They have never had it so good!

Sitting with a prospective parent recently, they were bemoaning that schools appeared to be increasingly diverting their attention from teaching maths, physics and reading to also attend to young people’s mental health. “Even the Royal Family are at it!”, they exclaimed with much eye rolling. “We all seem to be obsessed with mental health, when so much of our children’s lives is so much better that it was 50 years ago!”

In some ways, he was right, of course. There is about three times more purchasing power, better quality housing, with ever better facilities, there are many, many more cars, and clothes are ever more inexpensive (Easterbrook, 2003). This progress has not been limited to the material aspects of our lives. Overall, many would argue that there is more music, less racism, less pollution, fewer tyrants, more entertainment, better access to information and education for all (e.g. Schuman et al., 1997; Snyder et al., 2008).  In short, at first glance at least, life does indeed seem better than ever!

On the other hand, aspects of today’s society seem to be detrimental to the mental health of children and young people in the UK.  As they grow and develop, children have to navigate an increasingly complex, interconnected and rapidly shifting world, and face challenges and pressures in numerous aspects of their lives.

For example:

• There seems to be a great deal of pressure to have access to money, the perfect body and lifestyle – and to be seen to be doing so.
• 24-hour social networking and what young people can access from a young age can have a negative impact on their mental health and well-being.
• Online spitefulness is commonplace.
• Increasing early sexualisation and unrealistic expectations may throw certain young people into an adult world they are often struggling to understand.
• Violence is widespread in some of our communities and fear of crime can be a frequent source of distress in young people.
• There is an increased emphasis on exam results and measuring outcomes in modern education (Baylis and Morris, 2016).

These and other pressures contribute to the increasing prevalence of mental health issues in young people (Seligman, 2011) and the disturbing statistic of 850,000 children aged 5-16 having experienced mental health problems during their young lives (YoungMinds, 2016).

Additionally:

• 90% of school leaders have reported an increase in the number of students experiencing significant anxiety or stress in the last 5 years (YoungMinds, 2018).
• One in 10 young people have deliberately harmed themselves regularly (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2014) and 15,000 of them are hospitalised each year because of this (House of Parliament, 2014).
• Close to 80,000 children and young people suffer from severe depression (Office of National Statistics, 2014).
• Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14 (NIMH, 2005).
• Almost 300,000 young people in Britain have been recognised as experiencing an anxiety disorder (RCPsych, 2016).
• Amongst teenagers, rates of depression and anxiety have increased by 70% in the past 25 years, particularly since the mid 1980’s (Mental Health Foundation, 2016).

Although All Hallows is far from representative in terms of the make-up of our community, at a national scale, this would mean that if I looked out into a typical class of pupils at least three could be experiencing significant mental health difficulties (Green et al. 2015), double that number may be self-harming (WHO, 2016) and many more struggling with their wellbeing at some level (Office for National Statistic, 2016).  Even at All Hallows, it is likely that there will be pupils who need support with their mental health and well-being at some stage of their journey through the school.

Beneath these statistics are children and young people who feel isolated and deeply unhappy, or are simply struggling to cope with the challenging circumstances in which they find themselves.  No one who works with or cares for young people can be satisfied with this picture.  Although children at All Hallows might be less at risk of experiencing the adverse life experiences and forces that threaten their mental health and well-being, they are far from immune!

As someone who believes in being solution-focused, forward looking and that young people have almost limitless potential if they are empowered and supported appropriately, I do not suggest we simply ring our hands and adopt hopeless inactivity. With Mental Health Awareness Week on the horizon, I will write more next week about the culture we are trying to build across all levels in school, how we are seeking to audit our provision in this area, our plans for specific proactive programmes with our pupils, as well as how we might work in partnership with you as parents to an even greater degree to foster your children’s well-being and resilience. Although far from perfect, I believe that we are well-ahead of many other schools in this respect, but well-being continues to emerge in our current self-evaluation process as an area that we want to develop further.

To the prospective parent who was railing against schools seeking to achieve broader outcomes than exam success, I pointed out that not only will such work have an impact potentially on success, satisfaction and happiness in later life – which is surely something we all wish for our children – but also maximises academic attainment in the shorter term.  Guess what, young people who are confident, feel they have a contribution to make, have a good degree of self-worth and people in their lives who support them when times get tough tend to do better in exams and assessments.  Who would have thought it?

More next week.