Why should teachers talk about mental health with students and colleagues?

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anxiety, Bullying, career, colleagues, Depression, harassment, management, mental health issues, recovery, secret, stigma, stress, support, teachers

Why should teachers talk about mental health with students and colleagues?

Clare can now talk with calm reflection about the moment she decided to end her life. She remembers feeling as if she were living in a sort of twilight zone where nothing made sense: she was being shunned by colleagues and faced losing her job as a teacher.

Things had spiralled out of control after Clare was signed off work with stress-related depression. When invited back to school to talk about when she might return, managers tried to renegotiate her contract. Clare immediately sought legal advice. “I felt isolated, bullied and harassed.

“My managers were asking other staff members about me and I was becoming increasingly anxious by what was happening. Instead of supporting me and making reasonable adjustments to the fact that I was off with stress, the school’s response was completely punitive.”

Part of the problem is that mental illness in teaching is stigmatised, says Clare. “If you reveal that you are stressed, it is seen as a great weakness – that you are just not up to the job.”

Figures published by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) this year showed that more than a third of school and college staff have noticed a rise in mental health issues among colleagues in the past two years. Despite this, 68% kept their problems a secret from their bosses.

In a recent Teacher Support Network survey, the majority of teachers (89%) blamed excessive workloads for their mental health problems, and 40% wouldn’t talk to anyone at work about mental illness because was seen as “a sign of weakness”.

People worry about being seen as not good enough, says Tim, a teacher who retired early due to stress and anxiety. “If you are suffering from work-related stress you are especially reluctant to seek the support of senior management for fear that your complaints could be seen as an indictment of their management.”

David Ambler, ATL district secretary in Birmingham, says mental health problems are also stigmatised because of worries about how this will make a school look. “To reduce the stigmatisation of mental illness requires more than simply a change of attitude among headteachers and senior management in school. It requires a change of attitude among the general public and parents to understand that teaching is a stressful job and sometimes teachers go under or need treatment.”

When Michael was signed off with stress-related depression, he found that some colleagues were understanding but others were not. Teachers worry about the impact of admitting to a mental health problem on their career, he says. The headteacher who employed Michael in his current post said that she was taking a huge risk and put him on a six-month trial period. “Employers are not as sure about mental illness as they would be about physical illness,” he says. “If I broke my leg, for example, and came back to work I don’t think I would be trialled in the same way.”

But this needn’t be the case if the stigma around the issue of mental illness is tackled and the right support is put in place. Rachel, who has experienced depression for years but hasn’t taken time off work, puts her ability to keep teaching without taking any extensive leave down to the support of her senior leadership team and colleagues.

“I am able to talk to all my senior management team and have good friends on the staff who also know and are supportive. My experience of mental health, if anything, has done the opposite of holding me back. But if I had not received the understanding and support I did then I would almost certainly have ended up off sick and probably left teaching.”

Nor is this just an issue of doing the right thing and supporting people experiencing mental health problems – it’s also essential to their recovery. Alison Stark, a senior teacher at a Dutch secondary school, who is off sick with work-related burnout, says there is a more open culture to mental health in the Netherlands.

“The first step is admitting that you have a problem. I talked about my problems with a friend and just being able to say out loud that I am struggling helped me accept things,” she says.

Her school has been patient and supportive – rather than worrying about what to say, colleagues have sent her cards, flowers and message of support. “It is important that schools have a supportive management who are understanding. Headteachers need to support management and create an atmosphere in which teachers can talk about it [mental illness].”

For Stark, the most supportive person has been her deputy head, who has sought solutions by asking her what she needs and what would aid her recovery. “They say, ‘do you want me to allow you home access to email or not? Should I block it and protect you?’”

An openness about mental illness could also help students by ensuring they have positive role models. Kelly, who just started in a girls’ school, is recovering from an eating disorder and used to self-harm. She says stress from teaching can cause a flare-up in food-control behaviours and she has visible scars on her arm. “I am what you could call a normal weight so it’s not obvious I struggled with bulimia, anorexia and excessive exercising,” she says.

Kelly wants to share her experiences to show her pupils that no one should let mental health problems define them, but she worries about the repercussions. “I worry that my school would not be supportive of my talking about my experiences as they would be concerned about the potential backlash from parents. If students mis-reported the story at home some parents may be concerned about my capacity to cope.”

• Most of the names in this article have been changed to protect the teachers who shared their stories.

The Tackling mental health stigma in schools series is funded by Time to Change. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here.

Mindfulness therapy comes at a high price for some, say experts

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anxiety, attention, breath, depersonalisation, Depression, health professionals, meditation, mindful living, mindfulness, mindfulness meditation, mindfulness therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), NHS, side-effects, stress, teachers, training, trauma memories, vulnerability

Mindfulness therapy comes at a high price for some, say experts

In a first floor room above a gridlocked London street, 20 strangers shuffle on to mats and cushions. There’s an advertising executive, a personnel manager, a student and a pensioner. A gong sounds softly and a session of sitting meditation begins. This is one of more than 1,000 mindfulness courses proliferating across the UK as more and more people struggling with anxiety, depression and stress turn towards a practice adapted from a 2,400-year-old Buddhist tradition.

Enthusiasm is booming for such mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) courses, which an Oxford University study has found can reduce relapses into depression by 44%. It is, say the researchers, as effective as taking antidepressants. It involves sitting still, focusing on your breath, noticing when your attention drifts and bringing it back to your breath – and it is surprisingly challenging.

Lifestyle magazines brim with mindfulness features and the global advertising giant JWT listed mindful living as one of its 10 trends to shape the world in 2014 as consumers develop “a quasi-Zen desire to experience everything in a more present, conscious way”.

But psychiatrists have now sounded a warning that as well as bringing benefits, mindfulness meditation can have troubling side-effects. Evidence is also emerging of underqualified teachers presenting themselves as mindfulness experts, including through the NHS.

The concern comes not from critics of mindfulness but from supporters, such as Dr Florian Ruths, consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley hospital in south London. He has launched an investigation into adverse reactions to MBCT, which have included rare cases of “depersonalisation”, where people feel like they are watching themselves in a film.

“There is a lot of enthusiasm for mindfulness-based therapies and they are very powerful interventions,” Ruths said. “But they can also have side-effects. Mindfulness is delivered to potentially vulnerable people with mental illness, including depression and anxiety, so it needs to be taught by people who know the basics about those illnesses, and when to refer people for specialist help.”

His inquiry follows the “dark night” project at Brown University in the US, which has catalogued how some Buddhist meditators have been assailed by traumatic memories. Problems recorded by Professor Willoughby Britton, the lead psychiatrist, include “cognitive, perceptual and sensory aberrations”, changes in their sense of self and impairment in social relationships. One Buddhist monk, Shinzen Young, has described the “dark night” phenomenon as an “irreversible insight into emptiness” and “enlightenment’s evil twin”.

Mindfulness experts say such extreme adverse reactions are rare and are most likely to follow prolonged periods of meditation, such as weeks on a silent retreat. But the studies represent a new strain of critical thinking about mindfulness meditation amid an avalanche of hype.

MBCT is commonly taught in groups in an eight-week programme and courses sell out fast. Ed Halliwell, who teaches in London and West Sussex, said some of his courses fill up within 48 hours of their being announced.

“You can sometimes get the impression from the enthusiasm that is being shown about it helping with depression and anxiety that mindfulness is a magic pill you can apply without effort,” he said. “You start watching your breath and all your problems are solved. It is not like that at all. You are working with the heart of your experiences, learning to turn towards them, and that is difficult and can be uncomfortable.”

