Does a child's mental health really improve if you take them out of school?

P.s. I do know of parents that have home-schooled with other parents sharing the load, and their kids have done really well.

I think it's important to have structure and school can provide that.

I also know that the longer a child doesn't go to school the more alienated they become and the harder it is to go back. Friendships are really important.

Please DM me if you want some personal advice, I can't give too much information on here as it'll be outing.

we are on the waiting list for EHCP

EHCPs don’t have waiting lists. Has an EHCNA been made? If so, what week are you on?

In the meantime, if DD is unable to attend school, the LA must ensure she still receives a suitable full-time education.

I’m the parent of an EBSA and was a secondary teacher for 25 years.

Schools now are horrific in terms of pressure and overload. Constant targets, petty rules, endless work load. Gove changed all the requirements and GCSE’s are much much harder ( stupidly harder). There’s no coursework to ease the load and creative subjects were cut right back. This had a severe impact on student mental health.

My EBSA is ND. She couldn’t handle noise, change, shouty teachers, being asked questions etc. school broke her mental health. I think she would have been fine in schoolm20 years ago. It was a completely different environment.

Totally dependent on the individual child. I doubt there's enough data to show any proper evidence yet. It's definitely not 'abuse'. I don't think any kid will be 100% happy either at home or at school, it's about balancing the pros and cons of each depending on their situation. if DC is generally happy once there, I'd be inclined to stick with school

I can only speak from experience. My dd now 16 is ND. Struggled massively as soon as she hit secondary school age. Her mental health was terrible and she did end up in a mental health facility for a short while (just giving context of how severe). We took her out of her mainstream school,plus school didn't feel they could support her at that time. She was home schooled for 18 months.

At first her mental health improved due to the stress of attending school being removed. But then dipped again as she felt lonely and isolated with no friends. There aren't many home school meet ups here. So I found her a place in an alternative provision school for children with an ASD diagnosis. The school is very small with around 9 pupils per class. Lots of support. And she's thrived. Especially being with other children like herself.

Possibly Dr Lucy Foulkes - Oxford Univ, doing research on adolescent mental health. Have listened to her talk and she has some books about mental health and how we help teens navigate anxiety.

On another note, the existence of the special school system is in itself an acceptance that mainstream education is not suitable for all DC's.

One of the main areas for which an EHCP can be issued is social emotional and mental health needs and there are plenty of special schools with that focus.

www.cambiangroup.com/specialist-education/our-schools/semh-schools/

So for those DCs at least they are better off out of (mainstream) school.

There is some speculation not yet backed up be research that the whole zero tolerance/isolation for forgetting your pencil is causing stress and adding to MH problems with teens. No quantitative research as yet although some interesting case studies.

This is a very good point - we were actually very happy on the whole as a family during lockdown (and I’d quite happily go back sometimes!) but my son who struggles with going into school also really struggles with home learning (and it wasn’t because of the work that was set or because it was punitive or anything like that, it was the self-directed nature of it plus he ended up working for far longer and achieving less (probably ADHD). He may well be happier not going into school in some ways, but he wouldn’t achieve what he will achieve at school where everything is more structured and the pace is quicker. Therefore in the long run he won’t be happy.

@InvisibleDuck it was exactly that reasoning that led me to deregister DS.

Taking an unhappy child out of school is not a magical fix for mental health issues, but in a lot of cases, being out of school means the damage can begin to heal. Forcing them to keep going to school is compounding it.

Some children flourish in school. For others it's hellish. Just like there are work environments that some adults love but others would hate. Generally I say that if their mental health is poor enough that were they an adult they'd be signed off work? They shouldn't be in school if it's causing them distress. Show them the same care and compassion you'd have for someone older.

It might depend on the school. If it's one of the academies where there is a day in isolation if your shirt comes partly untucked, I can see how a lot of teens mental health would improve away from that environment. If its a more nurturing school environment then it might be different, being away from people etc

It depends on the child and their needs.

DS1 has complex needs, including complex MH conditions. He didn’t cope in school. He has had EOTAS via his EHCP for a number of years and it has definitely improved his MH.

But, some DC with mental health difficulties are better suited to being in (the right) school with all the support they require.

What support is the school providing? DD providing Does DD have an EHCP?

DS has been home educated for a year and is like a different child in terms of his mental health and anxiety levels (in a good way!).

I can only speak from our personal experience with DD and DS. DD was completely unable to cope in mainstream education, she was moved and supported with an EHCP to online school from home aged 12 where she finished education.

