Child and Adolescent Mental HealthSession 8 – November 22nd

Module Summary

Aims

Looking at the more subtle but equally pervasive influences on good mental health

Consider the role of the media

Consider the role of the school

Consider the role of society

Wellbeing and Why it Matters

‘ Wellbeing is a state of being with others, where human needs are met, where one can act meaningfully to pursue one’s goals and where one enjoys a satisfactory quality of life’

The ESRC Research Group on Wellbeing in Developing Countries, University of Bath

Children and Wellbeing

Child Poverty in perspective: An overview of child wellbeing in rich countries, Unicef 2007.

‘ The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialisation, and their sense of being valued and included in the families and societies in which they are born.’

Unicef’s findings 2007Six indicators of well-being•Material•Health and safety•Education and wellbeing•Family and peer relationships •Behaviour and risks•Subjective wellbeing

UK (along with the US) in the bottom third of rankings for five of six indicators.

UK bottom of the tables for family and peer relationships, and for subjective rankings of wellbeing.

Other Surveys

University of York Research looked at wellbeing in European Countries in 2006.

There were 29 included. 43 separate indicators, summarised in seven domains of child wellbeing.

Netherlands top overall, followed by Norway and Sweden.

Out of 29, UK came 24th. Only Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta worth.

Where did the UK Rank?On health (including indicators on infant mortality and birth weight), the UK scores 24th;

On subjective wellbeing (including indicators on how children feel about their lives and health), the UK scores 21st;

On children’s relationships (including indicators on how easy children say they find it to talk to their parents and get on with their classmates) the UK scores 15th;

On material resources (including indicators on child poverty), the UK scores 24th;

On behaviour and risk (including indicators on violence and risk behaviour), the UK scores 18th;

On education (including indicators on achievement and youth inactivity), the UK scores 22nd;

On housing and environment (including indicators on overcrowding and housing problems), the UK scores 17th.

Why are other children happier?

A relationship exists between economic strain (measured by access to necessities) and overall wellbeing: in general terms the greater the strain, the worse the child wellbeing.

A relationship exists between lower inequality and higher wellbeing. More equal societies, such in Scandinavian countries, tend to do better on child wellbeing than less equal societies such as in Eastern Europe or the UK.

The researchers compared wellbeing to the proportion of surveyed children living in lone or step parent families and found no association between this and child wellbeing.

Are we failing our Children?

So much being done in education to protect children.

Children’s Act 2004, put Every Child Matter’s agenda into legislation.

Far more holistic approach to children’s education.

Keeping child at the heart of the curriculum.

Stronger links made between stakeholders.

Well-being and education

Seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Risk is vital to learning and development, but we also live in a society that is risk-averse.

happiness and pleasure are parts of well- being, but so too are challenge, meaning and purposefulness.

The feeling of accomplishing a difficult task, or doing something new and invigorating, perhaps even frightening - are contributing factors in well-being

Are the schools helping?

New Economics Foundation found that children’s overall sense of well-being at school is seriously compromised, particularly at secondary school, by focus on exam results and performance according to targets.

Found children needed to “have their say”, more creativity and more explicit promotion of “individual and societal well-being both now, and in the future”

A focus on testing, they maintain, has harmed both learners and teachers. Simply training the focus on future employability skills, moreover, neglects children’s actual needs in the present: it diverts the importance of a meaningful education into the adult world.

Health and SafetyTim Gill suggests that the stranglehold of H&S and associated risk aversion policies, in particular the effects these have on outdoor learning experiences, has impoverished children’s access to extra- curricular activity. To different extents, it has also restricted particular activities in subjects such as art, science, and sports

Michael Fielding has suggested that some schools in deprived urban areas tend to downplay intellectual challenge in favour of offering a safe, secure and caring atmosphere for children, while other, more high-performing schools over emphasise direct teacher instruction (‘teaching to the test’) in order to ensure maximum possible exam success

So What Can Schools Do?

Britain’s ‘Toxic Childhood’

Children are attacked from both sides.

Not just from what they see on tv and how the world is presented to them through the media.

It’s also about them – how are they portrayed by the media?

The Media

Childhood is ‘constructed’ in certain ways at certain times.

Recent critics have identified how media imagery and news coverage of children either constructs them as innocents or demonic monsters!

Researchers point out how we are constantly exposed to images of harmonious childhood innocence alongside “a terrifying generation of murderous, morally blank wolf-children, indulged one minute and brutalised the next”

National Consumer Council, 2007

paints a particularly grim picture of well-being in relation to children’s exposure to the commercial world and material culture through media, as well as of the effects of socio-economic context and the impact of family relationships.

it suggests that amongst children in less affluent areas of the country, watching television or using a computer often seems to take the place of family-oriented activities such as eating dinner together.

As a consequence, the authors suggest, children from less affluent areas and families tend to be exposed to more consumer values and are more likely to develop materialistic attitudes and self-beliefs.

In short, the NCC research finds that commercial media and poverty are damaging influences especially on children’s self-esteem and relationships with their parents.

What needs to be dealt with, the authors argue, is a corrosive triangle of media, poverty and family life, from the centre of which children are at risk of developing a very narrow sense of their own well-being as a condition of material prosperity.

What do Children Face from the media?

Exposure to violence brutal, gratuitous and graphic.

Exposure to early sexualisation which could lead to sexual exploitation.

The inability to recognise the impact actions have on each other.

Stereotyping gender roles.

Skewed beliefs of ‘success’.

What can be done?

Training in emotional intelligence

Media awareness

Self-esteem

• Self-confidence.

Conclusions - Wellbeing Matters…

• Wellbeing is multi-dimensional and encompasses 3 dimensions of social being: the material, the relational and the mental.

• It focuses on the attainment of positive states (wellbeing, social inclusion) rather than solely on the improving negative states (poverty/exclusion).

• In attaining wellbeing, young people can achieve, consciously and sub-consciously, effective participation in social, economic and political processes.

• Apart from the moral duty we have to protect children, children with good mental health become functioning members of a society which allows us all to achieve a better state of well-being.