Mindfulness is spreading fast into village halls, schools and hospitals and even the offices of banks and internet giants such as Google. The online meditation app Headspace now has 523,000 users in the UK, a threefold increase in 12 months. But mounting public interest means more teachers are urgently needed and concern is growing about the adequacy of training. Several sources have told the Guardian that some NHS trusts are asking health professionals to teach mindfulness after only having completed a basic eight-week beginners’ course.

“It is worrying,” said Rebecca Crane, director of the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice in Bangor, which has trained 2,500 teachers in the past five years. “People come along to our week-long teacher training retreat and then are put under pressure to get teaching very quickly.”

Exeter University has launched an inquiry into how 43 NHS trusts across the UK are meeting the ballooning demand for MBCT.

Marie Johansson, clinical lead at Oxford University’s mindfulness centre, stressed the need for proper training of at least a year until health professionals can teach meditation, partly because on rare occasions it can throw up “extremely distressing experiences”.

“Taking the course is quite challenging,” she said. “You need to be reasonably stable and well. Noticing what is going on in your mind and body may be completely new and you may discover that there are patterns of thinking and acting and behaving that no longer serve you well. There might be patterns that interfere with living a healthy life and seeing those patterns can bring up lots of reactions and it can be too much to deal with. Unless it is handled well, the person could close down, go away with an increase in self-criticism and feeling they have failed.”

Finding the right teacher is often difficult for people approaching mindfulness for the first time. Leading mindfulness teaching organisations, including the universities of Oxford, Bangor and Exeter, are now considering establishing a register of course leaders who meet good practice guidelines. They expect mindfulness teachers to train for at least a year and to remain under supervision. Some Buddhists have opposed the idea, arguing it is unreasonable to regulate a practice rooted in a religion.

Lokhadi, a mindfulness meditation teacher in London for the past nine years, has regular experience of some of the difficulties mindfulness meditation can throw up.

“While mindfulness meditation doesn’t change people’s experience, things can feel worse before they feel better,” she said. “As awareness increases, your sensitivity to experiences increases. If someone is feeling vulnerable or is not well supported, it can be quite daunting. It can bring up grief and all kinds of emotions, which need to be capably held by an experienced and suitably trained teacher.

“When choosing a course you need to have a sense of the training of the teacher, whether they are supervised and whether they themselves practise meditation. Most reputable teacher training courses require a minimum of two years’ meditation practice and ensure that teachers meet other important criteria.”

Teachers left to pick up pieces from cuts to youth mental health services

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behavioural problems, CAMHs, Children, counselling, counsellors, early intervention, emotional difficulties, mental health issues, mental health services, school, stress, support, teachers, training, well-being, young people

Teachers left to pick up pieces from cuts to youth mental health services

As the headteacher of large primary school in the west of England, Joan Cunningham is accustomed to the demanding aspects of managing an intake from a mainly disadvantaged area. However, for the past couple of years, she says, one issue has escalated so dramatically that it is nearly at crisis point. “There is so much more pressure on schools and teachers to deal with children’s mental health and behavioural problems,” she says. “We provide as much support as we can but, with fewer resources available and a massive increase in need … the pressure has been incredible.”

Cuts to mental health and other services for young people mean teachers are increasingly having to fill the gap, even though schools do not always have the resources or training to provide the extra support pupils with mental or emotional issues may need.

“It was already hard to access the right services before cuts but its getting worse,” Cunningham says. “Teachers … are not mental health professionals, and now there is a vacuum in the services we have [traditionally] relied on. Social services departments are under more pressure due to cuts, Sure Starts … have vanished, [and] in many cases the voluntary organisations we used to be able to turn to are disappearing. Sign-posting families to where they can get help is much harder because of all of this.” At a time when families are under greater financial strain and “even very young children” are under pressure to achieve academically, she concludes, the need for support is “growing very fast”.

Child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) have been particularly hard hit. These specialist services assess and treat children and young people with mental, emotional or behavioural difficulties. Typically, when schools cannot offer the support of their own counsellor, or when a child has especially serious difficulties, they will seek out their local Camhs for help.

