The Problem with Mental Health Awareness in Schools
Reading Resilience Network ‘Findings Solutions to Key Mental Health Challenges’ Series Workshop 4, In collaboration with the Well-being and Resilience in Mental Health Group (WARM)
About this event:
Workshop 4 was held on Thursday 11th May 2023 from 12 to 1 pm at the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences (Harry Pitts Building, Room no.G79) and was attended Online via MS Teams.
About the talk:
In recent years, there have been extensive efforts in secondary schools to prevent, treat and raise awareness about adolescent mental health problems. For some adolescents, these efforts are essential and will lead to a reduction in clinical symptoms. But it is also vital to assess whether, for others, the current approach might be causing harm. A growing body of quantitative research indicates that some aspects of school-based mental health interventions do indeed increase distress or clinical symptoms, and qualitative work indicates that this may be partly due to the intervention itself. In this talk, I will argue that we need to more carefully measure and understand harm from school interventions. We should be very cautious about the idea that providing a mental health intervention in a school is necessarily better than not providing one at all
About the speaker:
Dr Lucy Foulkes is an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford. She leads research into mental health and social development in adolescence, with a particular focus on the possible negative consequences of increased public mental health awareness. She is currently a Prudence Trust Research Fellow, investigating how school-based mental health interventions may be causing adolescents harm. Her first book, What Mental Illness Really Is (…and what it isn’t), was published in 2021. She is currently writing her second book, about adolescent development, due for publication in autumn 2024.
Followed by Q&A, Chaired by Prof. Stella Chan, University of Reading.
You can watch the talks below: