The Department for Education has recently published its State of the Nation research report on children’s and young people’s wellbeing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report found young people’s wellbeing dipped in 2020 but had closely recovered to pre-pandemic levels by 2021, however, children’s anxiety levels seem to have risen. Similarly the numbers of young people reporting low happiness levels has also increased in recent years and in older children (17-19 year olds) rates of self harm and eating problems were higher.
The report on children and young people’s wellbeing fron The Department for Education states, “While annual trends indicated that children and young people’s subjective happiness and life satisfaction appears to have recovered to prepandemic levels by 2022 (The Children’s Society, 2022), some measures, such as anxiousness among primary and secondary age pupils (DfE, 2022e), and loneliness (DfE, 2022g) and mental health among older young people (NHS Digital, 2022b), may have worsened further. However, it is not clear from these data why this might be the case.”
Parent Conference on ‘Understanding Anxiety’
In this regard in, we were grateful to be joined by Sarie Taylor in January for both staff inset training and her Parent Conference on ‘Understanding Anxiety’. She outlined how we work as humans and where our anxious thoughts come from. Many parents commented on how useful the session was and how engaging Sarie is, relating common anxious feelings to specific examples in her own life too. She talked about strategies that could be used to help young people work through their thoughts and feelings of being anxious. One example she gave was trying to avoid getting into detail about worries just before bedtime, since often any anxious thoughts are exacerbated by being tired and after a good sleep problems seem less significant.
We continue to support our pupils in their mental health and wellbeing through PSMEE lessons and tutor mentoring. The Prep also enjoyed many activities in Children’s Mental Health Week. One fantastic idea mentioned in the Prep newsletter before half term came from Teresa in Prep 5 who suggested having an ‘unplug’ day where we unplug ourselves from our devices. See the St. Bede’s blog for a ‘phone park’ template to store your phones.
As Saint Ignatius said, ‘It is not the soul alone that should be healthy; if the mind is healthy in a healthy body, all will be healthy and much better prepared to give God greater service.’