[Margaret Pilkington]

I think surveys(like research) weight their questions to get the answers they want to find.
I also think that many people are not completely honest when completing surveys.

In this modern world we try our best to protect our children. We do not give them the opportunities to take risks.
If you don't take risks now and then, you are completely incapable of being able to assess risks.

Depression and low mood are two totally different things. Yet people who are feeling fed up,(for whom things have not gone as well as they hoped, or who didn't get their own way) will declare themselves 'depressed'.

Growing up, I cannot remember anyone talking about depression. Growing up, I went without things that other people had.
Did that make me feel bad about myself? Of course it didn't.
There is too much introspection and not enough proaction.
I was taught that if I wanted something I had to go out and earn it...save for it.
Today many youngsters want life all wrapped up and tied with a bow. If they do not get it, they feel that life has short changed them.......when in actual fact it is us, their parents, who have short changed them by not giving them the strategies to compete in the real world.

There is much more self esteem to be achieved by setting out to get your goal by your own talents.

The boy who took his own life because he could not get a job(which made him feel of no value) could have done so many things.
He could have taken the benefits to which he was entitled.
He could have worked as a volunteer, this would have given him the self esteem the he felt he lacked. It would have given him healthy social contact, it would have made him feel that he was not wasting his time, but helping others who were less fortunate.
It would have given him some different work skills to add to his CV...and it may have eventually led to him getting a job.
He was interested in gardening...he could have gone around his local area and done the gardens of the elderly for a nominal charge.
He did not do any of these things. He ended a healthy life.

Contrast that with Stephen Sutton. diagnosed with Cancer at the age of 15.....many hospital visits, treatments, being unable, because of his health problems, to do many of the things he enjoyed.
What did he do? He got proactive and set about raising money for the Teen Cancer Trust. He set out to raise £10,000......and raised over three million before he died.

If anyone had the right to feel that life had thrown them a curved ball, it was Stephen Sutton.