In many cases, local authorities commission and fund these services, and the impact of council budget cuts on Camhs in some areas has been severe. According to research by the charity Young Minds, two-thirds of councils in England have reduced their Camhs budget since 2010. And when the charity asked NHS trusts and councils about other mental health spending targeted at children and young people, such as youth counselling or specific services for schools, more than half had cut budgets – some by as much as 30%.

The cuts mean local authorities’ Camhs spending is increasingly redirected towards more serious cases of mental ill-health, at the expense of early intervention services. “Draining money from early intervention services is short-sighted and just stores up problems for the future,” says Sarah Brennan, chief executive of Young Minds. “The result is Camhs feels it is being asked to respond to an enormous number of issues and schools feel Camhs has left them high and dry.”

Chris Harrison, national executive member and former president of the NAHT, says part of the problem until recently has been that targets in education have allowed children’s wellbeing to slip down the agenda. “The issue of mental health [in schools] has been coming to the fore over the past four or five years; there’s a real groundswell of interest, but it isn’t yet a priority in schools. We need to accept that preparation for life is about more than academic results.”

Research by the Teacher Support Network, a charity focusing on teachers’ wellbeing, shows around half of teachers feel pupil behaviour is worsening. Its survey of over 800 teachers also found almost two-thirds were stressed as a result.

The cuts to Camhs mean schools are struggling to provide professional support on site. Some have set aside cash from the Pupil Premium to pay for a regular counsellor. Andy Bell, deputy chief executive at the Centre for Mental Health, says that an “ad-hoc” system of support relies too heavily on the initiative of individual heads or teachers, and is undermined by unsatisfactory and arbitrary access to funds. “We see raising awareness of this issue as a major priority,” he says. “When we conducted research on child behavioural problems we found that three-quarters of parents asked teachers for help … However, some schools are better equipped than others. Many have virtually nothing by way of [professional] support, while others have full-time counsellors.”

Inadequate and underfunded services mean undue stress is being put on teaching staff, who may feel they are not trained or qualified to tackle many of the emotional or mental health problems that come up.

And with anecdotal evidence suggesting the number of young people experiencing mental health problems is rising, the crisis in Camhs is set to get worse. In 2004, the last year that government statistics were centrally collected on the prevalence of mental ill-health among children and young people, 1.3 million children were deemed to have a diagnosable mental illness. The economic downturn, coupled with government austerity and exam stress, means this figure is now probably much higher. And with NHS England estimating that only a quarter of children and young people with a problem are ever seen by mental health services, the figures are just the tip of the iceberg.

Politicians are becoming more aware of the scale of the problem. The health select committee has begun a parliamentary inquiry into Camhs, which campaigners hope will push mental health in schools higher up the agenda when it is published this year. “What we need is a consistent, national system that is accountable. What we need is for Camhs to be transformed.” says Bell.

Harrison says more needs to be done to ensure heads and schools have access to effective support services. “Schools and heads are battered at the moment. We want the government to look at the evidence. It’s common sense. There is overwhelming evidence that students learn better and are more effective in environments where they are supported and their teachers are supported.”

For now, charities and campaign groups are having to help schools themselves. Young Minds offers guidance on its website for teachers and is about to pilot a helpline for school staff, while the anti-stigma campaign Time to Change is running a project promoting pupil wellbeing and offering practical guidance for teaching staff. “Pupils are under much more stress these days and so are staff, yet teachers don’t have training in mental health – or spare time,” says Moira Clewes, lead teacher on health at Sandwich technology school, Kent, one of the schools piloting the project. “We are breaking down misconceptions around mental illness. Students are opening up. Teachers are grateful for advice. You’d be amazed at the impact this is having.”

A Department for Education spokesperson points to a range of initiatives, including the MindEd website, launched in March, designed to help people working with children, including teachers, “to recognise when a child needs help and how to make sure they get it”. The Department of Health says it has a “priority” focus on children’s mental health and, among other things, has put additional cash in to “talking therapies”, adding that it is liaising with the DfE to improve links between schools and Camhs.

