If we’re Going to Tackle the Mental Health Crisis we Need to Start Putting Children First – and Not Just in Schools
Most schools are safe and happy places that provide sanctuary to children who suffer because their home lives maybe unsafe and unhappy, but they can't solve this problem alone
- by Fiona Millar
You don’t need to go very far these days to read about the mental health crisis amongst young people; one in 10 suffer from a diagnosable mental health disorder; cuts to local provision mean some must travel the country to get treatment; even more inhumane, some end up in police cells.
Since 2010, accident and emergency visits by children and young people with a mental illness have almost doubled. A recent Association of School and College Leaders survey found that almost a fifth of all heads said at least 40% of their pupils were experiencing anxiety or stress.
Sometimes this problem is translated into a mental health crisis in schools. But we need to be careful with this idea. Most schools are safe and happy places that provide sanctuary to children who suffer because their home lives maybe unsafe and unhappy.
What we have is a mental health problem in society and since 75% per cent of mental illness starts before the age of 18, it would be odd if schools weren’t at the sharp end.
Policy shifts
What can we do about it? I am not going to re rehearse the issues about funding, although investing in adequate local Child and Mental Health Services is obviously vital especially at a time when social media can create extra unprecedented pressure on identity, image and personal relationships.
Some aspects of education policy could help; what if we introduced an understanding of the mental health issues into teacher training?
This was recently suggested by the government’s own review into ITT. What if we eased off the high stakes accountability which can bring so much stress and fear of failure at a time adolescence is already raging?
And what if we repointed success away from academic achievement alone, and towards broader outcomes including personal, social and spiritual fulfilment. This is not as daft as it may sound.
In international league table topping Singapore, it’s exactly what is happening as ministers seek to move away from a results driven culture to a more holistic view of child development.
Different priorities
But to do that would take a profound shift in our own government thinking; a shift towards putting children, rather than narrow performance measures, at the heart of policy.
It is seven years now since Michael Gove removed the words ‘children’ and ‘families’ from the name of his department.
Anything to do with wellbeing, parenting, the home and wider community had to play second fiddle to a misguided idea of rigour linked to a romanticised vision of public school education – when ironically, it is some of the top public schools that have pioneered the idea of happiness and wellbeing as integral to the curriculum.
Meanwhile schools minister Nick Gibb once described anything to do with social and emotional education as “ghastly” as his government proceeded to take an axe to housing benefits, local government, children’s centres and parenting support.
But this is entirely the wrong approach. Most politicians at one time or another, including Michael Gove, like to quote the historian and social reformer RH Tawney’s: “What a wise parent would wish for his or her children, so the state should wish for all its children”
What parents want
Most parents, wise or not, want much the same for their children: happiness, security, love and warmth, as well as the ability to achieve in whatever path they choose.
For the state to want that for all children requires a much broader sense of what we mean by a ‘good’ outcome and then a concerted attempt to tackle the underlying reasons why not all can achieve it.
It means tackling poverty and housing – children who grow up in the poorest homes face the highest risk of multiple deprivation later in life- but also the other causes of family dysfunction that can often overcome the best parental instincts regardless of home background and social class.
Poor mental health, in adults and children, is one of the greatest barriers to a happy and fulfilling life. But schools can’t solve this pressing problem alone.
Fiona Millar is a columnist for The Guardian and a co-founder of the Local Schools Network; for more information, visit fionamillar.com or follow @schooltruth.
