BENEFITS hmmmm

[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.

[Lucysgirl]

We mature adults have all had our own life experiences which give us our own viewpoints. I accept that Martin, the 20 year old, didn’t respond to his situation as well as the poorly 15 year old, but I’m not going to compare them because, as you pointed out, brave Stephen Sutton was a young teenage boy who through his years of hospital visits had doctors and nursing staff who were experienced mentors in dealing with youngsters going through their high and low periods. I would also query whether he was left on his own for any length of time.


As for Martin, we know from the newspaper that he wasn’t on benefits, we also know he shared a flat which means he must have been finding himself some sort of short term casual work, but I imagine there’d not be much outside gardening with the rain we’ve had. We also know his mum had given him bus fares to go to the job centre. From the job centre, Martin went back to an empty flat with no job, no money and possibly no food in the flat. I know from my son and his peers how they were treated as 18 year old college leavers applying for benefits – all of them were chastened from the experience.



When I retired I did a bit of volunteering and came across some very despondent teenagers which prompted me to do some research.: ... The frontal cortex of our brains is that part of the brain where we sift information and then make informed choices. The frontal cortex is not developed in teenagers, they don’t have one at all until it eventually starts making connections. We know people develop at different ages, thus the only certainty we have is that by the time we’re 25 years old we don’t have a fully developed mechanism for evaluating and making properly thought out decisions. Until that time arrives emotions are the deciders to the choices teenagers make

I've now surfed and ound youtube videos which gives a better explanation - Here's a couple - one made by a male and the other made by a female:-

[Margaret Pilkington]

Well, I can't access the YouTube stuff.
I can speak from personal experience though....having had a family member commit suicide.
I can also speak from my experience of life......and I know that the female brain works in a different way to the male brain. From the age of 11 I was responsible for care of three brothers(all younger than me) it made me develop skills that perhaps I would not have developed had this not been the case.

I was taught to look for dangers in life, to prepare strategies.....almost to expect the unexpected.
Children these days do not get those life skills.
Despondency comes from feeling like you have no control.....but in most cases there is always something you can do......and it is these things which have to be focused on.

See the glass half full.....not half empty.

[Retlaw]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

Only when you stare death in the face do you realise how precious life is....and how much there is to live for.

I heard angel feathers rustling more than once when I was in the Fire Brigade, especially when buildings started collapsing.

[Margaret Pilkington]

I was thinking about the prefrontal cortex stuff...and it made me wonder how the young lads in the trenches of WW1 went on.
It also made me wonder about court cases regarding the competence of adolescents to take legal and medical decisions for themselves.
It also made me wonder if the prefrontal cortex development is enhanced by having experiences which relate to life and consequences.
Certainly, growing up we (my brothers and I )were taught about consequences of actions.

I have now been able to view the Youtube stuff(changed my security settings temporarily) and agree with the second clip which says 'There is still a lot we don't know about the workings of the brain'.

Sometimes experts tell us things and then they find out something else which tosses their first ideas into the rubbish bin.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Originally Posted by Retlaw

I heard angel feathers rustling more than once when I was in the Fire Brigade, especially when buildings started collapsing.

Retlaw as long as you only heard them...and didn't see them...that is all you have to worry about.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

Maybe the people of today have expectations which are too high.....we can chase happiness all we want, but sometimes it isn't something external( a new car, a better house, a nice holiday)sometimes happiness is accepting the life we have and making the best of it.

How very true Margaret

[Accyexplorer]

Interesting, hmmm

Plans to amend benefit changes clear first Commons test - BBC News

[Lucysgirl]

Originally Posted by Accyexplorer

Interesting, hmmm

Plans to amend benefit changes clear first Commons test - BBC News

I've had some mixed feelings about having to move if you can't afford to pay the rent for the empty bedroom, as I know of one family who bought a new build three bedroom Barratt home in the 1980s and then discovered that the small bedroom (what used to be termed a boxroom) wasn't quite long enough for a standard size single bed. Additionally, and mainly, my other reason was because the government said it had given councils extra money for special cases, which didn't seem to be acted upon.

[Accyexplorer]

It's a (sick) joke L,folk up and down the country feel like they are being pushed into moving house or paying extra because councils are ignoring government guidance and failing to prioritise those who need it most .

Imo this is too little and too late, however, it is good to see Labour and even the LibDem MPs fighting against one of Ian DuncanSmith's vilest policies to date.....



.....You'd almost think there was to be an election soon

[putsinker]

Originally Posted by Lucysgirl

I'm bracing myself for the next batch of high flyer male youngsters whose suicides will be reported just before or after they've received their uni graduation results and neither their family or friends will know the reason why, especially as he was so cheerful the last time they saw him.

Experts don't know why either, although they acknowledge stress which leads to depression is one factor. The Princes Trust recently did a survey of over 2,000 sixteen to twenty-five year old youngsters and found 9% of long term unemployed felt they had nothing to live for and one fifth of those who were unemployed had contemplated committing suicide.

We all know boys brains are wired differently from the fair sex; a big clue is the bright chatterbox who went to bed last night gets up the next morning and can't string two grunts together. We also know they're not fully developed until they're about 25 years old yet we consider they're fully grown adults capable of riding all the storms life throws at them a full 7 years earlier. Authoratative figures make it plain they should fend for themselves, yet they probably haven't a clue about budgeting or what comprises a balanced diet which is necessary for a healthy body and mind; and in my opinion a meal comprising of a cheap can of baked beans or a beef burger with a tiny piece of lettuce and a slice of tomato isn't a healthy meal, no matter what the advert states.

25 years old, wow, I must be the odd one out. In all honesty I was about 50 yrs old before I considered myself as grown up, and I have met blokes older than that who are still little boys, and I reckon some of them will never grow up. Girls are different, they grow up very young.(Most of them anyway.)

[westendlass]

I think things (and life experiences) have changed a lot over the last fifty years or so. People seemed to have more responsibilities and less mollycoddling than today's teenagers, when you left school you started work - you suddenly became a grown up. Times and technology are drastically different now and the hardships faced by previous generations are irrelevant to the current generation. That and the so called 'Nanny State' making people fearful of and needing to be wrapped in cotton wool seem to be breeding a new babyhood of teenagers scared of the realities of the 'big, wide world'.

[cashman]

Many young uns these days have no concept at all of realities/hardships etc,n it aint there fault, its ours.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Yes, maybe you are right Cashy.
But is it not the case that ALL parents wish for their children a better life than they themselves had?
Having said that, it isn't right to just give children what they ask for. They need to be taught that they have to earn what they get. That is certainly the premise that I used when bringing up my daughter.
Things that come easy are seen to have little value.....but I have no doubt that this maxim has fallen by the wayside as some parents do not give their time......so compensate by giving material things.( please note......I did say SOME PARENTS)

[cashman]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

Yes, maybe you are right Cashy.
But is it not the case that ALL parents wish for their children a better life than they themselves had?
Having said that, it isn't right to just give children what they ask for. They need to be taught that they have to earn what they get. That is certainly the premise that I used when bringing up my daughter.
Things that come easy are seen to have little value.....but I have no doubt that this maxim has fallen by the wayside as some parents do not give their time......so compensate by giving material things.( please note......I did say SOME PARENTS)

Spot on as per usual. mine also had to earn stuff, but can recall many of their friends didn't, which could cause arguments.