Best Practice

Five ideas to support good mental health in your school

Pastoral issues Behaviour PSHE Pupil wellbeing Mental health
What are the 12 reasons why more young people are suffering from poor mental health, and what are five things schools might do about this? John Tomsett, a headteacher and author of a new book on the issue, advises

If you follow the issue in the media, it is relatively easy to conclude that we are seeing an increase in young people with mental health problems.
Whether we are seeing an increase in mentally ill children in our schools is a different issue, however. There is a crucial difference between our mental health, mental health problems and mental illness.

I just want us all to be utterly clear about what is a mental health problem, what is a mental health illness and what are merely the ups and downs of being a teenager.

Making those demarcations is difficult to do if, on the other hand, we want to help those students with genuine mental health problems to feel able to disclose their concerns and gain access to expert support.

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