Suffer The Children: Why Having a ‘Mental Health Professional’ in Every School is not the Answer

Executive Summary

• There is no doubt that currently, children and young people are failing to thrive as they should. In 2024, almost 20% of school-aged children in the UK had been diagnosed with a mental health condition, up from 10% twenty years ago;

• There has been almost unanimous agreement across the political spectrum and among representative bodies for mental health professionals, that placing a ‘mental health professional’ in every school may improve the situation;

• It is difficult to ascertain whether or not this is the right approach, without understanding what is meant by the terms ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’, and the challenges in diagnosing a growing number of conditions experienced entirely subjectively through feelings and observed behaviour;

• An abundance of information about mental wellbeing is freely available in a variety of different settings, but has done nothing to improve the situation for young people. Schools already have more staff and programmes dedicated to pupil wellbeing than ever before, even as rates of ‘mental illness’ continue to rise. The effects of ‘social contagion’ also need to be considered;

• Professional bodies have lobbied for the ‘mental health professionals’ to be fully qualified counsellors – there are, however, structural issues within the profession which suggest many interventions would, in fact, be carried out by unpaid volunteers, or professionals in training;

• The capture of mental health professional bodies by critical social justice theory and gender ideology – and the incorporation of these ideas in membership bodies’ ethical frameworks – means that many professionals are likely to look at distress through the lens of systemic oppression and decolonisation, and a need to challenge ‘heteronormativity’, rather than addressing individual distress;

• A ‘mental health industrial complex’ has developed in recent years, and there is a lot of money being spent – and to be made – in connection with the ‘mental health crisis’;

• This paper stresses the need to look beneath the surface for answers, in order to find long-term solutions, principally at the importance of: 

• secure early attachment and the need to support the mother/child relationship in the early years;

• family stability and unity for children’s mental wellbeing;

• addressing the ‘disaster’ narrative and nihilistic outlook fed to children.

• This paper recommends that in order to improve the mental, emotional and physical wellbeing of our children we need to encourage:

• the healthy formation of a child’s identity over time and within the context of family, community, personality and wider interests;

• the building of strong communities, committed to children’s wellbeing;

• a return to a knowledge-based curriculum in school, and a school day structured to build resilience through relationships;

• adults to take responsibility for leadership once more;

• the equal – fair – treatment of boys and girls, while simultaneously their differences are acknowledged and suitable provision is made accordingly.