in the UK.
At Sensory Integration Education, we have serious concerns that poor levels of awareness of sensory difficulties are detrimental to the daily lives and mental health of people with sensory integration difficulties. A recent national poll 1 we commissioned found that over a third (36%) of the UK adult population had never even heard the terms “sensory integration” or “sensory processing difficulties”.
And this is against the backdrop of sensory differences being quite common within the population. It is estimated that between 5% and 16.5% of the general population 2,3,4 have symptoms associated with sensory integration difficulties and these estimates are much higher for people with autism5,6,7,8, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) 9, 10.
Research has already demonstrated a relationship between sensory integration difficulties and heightened anxiety and depression 11, 12.
Poor awareness of sensory integration means a poorer experience for people with sensory differences when they come into contact with employers, teachers, civil servants, customer service staff, etcetera, and their behaviours are not understood and their needs are not properly catered for.
In its recent report 13, the National Autistic Society (NAS) stated: “Parents have told us that schools will often argue that their child’s behaviour is a choice, while as parents they recognise their child is overwhelmed by the social and sensory demands of school. [...] In school, social skills training, physical therapy, and sensory integration therapy all featured heavily in additional services which parents stated they would like to see.”
Our schools, businesses, shops and leisure areas have not historically been set up to be accessible or welcoming to people with sensory integration difficulties. We hope that more organisations and authorities make the effort to consider how their environments and routines impact people with sensory integration difficulties and make changes accordingly.
We urge you to support Children's Mental Health Week and help spread the word about the necessity of looking after the mental health of children and young people. Everyone can get involved this year between 7th to 13th February, whether you are part of an organisation, youth group, school, or an individual.
Thank you to Rehab 4 Addiction for allowing us to share this important infographic.
References
(1) Sensory Integration Omnibus by Ipsos MORI, November 2021, Base: 1050 adults aged 16-75 in the UK; Question: ‘How much, if anything, have you heard about the terms “sensory integration” or “sensory processing difficulties”? If you don’t know much or have never heard of them, please say so.’
(12) Serafini, G., Gonda, X., Canepa, G., Pompili, M., Rihmer, Z., Amore, M., & Engel-Yeger, B. (2017). Extreme sensory processing patterns show a complex association with depression, and impulsivity, alexithymia, and hopelessness. Journal of Affective Disorders, 210, 249-257. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.12.019
