With the new government agenda prioritising mental health education and Ofsted now including criteria that “outstanding” schools must enable students to “make informed choices about healthy eating, fitness and their emotional and mental wellbeing”, the scene is set for schools to make a significant impact on wellbeing.  

There is a growing amount of guidance around what schools can do to support this, but very little about what they should avoid.  

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Here are 10 potholes, as suggested by psychology, that schools should look out for on the road to supporting better mental health.

Mental health: Assuming that a one-off approach will make an impact

Just as eating a healthy salad once doesn’t make us lose weight, in order to have built resilience, wellbeing and good mental health, our young people have to experience more than a one-time hit of a motivational speaker or well-planned assembly.  We must build an environment that supports wellbeing holistically and not just for a day. 

Not addressing the underlying issue

Trying to treat a disorder without paying any heed to its origins is doomed to failure.  

In the UK, children living in the lowest 20 per cent income bracket are two to three times more likely to develop mental health problems than those living in the highest.  

Therefore, we must, at the very least, consider the stressors that are linking poverty to mental health disorders if we want any intervention to have an effect.   

Admittedly, this has become harder with cuts to services, but simple support, empathy, understanding and flexibility to families in times of crisis can go a long way.  

Assuming that everyone needs the same approach

We may not have completely accepted this yet, but the national curriculum doesn’t work for everyone. Unsurprisingly, neither does a single approach to mental health. 

We are able to shape what mental health in schools looks like, which means we can prioritise individualised approaches. Young people need to be able to access a variety of support in schools, which should include everything from online information to individual counselling and group support.

Not using research-based interventions

In the rush to support child mental health, a number of programmes or interventions that claim to improve self-esteem or raise resilience have been published.

But just as we needed the Rose Review to assess the impact of interventions for dyslexia, we need schools to look for the evidence that any intervention they buy actually works. Preferably the research won’t have been carried out by the company that produces the intervention. 

Not applying the approach fully

Once a school has found its evidence-based intervention, it can rest assured that it has something that will improve wellbeing, right? Wrong.

Programmes often only have an impact within a very specific set of variables. Changing, for example, how many children you have in a group or the number of sessions you have can affect the impact.  

Not measuring wellbeing

To really understand how well you are supporting mental wellbeing in schools, you need to understand the prevalence of mental health issues in your school. Just as we “baseline” children when they join school, we need to see if we are actually improving emotional outcomes for the children within them.  

The government’s Measuring Mental Wellbeing in Children and Young People offers a few suggestions of how to measure this.  Although these are blunt tools to measure a hugely broad and complex area, they offer a guide to developing more targeted interventions that fit your school. 

Using punitive behaviour approaches

This shouldn’t be news to anyone, as a plethora of studies have linked zero-tolerance behaviour policies to mental health problems for students. Punitive approaches damage relationships, reduce the standards of behaviour in the school overall and negatively affect academic outcomes. 

Assuming mental health is the responsibility of certain staff

The good news for schools is that the government has promised money to fund mental health workers in schools. While this drive to support specialists should be applauded, attributing the job of “supporting mental health” to any one person in school is dangerous. 

It risks everyone else thinking it isn’t their job. Just like teachers are required to be SEND teachers first, they should aim to be wellbeing supporters first, too.

Ignoring staff wellbeing

It is crucial to invest time and money in supporting teachers’ wellbeing so that they can get the most out of a job they love. Educational psychologists require supervision to practice. Teachers are at the coal face five days a week - they require the same. 

Viewing mental and physical wellbeing separately

Exercise, diet and health behaviours (such as smoking) have all been linked to mental health. Rates of obesity in the UK are rising just as are diagnoses of mental ill-health.  

A whole-school approach to mental health should consider how to support young people being active, eating well and making positive decisions about their health, which brings us full circle back to that Ofsted criteria.

Sarah Taylor-Whiteway is an educational psychologist in London