Mental health specialist in every school....

thatbags you may have known I don't suppose you saw any pictures of children dying. A lot of children do now.
The tests in Primary schools were not really the same. They were part of everyday work, not done on special paper, usually just part of an ordinary day and dependant upon the school. SATs are much more formal

I knew about children starving to death. We were enjoined to eat things we didn"t like because a "child in Africa would love to have it". As one of my friends said she always thought back then: "Well they're welcome to it; I don't want it!"

We had tests at school from an early age too, jane10. Your comment just reminded me. I can't remember from before my last two years in primary school (a state school, trisher), but from the age of nine we had class tests every term and one's place in the class was ranked in order depending on the results. In secondary school (also a state school) we had fortnightly averages of homework marks and the top two in each class were named at assembly in front of the whole school.

So I don't think it's testing as such that's stressing kids out so much as people's attitudes to tests, including teachers' attitudes. I think teachers are more stressed nowadays and I wonder if kids pick up in this.

Just a thought but does the proliferation of access to the internet via mobiles etc contribute to child mental health issues?
Eg online bullying, accessing proana websites, porn in general etc etc as well as messing up sleep patterns.
I know we can't suddenly prevent this access but it must contribute. Add in the observations from the thread about mothers being glued to their phones and completely ignoring children at a crucial age for communication. What will the long term effects of that be? Not great I suspect. We'll end up needing more mental health workers than teachers in school at this rate.

Well said trisher, all the points you make are valid. In the past, many children with what we would now recognise as emotional/psychological/psychiatric difficulties were excluded from mainstream. They were sent to huge 'special' boarding schools, where abuse was rife in all its form. Many progressed to special hospitals.

We now have a more well informed and enlightened approach Unfortunately, the money 'saved' when the huge special hospitals and boarding schools were closed down wasn't invested supporting young people or children who were to find inclusion beyond them and end up excluded and put into pupil referral units, or worse, given no educational provision at all. They're the young people most likely to end up in hmp, illiterate, innumerate.

To use the war example, I have lost count of the number of friends who now in their late 60's or 70's realise that the father they feared, who lost his temper, hit them, frightened them was probably suffering some kind of PTSD having been working and surviving on the Burma Railway for example. These were from middle class families, men who were functioning, who returned to professional employment after the war.

There are no simple solutions to complex problems. think of Primo Levy who survived concentration camps, wrote wonderful, life affirming books like If This is Man - who seemed to be managing his awful experiences and living well. He committed suicide in his 80's unable to tolerate his memories.

I think it was probably different during the war because everyone around u was in the same boat
We have created so many problems for our youngsters. We seem to live in a goldfish bowl where image is all important
How did we get it so wrong?

On the other hand you didn't know about refugees, children being killed or starving to death, wars, nuclear weapons, torture, violent crime, paedophiles, horror films or any of the thousands of other things today's child accesses on TV or computer. Children today have different problems but they are just as valid.
Private school then Jane10 ?

I was once very taken aback when an older lady snapped at me about modern day stress: she went on to tell me about her experience as a child in wartime. Evacuated to strangers, food shortage and the uncertainty that her parents and siblings hadn't been bombed (in London). She had even been strafed by a German pilot as she walked along a country lane. That was stressful she told me unlike the 'first world' problems I had been telling her that children faced today.
She's a nice friendly well adjusted lady and not an old miseryguts!
We started serious exams at 8 in our school..

I agree with you Iam64. Dealing with young people with eating disorders, who cut themselves, hear voices, have anxiety/depression, selective mutism, OCD, ADHD or any of the psychotic disorders, which often show symptoms in older teenagers, requires specialist help.

My "guesstimate" from experience is that at least 3-4% of teenagers have quite serious psychiatric disorders.

Sending somebody on a course and ticking a few boxes isn't going to help, nor is building up resilience in the normal way.

I don't think these disorders are necessarily more common these days, but I think we're better at recognising them and the continual stress caused by assessment doesn't help.

Oh I can see some little researcher in Tory HQ going "Mental health is becoming very trendy, even Prince Harry is talking about it. What can we do that sounds good but means nothing?" Bingo!

Any teacher would tell TM loud and clear what the real problems in school are - she just needs to listen. These attempts to catch votes really get up my nose. Does she think we do not have the nouse to know where the real problems lie? I wonder where she got this little sound bite from - certainly not from consulting teachers.

Yes it does sound like a correct summary of what will happen trisher.
Or alternatively, someone who has been a carer, family centre worker for example will be employed. I'm not criticising carers or family centre workers because I recognise the excellent work many do. I'm repeating the point that therapeutic work/mental health assessment of children needs a high level of training and on going clinical supervision. Poor intervention can be worse than no intervention.

