Whose Responsibility is it Anyway? Pupil Mental Health in a Scottish Secondary School (original) (raw)
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The Buckingham Journal of Education, 2020
The article presents a small-scale study utilising both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.Against the backdrop of widespread interest in the area of mental health/well- being by the UK government and also by the media, the study starts to explore the provision being made by secondary schools.The study suggests that the actions being taken nationally lack coherence. Even within the schools themselves, there is evidence of a fragmented approach as mental health/well-being initiatives are added to existing provision being offered by pastoral staff and formally appointed councillors.As new waves of pressure from social media, gender identity, examination stress and personal identity are held to impact mental health/well-being issues schools understand themselves as being the first responder. In turn, the majority of those interviewed in the study have a perception that support services such as Child and Adult Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and educational psychologists are less accessible as a result of budgetary constraints.
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Research reports high levels of mental health problems faced by young people in the UK. Schools provide a range of mental health support services, although these are often not robustly evaluated. This paper aims to explore the mental health provision of secondary schools across two large regions in the North of England and provide comparisons to the mental health questionnaire scores of their pupils. Results are part of a wider study providing an overview of the mental health of secondary school pupils. Measures include the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, distributed to year 8, 9, and 11 pupils attending secondary schools and a bespoke mental health service provision questionnaire for school staff at the same schools. A total of 6328 pupil questionnaires and 36 staff questionnaires were returned from 21 schools. Results showed a non-significant correlation between provision and young people’s mental health scores and highlight a range of factors to take into consideration....
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The need for schools to support children and young people's mental and emotional health is increasingly emphasised in policy initiatives, yet the role of teachers in this has been under explored. This paper reports findings from qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 14 school staff at eight secondary schools in England, examining emotional health and well-being (EHWB) activities in which they were involved. Three emergent themes are discussed: (1) a strongly held belief that teaching and EHWB are inevitably linked; (2) a perception that many colleagues outside the study sample are reluctant to engage in EHWB work; and (3) a concern that teachers' own emotional health needs are neglected, leaving them unable or unwilling to consider those of pupils. The findings endorse whole-school approaches to emotional health, with a focus on teachers' training and support needs and clearer aims, including consideration of how such work fits with the broader goals of schools.
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The current study aimed to explore the attitudes of principals, teacher training lecturers and teachers towards introducing preventative mental health strategies. Following a triangulated method, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with four principals, four teacher training lecturers, and a focus group was conducted with four teachers. Data were analysed following Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The three core themes derived from this study were: (1) cause and maintenance of mental health issues in adolescence; (2) barriers to implementing preventative mental health strategies; and (3) issues with teacher training and proposed solution. Participants favoured incorporating mental health training within teacher training, however highlighted that they were not mental health practitioners. The development and maintenance of mental health issues in adolescence is multi-factorial. Consequently, addressing this requires a wider systemic approach to include society, community, family and school.
Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 2019
A qualitative study conducted in four lower secondary schools in Norway explored teachers' and school principals' experiences of collaboration with a variety of extended services (ES). Particular attention was directed to the ways (if any) they perceived collaboration to be relevant to helping teachers support pupils with mental health problems through their everyday social and pedagogic practices. Findings of the study indicated that teachers valued initiatives that could help develop mutual understandings of teachers' and ES professionals' roles and responsibilities. Initiatives to build inter-professional relationships were perceived as laying the foundation for more productive collaboration. However, to be able to provide coherent, sustained support in the classroom, teachers needed guidance from ES professionals. This required a shift in collaborative processes away from a focus on individualized pupil support towards helping teachers support pupils through their classroom-based social and pedagogical practices. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.