Mr. Mark Smyth:

It feeds into a couple of conversations we have had about anxiety and what are the contributors. There are indeed those higher level pieces about Covid-19 and Ukraine etc. However, for me working with teenagers, and it touches on what Mr. Ryan said, the main anxiety they have is relational: am I good enough, do I fit in, do I have friends, do I have family. They are the main things they worry about. Obviously bullying is one of those things that directly impedes that because the impact of bullying behaviour is “you are not good enough”. Many people already inherently have that sense of “I am not good enough” and bullying reinforces that. I think Dr. Morning is right about that age of 17 being the time when significant mental health challenges arise. What I see is similar to what Dr. Morning said on transitions. At 13 years old young people moving from a primary school where they are relatively well protected. There is one teacher and there is predictability. In secondary education young people have 11 teachers, different classrooms and they are the youngest again and the question is how to fit in. There are different rules and different expectations of what is good enough. We see the early impacts of exclusion, bullying and not fitting in at 13 years old later on when they get to 14, 15, 16 and 17 years old. It is coming back to those pieces. We need counselling supports when those things have happened but we also need to prevent them.

We have talked an awful lot about firefighting and responding when the impact has happened but we need to do our best to eliminate it as best we can, to identify it and not to be afraid to have conversations, for schools to feel empowered to have those conversations and not worry about how this will reflect on them as a school or as a teaching environment so that everybody can have open conversations. We need a bit of both. It is both preventative but also being supportive. It still comes back to relations and what Jigsaw says – I have quoted Jigsaw for many years – about the importance of one good adult. Much of the work I do is actually not just about what I do with that young person, it is who can I support around them, who is the adult who can be there on Friday at 8 p.m. when the young person feels lonely because nobody has asked him or her out, or on Sunday evening before school. They are far more effective. If we support the families and carers about managing anxiety in the environment and in the moment when it happens we will have a far more effective approach than sitting with me for an hour in a room.