A majority of young people experience symptoms such as nervousness, irritability, sadness or sleep problems which surface during early teenage years and accelerate towards late adolescence, according to Well, the Scottish Executive-financed magazine on mental health and well-being.

Up to one in three boys and two out of five girls report some form of distress. It is commonplace to write off such difficulties as “a phase they will grow out of” but that ignores the seriousness of the problems.

Bad parenting and conflict in relationships are common factors, and can lead to bullying and higher levels of smoking, drinking and drug use. Poor school performance is a risk factor in substance abuse, unwanted pregnancies, bad behaviour and crime.

Schools should take a social competence approach to boost pupil resilience and self-esteem.

THE SIGNS OF TROUBLE

TWO to three pupils in every class from nursery to secondary are said to be suffering some psychological distress at any one time.

They may feel under strain and depressed or unable to sleep or concentrate, a national conference on the mental health and well-being of young people heard last week.

But while the focus turns to those on a downer, the future depends on whole-school approaches to positive health and that begins with the teachers, experts told the Children in ScotlandPenumbra conference held to coincide with Scottish Mental Health Week.

Katherine Weare, a reader in education at Southampton University and one of the foremost researchers on emotional and social health, said: “Teachers have to believe their own health is being promoted by this and the basic human question is, ‘What’s in it for me?’.

“Teachers are going to be completely cynical if they are being encouraged to think about children’s well-being without anyone helping them with their own stresses and anxieties. Their emotional and social well-being has to be promoted right from the top.

“Headteachers, for example, are often very lonely people and need help from their local authority.”

As school leaders, heads had to look for signs of stress among staff and reward effort. They had to examine workload and accountability, the two greatest sources of friction. Alongside that, teachers had to learn some of the competences of being socially and emotionally literate, in the same way as pupils were being taught such skills.

“A crucial one is anger management and dealing with the problems in schools such as pupils lashing out at each other and bullying others,” Dr Weare said.

“There are simple techniques to recognise the physical side of anger in themselves and to learn to walk away from situations. When you feel your heart racing and you are sweating, you are tempted to become angry in turn. You can control that.”

The current focus was on withdrawn pupils but equally teachers had to learn to express their feelings and not gripe in the staffroom. “If they can be more assertive, they may well help the quiet ones in the corner, quietly sitting there failing and no one is noticing,” Dr Weare said.

Many of the quiet children were incapable of forming relationships and did not know how to join groups, often barging in and then being rejected. Teachers could help them through the process of learning group skills. “It’s something that kids find absolutely fascinating,” she said.

Dr Weare has reviewed social and emotional health strategies in five English and Welsh authorities and found that primaries are far better than secondaries where the emphasis is still on subjects, not children.

An estimated one in 10 under-16s in Scotland suffers from some mental illness and Dr Weare said that the “same measures that help the few, help the many”. There was substantial evidence to show that effective learners were usually the more socially competent.

Leader, page 20