By Jaya Carrier
I hope everyone’s had a great week so far! This week, I was really interested in a study that was conducted by UCL into teenage mental health, which looked at the possible impact that school itself plays on poor mental health (particularly in girls) during adolescence. It used a large amount of anonymised longitudinal data taken from mental health clinics, GPs and CAMHS Objectives: To examine data from students in secondary schools to look at some of possible causes of poor mental health in adolescence. Summary:
- The findings show that mental health issues are rare in primary-aged students, but then they increase rapidly in secondary school, wherein they become twice as common for girls compared with boys.
- For boys, the data suggests that only towards YR11 do mental health issues increase, whereas for girls it appears that this occurs from YR8 onwards.
- The authors suggest that this may be due to biological or hormonal changes in girls, as well as boys being less likely to disclose or seek help for mental health issues.
- Whilst recent educational policy has suggested that secondary schooling or specific year group dynamics play a part in this decline in mental health, this study raises some important questions about this
- The study contends that age rather than year group appears to be a stronger determinant of mental health issues. By comparing summer-born students and autumn-born students in consecutive years (who are therefore very close in age but in different year groups) they noticed that it was age rather than year group that influenced mental health decline more than say ‘being in YR11’.
Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:
- What is my awareness of mental health in our students? What are some of the signs of declining mental health?
- How does this study shape your thinking related to students you teach, or students in your tutor group?
No comments:
Post a Comment