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October 2016
MENTAL HEALTH IN SCHOOLS.

I'm going to re-start these blogs on education by looking at something topical and very close to my own heart, namely mental health and associated problems among young people. If you read this piece from combined years about my life, you will see why I feel I can speak from experience.

The Prime Minster, in a speech on Monday, said she wanted to transform attitudes to mental health, with a particular focus on children and young people. Figures show that over half of mental health problems start by the age of 14 and 75% by 18.

The plans include mental health first aid training being given in every secondary school. This will, they say, and you may note a spot of scepticism creeping in here, teach people how to identify symptoms and help people who may be developing a mental health issue.

Having been one of those “people” and having carried this issue through my whole life and only recently even begun to understand it, I feel a few sessions with a trained counsellor is not really going to help anyone. There are two major problems. Firstly mental health issues are incredibly difficult to identify. They are not like a broken arm, a twisted ankle; they don't come with any set pattern and sometimes are incredibly well hidden, accidentally or deliberately. Secondly unqualified, scantily trained, non-experts risk boosting the problem not helping remove it. They also open the door to further problems.

I also read that there are suggestions that older pupils could mentor and support younger ones with these mental health issues. Some of you may know of my horror at parts of our nanny state society, particularly in schools. The story that a school had banned pupils from performing cartwheels in the playground because there had been some injuries was, to me, ridiculous. However the idea that we could place upon our older pupils a burden of care for someone with a mental health problem worries me even more. Sometimes, the problem becomes too great for the sufferer and they do, indeed, feel so overwhelmed that they take their own life. Can you seriously imagine the damage such an event would do to a pupil who had been charged with supporting that young person. This role, and the inherent responsibility, should only be entrusted to those who have chosen this occupation in life, have, hopefully, been suitably trained over several years and are being paid to take on that role.

Far better than mental health first aid training would be for someone to go into schools and train our young people in how to treat their fellow pupils, because, in our modern world, some, and possibly only a minor proportion, but some of young people's mental health issues are exacerbated by the behaviour of those around them. If you see so-called celebrities like Ant and Dec, in my opinion, encouraging people to humiliate others, you can think this is how we should all behave.