Resources: Quick guide to ... depression and anxiety

Find cheerful ways to help with the quick guide.

1. Research by the Institute of Psychiatry published last week says the proportion of 15-year-olds with emotional problems such as anxiety and depression has increased by 70 per cent over the past 25 years. Louis Appleby, the Government's mental health tsar, is reportedly cautious about the figures. But he agrees that about two per cent of 11- to 15-year-olds are depressed and five per cent have emotional problems, such as anxiety and phobias.

2. Is this due to the pressures of school and the high expectations of this highly tested and examined generation? No-one really knows. There are lots of pressures on young people as they move towards independence. It is an increasingly long road and lonely, in that it is very different from the experience of their parents' generation. Whatever the underlying cause, the result is that more and more young people need sympathetic and informed help.