SENIOR / TALKING POINT
All in the Mind
Adolescent mental health has hogged the headlines this year with concerns about soaring rates of anxiety, depression and other disorders amongst teenagers. Earlier this year, the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (the umbrella organisation of the UK’s leading independent schools) held a Good Mental Health conference to address these issues. Here Natasha Devon, the recently deposed government mental health tsar who spoke at the conference, discusses where she thinks the issues lie; Chris Jeffrey, Headmaster of Bootham School in York and Chair of the HMC’s Wellbeing Working Group, explains what took place at the conference and outlines some of the challenges facing today’s teenagers; and a number of schools explain what they are doing to support their pupils' wellbeing.
“Social media is a catalyst, not a cause, of poor mental health in young people today”
NATASHA DEVON
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Writer and mental health champion
uring a commons debate earlier this year, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was asked what he thought was responsible for the surge in poor mental health amongst the British population. His answer was decisive. For young people, he said, it is ‘social media’. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scream in frustration. Of course, technological advances are having a huge impact on the way young people think and behave but they are a catalyst, rather than a cause. And there is an important distinction here – poor mental health is not synonymous with mental illness. One in four of us will statistically experience a mental illness during our lifetime but four in four of us have a brain and therefore mental health. I do not believe it is helpful to tell a pupil so strung-out with exam stress they’re having 50
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panic attacks and unable to function that they are suffering from ‘anxiety disorder’. They aren’t. They’re suffering from acute stress caused by unprecedented amounts of academic pressure coupled with momentous expectations in an increasingly competitive climate. This is particularly pronounced in independent schools. It does not mean, however, that their concerns are not serious and should not be dealt with. What schools are facing is a crisis of poor mental health, and while this is leading to more instances of diagnosed mental illnesses, the greater issue is the number of children flying below the radar who have symptoms of depression, anxiety or selfharm but who do not meet the ever-higher thresholds of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. It is their needs teachers are being expected to meet with only a few vague directives from above (generally parroting the words ‘resilience’ and ‘peer-to-peer mentoring’ ad nauseam).
The crisis in mental health is, I believe, primarily an economic one. A Young Minds survey in 2014 of 5,000 12- to 18-yearolds revealed worries about the future – the prospect of leaving university with record amounts of debt, the likelihood of unemployment or of not being able to afford to live independently on an average wage – to be a primary factor in spiralling anxiety in young people. Coupled with this, both parents increasingly have to work long hours to sustain the family’s lifestyle (interestingly, many independent school children I speak to say worrying about the amount of money their parents have to pay to send them to school causes them significant stress). This has led to a reduction in quality family time, community and communication, all of which are the bedrock upon which a child builds their sense of identity and self-esteem. Mental Health First Aid England, a charity which offers training to education professionals, talks about a metaphorical ‘stress bucket’. We all have a stress bucket which is incrementally filled by the challenges of everyday life. This is entirely normal, but it is when our stress-bucket overflows that we are at increased risk of developing mental health issues. So we need a ‘tap’ – something that provides release from stress. Talking, writing down our feelings, exercise or indulging in something creative are all ways we can empty our stress buckets. But in a world where the pace of life leaves us unable to contemplate and reflect, it is little wonder that so many young people have reached crisis point.
2016
05/10/2016 15:19