For Cunningham, while any help is welcome, she is adamant that “nothing short of a clear, coherent and properly funded approach nationally will work for schools and for children”.

• Some names have been changed

Britons show Victorian attitudes to epilepsy as children who suffer from the condition are accused of being ‘possessed’

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Bullying, Children, discrimination, epilepsy, friends, possession, prejudice, seizure, teachers

Britons show Victorian attitudes to epilepsy as children who suffer from the condition are accused of being ‘possessed’

One in five children who suffer with epilepsy has been accused of being “possessed” after having a seizure, according to shocking new research.

Britons’ Victorian attitudes to the condition are exposed in a report published by the charity Young Epilepsy.

It finds that over three quarters of people of all ages have experienced discrimination as a result of their epilepsy. More than 40 per cent of children have experienced discrimination or exclusion from their peers, and almost a third have faced discrimination from teachers.

In addition, two fifths have faced discrimination from strangers, and 8 per cent by doctors and medical professionals, according to polling for Young Epilepsy by Opinion Matters.

Negative reactions from others after a child suffers a seizure include being told being told that epilepsy is contagious, which happened to a third of affected children, and being asked if they could speak to spirits, which occurred to 18 per cent.

David Ford, chief executive of Young Epilepsy, said: “It’s a level of prejudice more akin to 1913 than 2013. We knew there was some discrimination but we had no idea it was on this scale.”

Conservative MP Laura Sandys said: “I’m epileptic and I know from personal experience that this is what people think.

“There’s been a sea-change in people’s perceptions of most disabilities, but epilepsy still seems to be seen as something you keep quiet about; it still hasn’t shaken off that perception that you’re somehow possessed by the devil or demonised.”

Ms Sandys, who is chair of the All-Party-Parliamentary Group on Epilepsy, said: “There have only been two MPs who have declared their epilepsy, but statistically there should be another four.”

Experts are concerned that this prejudice means that children with epilepsy are less inclined to be open and discuss their condition, something which could have serious health implications.

This guardedness continues into later life, with 55 per cent of those adults who were questioned in the survey saying that they never disclose their epilepsy to new people because they fear a negative reaction from them.

Professor Helen Cross, Prince of Wales chair of childhood epilepsy at University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital, said: “These high levels of prejudice have a huge impact on how children can manage their condition. If you’re worried about being bullied then you don’t want to talk to people about it, which means you don’t have buddies who know what to do if you have a seizure.”

She added: “Epilepsy is as common as diabetes, and in childhood it’s more common, but while I bet every schoolchild can name someone they know with diabetes, I’m sure that’s not the case with epilepsy.”

Case study: Elliot Harden, 11

Julie Harden from Oxted, Surrey, is mother of Elliot, 11, who suffers from a life threatening form of complex epilepsy

“Some people are really quite nasty about epilepsy. In conversations Elliot has been called ‘a retard’, ‘mad’, ‘not right’ and ‘that scary boy’. Even coming into my house people jump back from him as if they’re worried they’re going to be attacked.

I’ve got friends who won’t come round to our house with their children because they’re scared of what they might see. One time my other son Cameron, who is 8, was playing with other children upstairs. Elliot came up to see them and the other children ran away downstairs.

One of my neighbours even bangs on the wall saying ‘f-ing this and that’ when Elliot is having a seizure and fighting for his life. Another neighbour ran out of the house when he had a seizure.

Massive rise in disruptive behaviour, warn teachers

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aggression, behavioural problems, boundaries, Children, emotional problems, family breakdown, low self-esteem, mental health issues, physical abuse, school, social media, stress, teachers, young people

Massive rise in disruptive behaviour, warn teachers

Teachers have warned that disruptive behaviour in classrooms has escalated sharply in recent years, as funding cuts to local services have left schools struggling to cope.

A survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) found that the vast majority of staff had recorded a rise in the number of childrenwith emotional, behavioural or mental health problems.

