by Nigel Leaney
Nostalgia is an odd thing and - except for those occasional indulgences to be had behind closed doors - is best avoided. Besides, no one likes an old bore, rambling on about how things were so much better in his day. As if it were now time to move on and hand the present over to the exclusive use of gilded youth.
But compared with 50 years ago, youth is having a tough time. And this isn't some misty vision lamenting a rose-tinted past where parents set their kids loose each summer day to play until sunset - although in my case that was true.
Severe depression has risen among our young people (16- to 24-year-olds) to match the adult levels of 11%. Depression, was once a most adult affliction but now teenage angst has become clinical. There are a lot of antidepressant pills out there and someone has to take them. But it's not just the pharmaceuticals industry that is rising to the challenge.
Dr Martin Seligman, a US psychologist, maintains that happiness is not our children's natural inheritance but has to be learned as part of a school curriculum. No doubt slotted in on a Monday morning just before a double helping of maths.
Seligman is in the UK to disseminate the results of a $1.6m, three-year study that found children performed better in class after being taught positive psychology. That is, acquiring skills in decision-making, assertiveness, handling stress and challenging negative thinking.
Seligman's ideas are now being put to the test in selected schools as part of a political agenda to promote happiness and well-being.
What should be an integral part of living is now isolated and given its own little slot. But surely schools should promote happiness and well-being as an unseen mantle that encapsulates all that they do - not dish it up like a dollop of suet pudding and custard.
Pay too much attention to happiness and it slips away like faeries' gold. Just as in the fable of the dancing centipede who caught the attention of a jealous tiger: "A hundred legs, how on earth do you remember all those movements, which legs to go where? The centipede stopped and thought for a moment and from that moment on he never danced again."
Nigel Leaney manages a mental health residential service
At Wolgarston High School there is an air of happiness that even the old school teachers have commented about in the staff room as they sit in the same chairs each lunch time.
I hope as an ex school phobic myself that I have contributed to this by my model AERO [ Aspirations, Encouragement, Realism and openness] a tool which helps any Wolgarston students who want to use it to find out who they are and what they want out of life and thus head towards some degree of happiness.
This tool will be on offer to other schools through a training session which will be based at Wolgarston for a modest cost.
In December Tim Loughton the shadow children's minister is coming to Wolgarston and will hopefully see why AERO should reach as many children as possible and won't cost anything like the guy from the USA.
Why do we think that we don't have the knowledge here in the UK?