Please bear with me for this super long post and excuse me if I say anything that sounds wrong, my head is just in such a jumble today.
My daughter is year 9 in a private girls’ secondary school in central London. It's high achieving but not overly so IYSWIM.
Since mid-year 7 it has been a constant stream of mental health issues amongst her peer group. From eating disorders, self-harm, suicide ideation.
At first, I naively thought it was something that, while upsetting, had not directly affected her. But towards the middle of y8 I noticed her talking about poor mental health herself.
First- she started saying she thought she must have 'anxiety or ADHD or ASD'. This was based on a few moments of worry at school during exams, homework stress and finding herself occasionally losing focus. I assured her these were normal feelings and talked to the school about coping strategies and we agreed we would keep an eye.
That resolved pretty quickly, but soon she started refusing food and taking lots of selfies of her stomach and weighing herself. This lasted a few weeks and, again, we kept communication open about health and body image. She eats very well now and remains a healthy weight.
Then I found a note on her phone to herself recently saying she was self harming and 'it was the only thing that helped her feel calm'. I kept her home from school and we talked through it. She had some sharp scratches on her upper arm and said her friend had told her how to do it.
Here's where I might say something a bit controversial. During this talk, I felt like she was reading lines from a script about self harm, almost playing a role. I know that sounds awful and I didn't share this with her, and we took all the steps to make sure she felt supported. I would never, ever dismiss her feelings, but there's this niggling feeling that she's almost 'trying on' different mental health 'hats' to feel like she's a part of something.
She is very easily influenced by her peer group, especially the popular ones, and desperate to fit in.
She has not had another episode of self harm since and we spoke to the school, who were really helpful. But I'm just wondering, what's next?
I suppose what I am saying with all this, is that mental health seems to have become somewhat 'trendy' amongst her year group and it almost feels like a lot of the girls are doing it to feel l connected. I'd estimate by now that around half of the class have self harmed.
I don't doubt that there are many girls suffering, but I feel there is also a huge contagion effect going on. They also seem far less prepared than my generation to accept that it's normal to feel ugly, unmotivated, sad, anxious etc and that these feelings tend to pass. Instead they pathologise them immediately and convince themselves they can't cope and there is something wrong with them. It's frightening.
I'm considering taking her out of the school, but a local psychologist I spoke to about this told me she was seeing similar cases in girls across London schools, private and state, single sex and mixed. She says I'd be right to remove her from any immediate harm, but long-term, the same issues would likely reappear at any school and it's a case of building resilience and self-assurance.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
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