Young people's poor mental health affects everyone. It affects young people themselves - now and in the future, it affects their parents, it affects schools, it affects young people's future employers and it affects the economy.
A new report from the Centre for Mental Health, Centre for Young Lives, the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition and YoungMinds finds that the costs of persistent absence from school – a large percentage of it due to mental ill health – were £1.17bn in the 2023/24 school year.
I sat in on a recent meeting of schools in one area where 57% of absences were put down to mental health reasons and more than a quarter more were due to school refusal, much of which is motivated by mental ill health. The figures are worrying and overwhelming for schools which have seen their budgets consistently squeezed in recent years.
From a parent's perspective, the mental health toll is immense. A recent survey identified 46% of working parents saying they are concerned about their children’s mental health. Returner initiatives are reporting more and more parents taking career breaks due to their children's mental health problems. It is estimated that UK employers lose £8bn a year due to reduced performance, time missed for caring responsibilities or parents leaving their roles entirely because of their children's mental ill health.
A failure to address the problems also has a knock-on effect on the labour market. Already figures for the number of young people who are economically inactive due to health issues, mainly mental health, are high.
So this is not just an issue for parents or for schools. We all need to wake up to the scale of the crisis. The new report urges the government to ignore ‘wishful thinking’ that it is exaggerated or a result of “over-medicalisation”, and also calls for an independent Government-commissioned review to examine the causes of the children’s mental health crisis, including the role played by social media.
Early intervention
Part of the solution must be to intervene earlier, before a mental health problem gets to crisis point. Any parent who has had to seek help from the health service knows that the waiting list for mental health support is huge. Is there something we could do at an earlier stage to promote good mental health, to help young people deal with the kind of everyday stresses and strains that are part of life these days?
Prevention has traditionally been the so-called Cinderella of health. It's hard to prove the value of something that doesn't happen so it is generally first in the firing line for cuts. But without prevention initiatives and early intervention all we are left with is waiting for a crisis to happen.
And what if young people could be included in these efforts? After all, they are on the frontline, listening to their friends' problems and anxieties? Training them and giving them the support they need to help other young people - under supervision from their school's pastoral support team - can not only educate them about mental health, but empower them to feel they are not passive victims, but can actively make a difference.
That is what Talk2Nish does. By training and supporting mental health peer mentors - generally sixth form students - we hope to provide young people with a listening ear and mobilise the power of empathy. We know that young people may be more likely to talk about their worries with a peer than with an authority figure such as a teacher. We've already begun our work at a pilot school where the programme is embedded in the pastoral support structure and students are requesting mentors. They tell us it is helping. Surely these kind of initiatives which give young people a voice and an active role in addressing the mental health crisis that young people face today are a vital part of the prevention jigsaw.
*To find out how your school can get involved, contact www.talk2nish.com on talk2Nishpm@gmail.com.
**Picture credit: Zehua Chen and Unsplash.
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