Researchers have cautioned that teachers are missing all hints of poor mental health among pupils by handling behavioural issues with discipline and punishment.<\/p>\n
A lack of suitable mental health training means that teachers repeatedly fail to spot psychological distress and mistake it for simple bad behaviour, as found by a new report.<\/p>\n
Researchers at the Centre for Mental Health also said that in their state-of-the-nation study on mental health establishment in schools that an untreated, poorly behaved child will cost \u00a33,000 a year on average in a school.<\/p>\n
Andy Bell, Deputy Chief Executive at the Centre, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cSchools are often seeing behaviour problems as a disciplinary problem rather than a mental health problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always a few in every classroom, but I\u2019m talking about children who regularly and persistently are behaving badly.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of just being a behaviour problem, it very often masks a serious\u00a0level of distress.”<\/p>\n
Of the one in 10 children \u2013 or one million at least \u2013 who suffer from mental health issues in the UK, only a quarter ever go on to receive professional help, according to the new report.<\/p>\n
Many teachers wish to spot children suffering from anxiety, depression or conduct disorder, but few have the time within their main roles as educators, or the initial training, said Mr Bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cSchools are recognising it as a problem, but they don\u2019t have the wherewithal to deal with this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeacher training still doesn\u2019t include healthy child development as standard. It\u2019s extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lorraine Khan, associate director for children and young people at the Centre, said: \u201cWaiting for a child’s mental health to deteriorate until it hits crisis point causes untold distress and damage to their lives, and carries a heavy social and economic cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to take action now to offer high quality help quickly to children and young people everywhere.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Researchers have cautioned that teachers are missing all hints of poor mental health among pupils by handling behavioural issues with discipline and punishment. A lack of suitable mental health training means that teachers repeatedly fail to spot psychological distress and mistake it for simple bad behaviour, as found by a new report. Researchers at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":14813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,44,37,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-health","category-local-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}