Adolescent mental health in the UK

[PrincessOfPreschool]

I've been wondering about this for the last few days. Had some American friends visit and the education system there seems more relaxed, more rounded in terms of emphasis on sport, dance, art. Their Y13 is basically applying to uni's and going into school rarely. Then they go to Uni so they get this year sort of 'part time' to relax a bit. They have far far fewer exams, and we're shocked at our GCSEs and the amount of exams.

I wonder how much the education system contributes to adolescent mental health problems. I know 2 close friends/ family who have attempted suicide and my own son isn't in a good place mentally (though he's 20) and completely judges himself on his grades and compares himself based on them. Schools bang on about grades so much. Yes, the tougher of spirit may survive but there are very many more sensitive kids who are deeply affected.

What can we do?

Provide better senior schools - smaller, more personal, instead of huge faceless nameless sausage farms.

I went to a grammar of 460 pupils. There was massive pressure on us to get good grades (we all went to uni when only 15% of the population could go) but we all had supportive relationships with our teachers, who were working at a scale that they could spot people struggling and do something about it.

My ds is at a school of about the same size. Same pressure but good supportive relationships, and he's taking it in his stride.

Plus no stupid toilet / wrong trainers / isolation rooms rules. Children are at school, not in prison.

Having said that, no-one at our school carried a knife took drugs or dreamed of being famous as a school shooter. The worst was a sneaky cigarette behind the groundsman hut.

Teachers are under too much pressure and schools are too large. They need to be smaller, on a more human scale.

I think adolescent mental health in America is much worse than the UK. Just look at their school shootings - those guys are messed up!

US universities applications is not relax and worse if applying to Ivy universities. The all rounder profile means child to get into top universities need to do sport, music, debate, lead a club, etc to a high level ( for many years) plus SAT high score. Application is to as many universities and applications fees as DC can afford and have bandwidth. Each university applications are lots of paperwork and essays. So not one set of exam, UCAS and personal statements which save time and money. The university process would look at your GPA score which is your school test marks and grades for 2 years, so high pressure through the years with all your teachers.

Totally agree with @HawaiiWake - the system there creates many different demands and creates an even wider gap between the haves and have nots. Plus the costs of applications are crazy. Every system has its pros and cons. It might be tempting to look at your friends' experience as though it's better, but there's plenty of ways in which it isn't, and neither is the only factor in adolescent MH. I'm sorry about your son and hope he can get help to get past the grades and build his confidence in other ways. As soon as that phase is over, there's so much more to life and no one gives a shit about such stuff in the grand scheme.

Your friend’s experience is definitely an outlier in the states. Having been through their system (I moved to the UK after uni), the way they could mar the last year of high school seem easier is if they had fulfilled most of their graduating requirements in previous years. The thing that is different is the timetabling. Instead of taking classes with your own year group all the time, at the beginning of high school you are given a list of courses and a list of graduation requirements. You can then take these in any order aside from pre-requisites really. So an advanced student might skip English 1 in 9th grade and join English 2, which would mostly be 10th graders. But the school will only offer up to English 4, so in their last year they can choose the easy route (no English) or the hard route (take a uni level English class so you stay a year ahead when you get to uni, often available through a local uni or community college). We could take the sciences in any order as you did a year of each. Most people opted to do bio then chem then physics so you would have enough maths by the time you got to physics but not everyone did, so I had a student in their last year in my bio class in the first year. That sort of timetabling means you can get to the last year and not need every hour of the day to graduate, but doing that and not using the ‘extra’ time to do things that will get you either a uni place or a job is really rare IME. But there is not a lot of consistency across the states when it comes to education so I’m sure their experience isn’t unheard of. It’s just also not the norm.

Teaching in the UK, the biggest difference to me was how early British students concentrate on their chosen subjects. In the states, we don’t even do this until partway through uni. Most degrees are set out as a four year plan (though you can set your own timetable to go for three or five etc) and the first two years still include the entire cross curricular set of subjects. We choose a major and a minor subject and put together they are still only half of the required courses. Everyone still has to do maths, science, English, arts, comp sci, history or geography etc. Meanwhile it’s been years since the British cohort have had to cover the whole curriculum. I’ve always felt there’s not a universal best in either system but rather some personalities work best with the early focus and others have no idea what they want to do yet and it’s more sensible to keep all the subjects going.

Teen mental health is definitely not better across the board in the US than the UK and it has been poor there for a very long time. I went to a very small school and lost multiple classmates to their own mental struggles. I don’t know anyone from home who didn’t have a similar experience. There was a huge amount of pressure in US schooling - it just looked different. We didn’t have national exams like GCSEs but we had final exams set by the teacher each year, and one teacher could wreck your GPA. It was quite common to drop a class halfway through the year because you knew you couldn’t pass the test at the end with a high enough score to keep your uni offer, even if doing just okay in a reallllly tough class would have been a better learning experience.

In terms of change and what can be done, I do wish every school could have a full time school counsellor for students to see. Ours was an absolute lifeline. A reliable and real person who can listen and advise and be trusted really does make a big difference in times of high stress.

I have no idea about America but there’s a lot wrong/going the wrong way here.

I think the education system and its lack of resources is part of it, but tonnes of it is the internet/screens/social media.

I’ve heard similar from a family member who has moved to the US (re primary aged education). In my experience the academic pressure starts early hers (year 5/6). Adolescent mental health is multifaceted and school pressure, crowded classrooms, stressed teachers, social media etc seem to make it an uphill struggle.

Thanks all. Seems like it may be a bit 'grass is greener' and actually not much different in the US, just different kinds of pressure.

I do feel like when I was growing up education was far less pressured and learning was more fun. I know screens, social media etc have had an effect, but the kids I know with issues are not really into that stuff.

@Meadowfinch Some good points here. I too went to a similar sized grammar school with similar results. However they exist in an ivory tower type bubble and the majority of their cohort do not have additional needs or challenging behaviours and come from economically stable backgrounds.
There's also the issue of breadth of curriculum. Our catchment school was a similar sized comprehensive and could not offer anything beyond a small and standard range of subjects at GCSE. DDs both went to a huge faith secondary school and there was a fantastic range of GCSEs and A levels. DD1 currently loving a placement year in industry before going back to her niche degree, partly as a result of doing an unusual GCSE and A level. So you might sacrifice specialist teachers if the school is small.