BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Hello and welcome to the last in this series of more or less, you're ever faithful

guide to the numbers in the news and in life. Back at the start of the pandemic we had a series

that ran for 14 weeks, this one didn't, it just felt like it, it's been a lot. This

week we discussed the undercover elephant in the room as we ponder a curious treasury

tweet about stamp duty, we examine the satnav effect which has pushed traffic onto residential

roads, except maybe the whole thing is a massive statistical mistake and David Spiegelhalter

discusses earthquakes, birthdays and coincidences. But first, in August the website I news ran

an article with a headline, one in three teenagers given antidepressants as lack of mental health

services puts pressure on GPs to help. This alarming claim caught the attention of loyal listener

Liz Bennett, who expressed her skepticism. Could you please dig a little deeper into this

apparently extraordinary statistic and perhaps determine what the headline should have read instead?

Digging deeper is what we do Liz and our reporter Nathan Gower has been digging for weeks,

Melonathan, hi Tim. So this figure comes from a survey run in July by a charity called STEMFORP,

who say they support positive mental health in teenagers. They were running a survey on young

people's friendships and relationships and were approached by the ITV daytime programme Good Morning

Britain to include some additional questions, including one about antidepressant use. The key question

was have you been prescribed antidepressants to treat depression or other mental health conditions?

They found that 37% of 12 to 18 year olds said they have been prescribed antidepressants at some point

in their life. And that's where this third of all teenagers claim is coming from.

Wow, so actually even higher than a third. Now I can believe it's really tough to be a teenager,

especially through the pandemic, but that seems high. Are there any other sources we can compare it to?

...