How to Maximise Emotional Wellbeing and Improve Mental Health

The Essential Guide to Establishing a Whole-School Ethos

Rona Tutt, Paul Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367511371
• eBook ISBN: 9781000391077
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

In this highly practical book, Rona Tutt and Paul Williams explore how schools and other educational settings can provide students with the right environment to support their emotional wellbeing and hence to maximise their learning potential. Encouraging collaboration between education and healthcare professionals, as well as other services, and with families, they show how to develop resilience in young people and provide them with the tools for coping with mental health issues.

Based on a range of practical experiences from many different schools and practitioners, How to Maximise Emotional Wellbeing and Improve Mental Health discusses several crucial aspects of wellbeing in educational settings, including:

• Changing attitudes surrounding wellbeing and mental health
• Nurturing resilience, and its application
• Creating a healthy and constructive ethos and environment

Providing extensive case studies, and featuring insightful conversations with school leaders and other professionals, this book will be an essential resource for staff in schools, including those leading in mental health, as well as trainee teachers and anyone with a wider societal concern about mental wellbeing in young people.

Chapter 1
Changing attitudes in changing times

This book was written during a year that straddled the time before COVID-19 had hit countries across the globe and the time when the devastating ramifications of the pandemic were beginning to emerge. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, described the event as the most challenging crisis since World War Two. The uncertain future for major industries and local businesses alike are stark and the effects of rising unemployment threatens to blight too many lives, as a world we had come to rely on disappeared almost overnight. The visible signs of how the world had changed were all too obvious, but what may have been less apparent were the lasting effects on people’s mental health and wellbeing, as families and friends had long periods when they were unable to meet to socialise, to celebrate, or even to mourn together.

In his foreword to a report in July 2020, Mark Russell, Chief Executive of The Children’s Society, said there had been a decline in children’s wellbeing since well before the pandemic, with children’s happiness with their lives being at its lowest since 2009/10. However, he went on to say:

But there is hope. While children are feeling the impacts now of the coronavirus and the lockdown measures, there is still a sense of optimism for their future. Children told us that through these difficult times they have enjoyed having a time to reflect, to learn new hobbies or restart old ones and have found gratitude for things in their life pre-lockdown.

(2020: 2)

Similar conclusions were reached by Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England. In a report a couple of months later, she began by saying that some families had said they had enjoyed being able to spend more time together, when children were out of school and parents were having to work from home. She commented, too, on the dedication and commitment of many teachers, social workers and other professionals during this time. However, she pointed out that even before the pandemic, there were 2.2 million children in England living in households affected by domestic abuse, parental drug and/or alcohol dependency and severe parental mental health issues (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2020).

It remains to be seen what the long-term effects of COVID-19 will be on the mental health and wellbeing of people of all ages. But what is clear is that the current crisis will throw a spotlight on emotional wellbeing and on the part schools and other educational settings can play in improving the mental health of the nation.

Recognising the importance of mental health

Well before the advent of the coronavirus, there had been a shift towards recognising the importance of emotional wellbeing, but there is still some distance to go before people are as open and well informed about their mental wellbeing as they are about their physical health – yet the two are closely intertwined. In addition, societal changes from well before the virus have made it harder for people of all ages to remain resilient. Instead of an extended family of grandparents, cousins and other family members living nearby, families may be scattered across the country and, increasingly, across the globe, leaving the nuclear family less cushioned without the wider family’s support to draw on.

Another growing pressure has been the rise in social media, leading to less face-to-face contact and more time spent shut off from engaging with the real world. An increase in indoor activity has been noted along with a decrease in outdoor pursuits, which is one of the areas where physical and mental health merge. Meanwhile a digital divide has opened up between households equipped to access online education, information and advice, and those whose lack of technology leaves them further behind.

An unintended consequence of the reliance on social media has been a rise in bullying and other forms of unacceptable behaviour, which is affecting people of all ages. Bullies have always existed, but now that it is possible to attack or belittle people while hiding behind a screen of anonymity, it has become more invidious, more damaging and more extreme. In June 2019, as part of an inquiry into funding in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in Westminster heard from Geri Cameron, Principal of Loughshore Education Centre in Belfast. Geri said that a strategy for protecting teachers and their wellbeing is sorely needed, saying:

I can’t imagine any other situation where a school principal could be hounded, stalked and vilified on social media and held up for public ridicule with no consequence.

(There is more about bullying in Chapter 4, where attention is paid both to the bully and to the bullied.)