That sounds about right trisher going by my (and probably yours an almost every other teacher's) experiences in education.

It's a cynical attempt to attract votes and give the impression that they actually care. At a time when education is struggling, there aren't enough school places and class numbers are through the roof there is to be a 'mental health specialist' in every school. What I suspect this really means is that some poor teacher already overburdened with work will be sent on a short training course and then proclaimed a 'mental health specialist'. Meantime the cuts to all other services will go ahead. Children will continue to struggle with the number of tests and examinations they are subjected to, teachers will struggle to cope with the work load and education will suffer. But don't worry any child with a problem will be referred to the 'mental health specialist' who will try to fit in interviews between the preparation, marking and teaching and dealing with discipline problems.

I would question if there are sufficient appropriately trained people to provide in-school support at the moment. The right training is essential.

Where is the money to come from to put a mental health specialist in every school? What does the term mean? Many of the schools in particularly deprived areas locally, had a counsellor or play therapist on school premises. Not any more, the cuts mean those employees were no longer affordable.

I've no objection to taxes being used to provide a suitably qualified person to support children at school. If this is a genuine proposal, we need to know how its to be funded and whether other essential services in our Child and Adolescent Mental Health departments are to have their budgets reinstated, or better yet, improved.

I agree with the wider point that as a society and in education, our children would benefit from actually having a childhood.

too

I worked in a school, where a number of pupils were experiencing mental health issue and attending a child mental health unit. It was awful to watch them suffering. Most of their problems stemmed from their home life.
I agree that we put undue pressure on pupils. In my LEA, all pupils in mainstream had to sit SATS, regardless of ability. It was nothing short of cruelty to make these children attempt the tests.
However, we do have to prepare our children for life as adults teach them how to deal with disappointment.

Children clearly have to learn to cope with disappointment - that is part of growing up. And the presence of counsellors in schools is not unknown - but the budget cuts mean that some schools (like ours) have had to get rid of them. I am not averse to counsellors in school - it makes a lot of sense.

What peeves me is that what TM is proposing is a response to the increase in mental health problems in young people and the proposal is a sticking plaster that does not tackle some of the root causes. Those causes in the school context are often due to pressures that schools are under to get good SATs results or their school gets a poor OfSted. Other things like the curriculum being too narrow and the teachers being under stress play their part.

There are clearly out of school pressures to that contribute; but if the in school pressures were properly tackled then this would be of huge benefit.

One child I know simply did not finish her SATs tests because she was so tired from a sleepless night of worry and so nervous that she could not function - she is top of her class. My own DGD spent the entire school year prior to the sATs worrying about them.

It is hard for teachers who often try, quite rightly, to play down the SATs, because they know that their school is being judged on it and they have pressure from above.

The system needs overhauling.

I'm not blaming parents here. What I'm saying is that they are misguided if they allow their children to think the world revolves around them and that they are more important than they actually are. In this, society must take the blame too.

Anya you have summed it up perfectly. A lot of parents never use the word no and use the word treat too often

grannyqueenie that's exactly the right phrase learn to cope with disappointment and in childhood.

Well said, Anya. A good friend of mine always said if children don't learn to cope with disappointment in childhood it's poor preparation for adulthood, which let's face it can be full of disappointments in relationships, employment etc.
Social media has a huge part to play too, most teenagers are welded to their phones where chat, some if it very negative and destructive stuff, goes on 24 hours a day. I've just spent a weekend with my son and his family and am saddened by how unhappy my beautiful and much loved 14 year old granddaughter seems. Her parents are really struggling, she won't engage with the counselling support offered at school and it's hard to see how anything will change for her at present. Not as hard a life as youngsters of the past had but full of challenges, some of them quite subtle, nonetheless.

That last sentence is very true Anya children are given so much far too early and made to feel that the sun revolves round them. Come real life and competition from others and they are lost. Life is tough, teach them that from an early age and how to deal with disappointment and bounce back and we teach them well.

I don't know if the pressures are greater than with previous generations or simply different. In the past children had to deal with fathers being out of work and no benefits to fall back in to feed the family, or fathers away at war, getting killed. Death was quite common and hunger and poverty was rife. Children were sent out to work at much earlier ages and a lot was expected of them.

Communication, radio, TV, social media are creating a new kind of pressure. As is the education system and modern expectations.

One of the best things we can teach our children or grandchildren is resilience. I once remember the lecturer in my 'A' level psychology class saying that part of a parents job is to put their child under stress, small stresses, such as saying 'no' when they're young and other stresses (such as standing up to their teenage angst or demands) when they are older, thus teaching them to deal with it in a supportive, loving environment.