Had CAMHS done their job even adequately she would have received treatment years earlier and may not have got to the point of no return, but she managed to obtain GCSES and A levels and is currently attending University from home

DS has a similar group of conditions although not as severely as DD and managed to cope in school although his timetable was reduced during Covid due to his anxiety. He also passed A levels and is at the same University as his sister

While both have similar outcomes I do not think DD would be alive today had she not taken the alternative path, she was bullied and miserable and having suicidal ideation.

As parents we can only do our best with the information and resources we have, when DD fell apart there was no help guidance or support, we had to find a path forward ourselves.

Her first EHCP took 4.5 years to achieve but fortunately interim payment was put in place after we self funded her school place, our LA had never placed a student in online schooling before but by her final EHCP the committee agreed that it was the best way to educate her

It's going to depend entirely on the child and the school.

Being forced to be somewhere five days a week that fundamentally doesn't suit you is inevitably going to impact your MH. It's the same for adults and work.

I have absolutely no agenda in this one way or another. My daughter has ASD but was diagnosed at university, not school.

We had periods where we had a lot of difficulties with school refusal and frankly the meltdowns after school were horrendous from years fourteen to seventeen. We both suffered from the fallout.

BUT we struggled through these issues and despite them I think generally she was better off in school than out. Partly because the school was good academically and she was a good student so she enjoyed that aspect of it even though it caused her a lot of stress. Second, because she made a good group of friends. Thirdly because she thrived with the structure of school and was more disregulated outside of that.

I am not going to sugar coat it. It was very hard at times both on my daughter who was angry and exhausted a lot of the time, and myself as the person who dealt with her frustration and meltdowns. Being undiagnosed of course did not help. But she got very depressed at home and thrived on structure and the school was fairly small and traditional without bullying or discipline issues so she came through it ok in the end.

So my advice op is that you will not find the perfect solution. Just aim for the best imperfect one.

Edited to say: her depression at home was not because she didn’t prefer being at home. She is a homebody through and through. Her depression was mainly because of the lack of routine. She also missed her friends.

I did consider home schooling but I don’t personally feel up to the job as my dd is more intellectually capable than me and has had a superior education to mine, and also, I felt that it wouldn’t help our relationship.

Depends on the situation.

I worked in schools for 20 years.

My last school had large numbers of autistic children and children with adhd.

We had students whose MH needs were such that they needed to be taught in a 1:1 situation and with known adults only. Those students are not getting much from school.

We also had students who were horrendously bullied by other students. The school did a lot of work on inclusivity etc but for those students they absolutely would have been better off being somewhere where they weren't bullied.

Even with EHCPs students with ND are often taught in groups. We had a nurture group of students with EHCPs that had 13 in it. I can say without fear of doubt that all of those children would have done better academically being home schooled as the 1:1 situation would have been easier for them socially. However, academics are not everything and learning basic social skills is important as well.

So for me it would depend on why your DD is unhappy going into school. Is she being bullied? Is the work way too hard for her to access? Or is it that she is just a bit outside her comfort zone?

Depends what triggers them, if it is the school environment and their personality.

If you pull them out of school, then they are just plodding at home all day watching telly then no probably won't stop mental health and will get worse..

If they stop school which is the main trigger, then at home do activities that manage emotions/stress like sports, art ect group activities that are less intense then i can imagine they would get better and rebuild confidence.

Each child is different anyway regardless of Sen, so cope in different ways, learn in different ways. You are the only one to know what is best for your child. One might thrive with home education, another will be better placed at school.

I read a really good article on this by a clinical psychologist. Will try and find it. She said that whether in school or not the problem is that there's a lot more recognition of MH problems but very little support for them ie CAMHMs hard to access and treatment available is too limited and short term to really help. So children and young people are noticing their anxiety, depression etc but they are tending to avoid the things that cause it rather than being helped in a structured way to cope better. Just sending them back to the environment that causes the problem isn't helpful but avoiding it isn't helpful either.

@FlowersInAFlowerBed , I left that group for that reason .

Oh, I hate that.

One of mine has always gone to school and loves everything about it. I let that slip at a home Ed group I take my youngest to and I just get dirty looks and “jokes” about being her in prison if the older kids ask after my daughter (they run the groups in the school holidays so she comes along then).

In fact, when my daughter does come along in the school holidays, there are parents who discourage their home educated children from forming friendships with her because she goes to school. Absolutely mental.

I would say if autistic and struggling in school then highly likely to thrive out of school system that triggers most areas of autism unless adaptations are in place and the child is able to ‘cope’ ( suck up without reaction) much of the very stimulus that is either overwhelming or painful