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There are issues with younger people generally being less resilient. We have a less physically-robust and therefore mentally-robust cohort of graduates, who have often been shielded from genuinely challenging experiences throughout their lives. The carefully-curated fantasies of school and university do not prepare them for the real work.

Albeit written for a US audience, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind – How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, is well worth reading.

More broadly, we are applying the term 'mental health' for everything. A couple of comments in The Times concisely summed up the problems, and warned:

"This is a very complex subject with many subjective aspects. As someone who has worked in mental health for 30 years I detect considerable concept creep. The threshold for being diagnosed is lower and a wider range of complaints are being described as mental illness. So I do not believe there is an epidemic of mental illness but there is an epidemic of publicity. Perhaps this is a sign of increased compassion or self indulgence. It's hard to say. But let's not confuse hard times, bad days, the process of maturing with mental illness. Stuart Hannell."

"I’m afraid I agree with you. I’m a psychotherapist who works with patients suffering from PTSD. My sense from my own experience is that we are increasingly pathologising the normal gamut of human distress and the understandable reactions to extraordinary trauma and hardships life can bring to bear. That in no way denigrates or minimises the enormous suMering and emotional pain experienced . From my own work more often than not the level of trauma experienced and resulting mental health struggles is unrelated to an original event but more the perceived and actual lack of social support available at crucial junctures in a patient’s life . The DSM 5 has played a huge role in this pathologising by creating ever more definitions and labels for US medical insurance purposes. ML Day."

Comments under, 'Pouring billions into treating mental illness doesn’t add up', Matthew Parris, The Times, November 24 2018.