Responding to a question about the scale of support for pupils with mental health problems Geri added that:

There isn’t a school in Northern Ireland at the moment which isn’t feeling the effects of the challenges of dealing with children and young people who have mental ill-health.

The same would apply to other parts of the UK as well. However, as this book shows, there are some amazing examples of what schools and other settings are doing to support young learners’ mental health, and if the intentions of the 2017 Green Paper on Mental Health (DoH and DfE, 2017) finally come to fruition – in combination with other approaches outlined in this book and elsewhere – the future could be much more promising than the past, once the battle with the coronavirus recedes.

Turning to further education (FE) colleges in January 2020, the Times Educational Supplement (tes) (which reaches schools in more than 100 countries and has offices in England, Hong Kong, Sydney and Dubai), did a survey of 142 FE colleges. An article headed: ‘The “tsunami” of mental health need’ summed up its findings:

• 17,500 students were seeing a counsellor or accessing mental health support regularly
• 914 had a dedicated mental health responsibility, which had more than doubled in three years
• More than 120 of the colleges ran a counselling service for students
• The number of staff who had received some form of mental health awareness training had increased by over 700% in the same three-year period (Tes, 2020)

The long-standing and rising concern about young learners’ mental wellbeing has resulted in a more concerted effort to address the issue and, as well as mental health charities and other organisations rising to the challenge, their voices have been added to by a growing number of figures in the public eye – from royalty to film stars and from footballers to TV pundits.

Opening up the conversation

Not only is this a significant step forward, but it has also been part of a growing trend for organisations to work collaboratively with others in the field. While there are so many developments that it is not possible to find the space to cover them all, here are some examples of the work that has been going on in recent years:

• The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have made mental health one of their main areas of charity work and launched the ‘Heads Together’ campaign to tackle stigma
• A legacy of ‘Heads Together’ was the setting up of the ‘Mentally Healthy Schools’ website (www.mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/), in conjunction with The Anna Freud Centre, Place2Be and YoungMinds, giving school and college staff access to quality-assured resources, advice and information. From 2020, the range of resources has widened to include the whole of the UK
• ‘Heads Together’ and the Football Association (FA) teamed up for the ‘Heads Up’ campaign to drive home the message to football fans of all ages
• In 2019 ‘Mental Health Innovations’ launched its first digital programme with the introduction of ‘Shout’, which is a free 24/7 text messaging service for people needing immediate support

During Mental Health Awareness Week 2019, an English TV presenting duo, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, commonly known as Ant and Dec, used one of their popular television shows to launch a Mental Wellness campaign, ‘Britain Get Talking’, supported by the mental health charities Mind, YoungMinds, and the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH). Every year, there is a Mental Health Awareness week in the UK.

Information point Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week has been run by the Mental Health Foundation since 2001.

It is a week in May every year devoted to raising the awareness of mental health and inspire action to promote the message of good mental health for all.

Schools, businesses, community groups and people in their own homes host events to raise money for the Mental Health Foundation, which produces free resources for the occasion.

The week is widely advertised by other mental health charities, such as Mind, Time to Change, Healthwatch, Anxiety UK, Rethink Mental Illness, Shout, Every Mind Matters, etc.

(There is further information about these charities and their campaigns in Chapter 7.)

Competing and conflicting agendas

Despite a more welcoming environment and a greater recognition of the need to nurture wellbeing in people of all ages, the efforts of schools to offer a rounded education has not always been enough to counteract successive governments’ unhealthy obsession with measuring a school’s success purely in terms of tracking academic progress. Pupils’ results are used to hold schools accountable, as if the complex work of schools can be summed up in a few bald statistics, while a fleeting visit by Ofsted inspectors can impact how schools are viewed by the public and affect how staff and pupils feel about themselves.

The time, money and energy that has gone into devising baselines for measuring children’s readiness for learning the minute they arrive in their reception classroom; the diktats about how pupils should be taught to read and write; and the insistence on priority being given to certain GCSE subjects at the expense of The Arts does not help to inspire and motivate pupils. FE colleges have a particular problem in trying to enthuse their students with a love of learning when they are required to re-sit their English and maths, carrying with them unsuccessful attempts at school to reach the required standard into the next stage of their education. While it is a welcome step that there is now a greater focus on wellbeing, it might not have been as necessary if teachers had been trusted to teach and ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword: from recovery to resilience
• 1 Changing attitudes in changing times
• 2 A pathway to progress
• 3 Realigning roles and responsibilities
• 4 Resilience: risk and protective factors
• 5 Emotional wellbeing in the curriculum
• 6 Creating a healthy ethos and environment
• 7 A whole-school ethos and a range of resources
• Index