In this day and age, it’s natural to be concerned about your child’s mental wellness, but is that the school’s responsibility? According to new charity MindFull, mental health lessons should be on the timetable in every secondary school in the UK, as too many pupils with symptoms of depression or anxiety are let down or ignored.
According to Emma-Jane Cross, founder of MindFull – which has launched a new online counselling service to support and advise 11- to 17-year-olds – poor mental health among young people was ‘one of the last great medical taboos in the UK today.’ She said that too many teenagers ‘are having to resort to harming themselves on purpose in order to cope, or worse still are thinking about ending their own lives.’ In the charity report, the authors urged, ‘We need to move away from only tackling the symptoms of acute poor mental health and wellbeing to focus on education, prevention and early intervention. Young people need to be encouraged to speak out about their mental health and wellbeing and feel confident that, when they do, they will receive the support they need as swiftly and as easily as possible.’
Lucie Russell of the YoungMinds charity, commented, ‘Children and young people are growing up in a toxic climate. They exist in a 24/7 online world where they never switch off, where cyberbullying, consumerism and pornography, sexting and the pressure to have the perfect body bombard them daily, where any exam grade below a C means failure and employment prospects are bleak. We know from our extensive work with young people that the support they so desperately need when they aren’t coping is grossly lacking but we also know from services that they are under huge funding pressures and are overwhelmed with demand.’
According to Health Minister Norman Lamb, the government is ‘placing an unprecedented emphasis on mental health’, particularly for children and young people. ‘More than a third of children and young people now live in an area where children and adolescent mental health services have been transformed,’ he said. ‘We are investing £54m into improving access to mental health treatments for children and young people.’