The union collated numerous examples of challenging behaviour, ranging from violent assault to defamatory campaigns on social media.

Suggested reasons for the deteriorating behaviour include a lack of boundaries at home, attention-seeking, an absence of positive role models at home, low self-esteem and family breakdown.

The ATL, which has 160,000 members across the UK, said aggressive cuts to the traditional safety net of local services have left schools dealing with complex behavioural and mental health problems on their own.

Earlier this month it emerged that two-thirds of local authorities have cut their budgets for children and young people’s mental health services since the coalition government came to power in 2010. A freedom of information request by the YoungMinds charity found that 34 out of 51 local authorities which responded said their budgets for children’s and young people’s mental health services had been cut, one by 76%.

Alison Ryan, the union’s educational policy adviser, said: “Services are struggling for survival or operating with a skeleton staff, so there’s now a huge pressure on schools to almost go it alone. Schools are absolutely on the front line of dealing with these children and young people and trying to provide a service that means they don’t fall through the cracks.”

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL, said: “The huge funding cuts to local services mean schools often have to deal with children’s problems without any help.”

The survey of 844 staff found that 62% felt there were more children with emotional, behavioural and mental health problems than two years ago, with 56% saying there were more than five years ago. Nearly 90% of support staff, teachers, lecturers, school heads and college leaders revealed that they had dealt with a challenging or disruptive student during this school year. One primary school teacher in Cheshire said: “I have been kicked in the head, spat at, called disgusting names, told to eff off, had the classroom trashed regularly and items thrown. We accept children who are excluded from other schools so they come to us with extreme behaviour issues.”

A teacher in a West Midlands secondary school said: “One colleague had a Twitter account set up in front of him on a mobile called Paedo ****** [their name], which invited others to comment on him and his sexual orientation.”

Another teacher in a secondary school in Dudley added: “I’ve been sworn at, argued with, shouted at, had books thrown at me, threatened with physical abuse and had things stolen and broken.”

Bousted added: “Regrettably, teachers and support staff are suffering the backlash from deteriorating standards of behaviour. They are frequently on the receiving end of children’s frustration and unhappiness and have to deal with the fallout from parents failing to set boundaries and family breakdowns.”

On the positive side, most of the disruptive behaviour facing staff was categorised as fairly low level, with 79% of staff complaining that students talked in class, did not pay attention and messed around.

Some 68% added that students were disrespectful and ignored their instructions, 55% said they had dealt with verbally aggressive students, and a fifth with a physically aggressive student. Among secondary and sixth-form students, smoking was considered a significant problem.

On most occasions challenging behaviour was deemed an irritation which disrupted class work, according to 74% of staff, but 42% revealed that they suffered stress and almost a quarter said they had lost confidence at work. Forty of those questioned said they had been physically hurt by a student.

Teachers To Be Given ‘Sexting’ Curb Guide

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Bullying, CEOP, guidance, images, internet, mobile phones, online safety, peer pressure, resources, school, sexting, support, teachers, Teens, young people

Teachers To Be Given ‘Sexting’ Curb Guide

Teachers are to be issued with a guide on how to deal with ‘sexting’ – the sharing of explicit photos or videos through mobile phones and the internet.

Amid a rise in pupils sending sexually explicit pictures, the advice pack, which is launched on Wednesday, offers tips on how to support a child whose image has been shared and whether the devices used should be searched.

A study by the NSPCC last year reported up to 40% of young people had been involved in ‘sexting’, and found teenage girls in particular were facing pressure from classmates to provide sexually explicit pictures of themselves.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, welcomed the guidance.

He said: “The problem of ‘sexting’ – and the exposure of children to pornographic images through mobile devices – poses real and serious challenges for parents, head teachers and school staff.

“It exemplifies the way technology blurs the boundaries between school life and the wider world.”

The brochure – titled Sexting in schools: advice and support around self-generated images – will complement other resources already available to teachers, including ‘So You Got Naked Online’, produced last year by the South West Grid for Learning Trust.

