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More young people are suffering mental anguish with a consequent rise in violent behaviour. And adults are often at a loss as to what action to take. We need to find an explanation, says Lisa Harker.

Child-on-child violence leaves an indelible scar on our collective adult conscience. Images of James Bulger and Damilola Taylor remind us of our failures as adults to protect children as victims; but we are haunted equally by the images of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson and of our failure to prevent children from becoming criminals. We are forced to question how those we would wish to be furthest from the influence of malign forces could commit such terrible crimes against their own peers.

Our reaction must be tempered by the knowledge that such crimes are - fortunately - extremely rare. But our response - a combination of horror, guilt, incredulity and anger - leaves us feeling woefully impotent.

We may look to nature or nurture for explanations - seeking solace in finding punishments to fit the crimes or placing blame on the environment in which children are raised. But neither perspective provides a clear guide as to how we should take action. Our tough juvenile penal system fails to deter criminal activity. And seeking less tangible explanations such as the malign influence of television, growing material envy or some loss of innocence leaves us without a clear or constructive way forward.

Faced with the fragility of our collective response we instinctively seek to safeguard children from a growing list of dangers we perceive face them (from paedophiles and stranger danger to traffic accidents and mobile phone theft). But motivated by a need to appease adult anxiety, smothering children in over-protection can escalate children's fears.

Children's own perceptions of crime reflect a disproportionate concern about their own danger. Nearly half of young women under 24 report being very worried about being raped and a third are worried about being mugged. Yet fewer than 10 per cent of young women are victims of any form of crime.

Our failure to take sufficiently seriously the increase in mental health problems in children and young people sufficiently perpetuates our inability to deal with both the causes and consequences of crimes by and against children.

While we continue to debate the overall prevalence of mental health problems in young people, there is a strong consensus that recorded mental health problems are rising in children and adolescents and have done so for more than 50 years.

An Office of National Statistics survey found that one in 10 children aged between five and 15 had experienced clinically defined mental health problems that would "stop children and adolescents doing the normal things, being able to make friends, go to school, function productively". As many as one in fifty 11 to 15-year-olds have tried to harm or kill themselves.

As ChildLine counsels its one-millionth child, we are reminded of our increased sensitivity to children's problems but simply cannot fail to conclude that the level of mental anguish in children has reached astonishing heights.

Such problems cannot be solely the concern of psychologists and psychiatrists, or charities and helplines. All those who hold responsibilities for children must play a role in questioning how we might improve children's lives to prevent such mental distress.

The roots of mental ill-health are complex but we ignore the early signs at our peril. The pathways from bullying to crime, and from being bullied to becoming victim are neither fixed nor inevitable. But early indications of problems must not go ignored.

This month US psychologists claim to have found an increase in bullying among girls, a new type of psychological warfare that they term "relational aggression". Such girl-on-girl cruelty takes the form of a subtle form of emotional bullying which is easily overlooked in the context of more obvious and disruptive male aggression. Some claim that such bullying has always existed but that it has simply been our awareness and acknowledgement of its existence among girls that has been lacking. But whether new or rediscovered, it deserves serious attention.

As the Damilola Taylor murder trial moves to a close we will instinctively wish for an explanation. But unless we pay more attention to the mental well-being of children and young people we are in danger of grasping at straws.  

Lisa Harker is deputy director of the Institute for Public Policy Research.