Best Practice

Mental health: The challenges facing schools

Pastoral issues Pupil wellbeing Mental health
With CAMHS under pressure and mental health problems rising, schools are working in difficult times. Dr Stephanie Thornton looks at the challenge facing teachers and asks how we can assess the efficacy of school-based interventions on mental health

Schools are ever more in the front-line in handling the mental health crisis among our teenagers.

Society relies increasingly on teachers to notice when something is awry with the young and then to triage such problems – deciding whether this is just a blip or something serious enough to warrant expert intervention.

However, there are well-publicised problems with accessing Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in many parts of the country due to austerity measures and local funding cuts.

As such it certainly feels like society is increasingly relying on schools, and on individual teachers, to deliver some sort of on-going daily support for adolescents with mental health problems, even if experts from CAMHS are involved.

Register now, read forever

Thank you for visiting SecEd and reading some of our content for professionals in secondary education. Register now for free to get unlimited access to all content.

What's included:

  • Unlimited access to news, best practice articles and podcast

  • New content and e-bulletins delivered straight to your inbox every Monday and Thursday

Register

Already have an account? Sign in here