Peter Davies, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, which helped develop the new document, said: “There are very real risks with this activity by young people, from bullying to the sharing of these images among sex offenders.”

The CEOP had seen an increase in young people sharing sexual images and videos of themselves with their peer group, he said.

Last October, the Internet Watch Foundation found that 88% of self-generated, sexually explicit online content of young people had been taken from its original location and uploaded onto other websites.

Statistics from the children’s charity Beatbullying suggested 38% of young people have received a sexually explicit text or email, while 25% have received a sexual image they found offensive.

Research by the charity also suggested over half of teachers (54%) knew pupils were creating and sharing explicit material of themselves.

The newly-published guidance was developed by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a child protection charity, Securus Software, which provides online safety systems to over 3,200 schools, and Medway Council, whose existing advice for Kent schools was incorporated into the recommendations.

The Department of Education and the National Association of Headteachers also supported the development of the resource.

The pack will include advice to teachers about how to respond if a child tells them about ‘sexting’ they have been involved in, as well as how to handle explicit images, manage student reaction and prevent further incidents.

Case studies in the document highlight the devastating impact the sharing of explicit images can have on children’s lives and the challenges faced by schools in dealing with it.

We Need to Break the Taboo Surrounding Self Harm and Start Talking About It

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Children, GPs, hospitalisation, parents, self-harm, support, teachers, young people

We Need to Break the Taboo Surrounding Self Harm and Start Talking About It

One in 12 children and young people deliberately self-harm with around 40,000 cases needing hospitalisation each year because their injuries are so severe. Those statistics alone suggest that we must do more to help children and young people who are turning to self-harm and our new research shows how imperative this task is.

Research by YoungMinds and the Cello group launched today shows:
• Three out of four young people simply do not know where to turn to talk about self-harm
• A third of parents would not seek professional help if their child was self-harming
• Almost half GPs feel that they don’t understand young people who self-harm and their motivations
• Two in three teachers don’t know what to say to young people who self-harm

The research findings are worrying. Among young people, parents, teachers and GPs self-harm is considered more concerning and more serious than many high-profile youth issues such as youth gangs, drugs, binge-drinking or eating disorders. Young people themselves also rank self harm as a very high area of concern.

Myths, misconceptions and lack of understanding characterize self-harm, our research shows it can be viewed as too serious with links to suicide or too trivial to prompt action by being seen as attention seeking. With this polarisation of views it makes it really difficult for people to seek or provide support.

As a society we feel ill equipped to talk to young people about self-harm and at the same time young people are saying they don’t know where to turn. If as our research shows, parents, teachers and GPs don’t feel equipped and confident then is it any wonder that young people are stuck not knowing where to go?

Only one in 10 young people are comfortable seeking advice from teachers, parents and GPs. Over half would go online to get support about self-harm despite only one in five trusting online sources. Thousands of young people are getting emotional support from online communities rather than going to their parents, teachers or GPs. Everyone concerned about the emotional wellbeing of young people needs to acknowledge and accept this and look at why young people are supporting each other online.

We shouldn’t blame people for not being confident or equipped our research shows a real desire for people to be able to talk to young people about self harm. The majority of people believe that they need to be able to offer support to young people who self-harm; however, nobody feels empowered to act.

Thousands of young people are suffering in silence every day. Our research demonstrates that we need to break the conspiracy of silence around self-harm so young people feel more able to seek support and parents, teachers and GP’s feel equipped to provide it. We also need to find ways to breach the gap online that exists between adults who want to help but don’t know how to enter the online space and young people who find peer support there but may also come across the more negative and dark side of online communication.

The YoungMinds Parents’ Helpline offers free confidential online and telephone support, including information and advice, to any adult worried about the emotional problems, behaviour or mental health of a child or young person up to the age of 25.

Call us free on 0808 802 5544  Monday to Friday 9.30am-4pm or email parents@youngminds.org.uk