Out of control

Who or what is to blame when children misbehave in school? Is it always a sign that kids are simply ‘out of control’ or losing respect? Alison Utley reports on work which suggests that sometimes the cause may lie deeper.

Maybe the stubborn refusal to co-operate was just because the little angel was having a bad day and felt like taking it out on his teacher. Or was something else going on?

For naughtiness in a child can sometimes be a sign of poor mental well-being. The World Health Organisation estimates that in a lot of countries as many as 25% of adolescents have symptoms of mental disorder. And mental distress can often show itself as conduct or behaviour problems inside as well as outside school.

According to Janet Shucksmith, Professor in Public Health at the University of Teesside, schools need to be able to accept that children’s mental well-being is a part of their welfare responsibility. She is exploring how schools are dealing with a new tide of challenging behaviour thought to be triggered by poor mental health. The behaviour may be disruptive in the classroom. Or it may equally result in the child being withdrawn and unco-operative.

As a former teacher herself, Professor Shucksmith is no stranger to the demands of the classroom. And while she stresses there is no magic bullet, she believes that the key to improving children’s mental well-being involves schools offering ‘a real commitment to the task’.

Professor Shucksmith has a longstanding research interest in whether schools are the right place for health interventions and health promotion activities aimed at young people. Having recently arrived at Teesside after several decades of work in Scotland, she says she found Scottish schools had a more committed approach to delivering good health. ‘Being a “health promoting school” is a defining dimension of what the good school should be north of the border, and this is reflected in the inspection regime. In England it is still more of an optional extra.’

‘If we don’t want problems to stack up into later life we have to start spotting young people’s distress at an earlier age and acting to remedy it’, she says. Schools are in a good position to act as this first line of attack on the problem. ‘If there is really a willingness to take on the task, schools can do much in the way they organise themselves and the relationships they have with pupils and parents to promote good mental health as well as all the current emphasis on physical health. Perhaps we need someone to do for mental health what Jamie Oliver has tried to do for kids’ eating habits at school.’

So far the research has explored the different strategies in use throughout Scotland’s schools for working with children who are disruptive or withdrawn. The results indicate that professional understandings about mental health have shifted from talking of mental ‘illness’ to the more positive notion of mental ‘well-being’.

However the researchers found the notion that teachers and schools might have some responsibility for working to improve young people’s mental health and well-being is still relatively new.

Professor Shucksmith said teachers should not be frightened by the new responsibility since there is a range of different professionals willing to share their experience and skills. While clinical specialists are there to support the most needy pupils, the whole school community benefits from having staff trained to lend a sympathetic ear to children’s troubles and to act robustly to support them. Health workers, social workers, parent support workers and in-school support staff each have a distinctive contribution to make and these people need to work alongside teachers in order to reach a shared understanding of the problems and the remedies.

‘Through integrated working, professionals from different backgrounds learn new perspectives and develop more rounded understandings of the problems faced by some children and young people’, Professor Shucksmith said.

In one school in Aberdeenshire, for instance, the researchers found a specially-designed programme which allowed teachers to access internal school support to develop new responses to children’s challenging behaviour in the classroom. Rather than viewing the children as the sole cause of the problem, the teachers were encouraged to think in terms of how they could change the classroom or other school environments to reduce the likelihood of such behaviours. Teacher support was delivered through a school co-ordinator who was trained to take a counselling style approach and, although this service was primarily intended to enhance the well-being of pupils, teachers also reported a very positive effect on their own well-being.

Professor Shucksmith says that in order to take ownership of the links between mental well-being and behaviour, schools should undertake fundamental reviews of their structures and cultures, placing well-being ‘at the very heart of their value systems’.

She wants to be able to offer teachers practical steps which can enable them to offer children the emotional support they need and, with her team at Teesside, she is currently undertaking some work for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence which aims to offer public health guidance on how primary schools could be intervening to tackle pupils’ mental health.

‘This is the start of a long process in which we need to change hearts and minds in order to promote good mental health for children’, she said. ‘While teachers – particularly at secondary level – may think of themselves as subject specialists, we want them to also take on responsibility for the well-being of the whole child – in partnership with parents of course’.

More about research in the School of Health & Social Care

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