Childhood bullying damages adult life

October is World Mental Health Month with today being specially recognised as World Mental Health day by the world health organisation. Today is the day for those involved in working on mental health issues to talk about their work, and what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people worldwide.  This year the emphasis is on young people and mental health in a changing world.

Childhood and adolescence is an important time for social and emotional development.  Having good mental and physical health supports young people in managing the challenges they encounter during their development. Resilient leaders, teachers and support staff enable young people to thrive, to manage pressures and to find constructive ways through adversity.

The focus is on young people who are being bullied, including cyberbullying, suffering the effects of trauma, gender identity and mental wellbeing, suicide and major mental illness in young children, such as major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.   The World Federation of Mental Wellbeing has produced a document that is aimed at offering loads of advice to young people in an effort to reduce the effects of mental health throughout the rest of their lives. For staff to provide the best possible support to young people it is important to create a workplace culture that teachers and others want to work and by tackling the stigma of mental health. One in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their life, so it makes absolute sense to take steps to promote positive mental health. ACAS have developed an effective framework for employers, employees and line managers. Click this link to open the PDF.

Recently a report was published on the development of a whole school mental health framework. The study focused on effective programmes on promoting mental health in schools or on children with mental health problems.  Read more about the mental health framework for schools.

A positive school environment can promote good mental health in students and staff consequently good mental health of both students and staff can promote academic performance in students, reduce staff absenteeism and enable teams/individuals to flourish.  Bullying and feelings of not being accepted by peers and teachers contributes to poor mental health in students.

Mental health should be a feature of all school health promotion initiatives for students and staff. This will lay the foundations for mental health for life if established in the early years and, if the school approached the subject as one, it will lead to a togetherness and provide a healthy school environment for everyone.

At BIRCH-HR we are happy to advise on management policies and identifying HR strategies for helping staff well-being in this delicate area.  This includes establishing a staff committee to focus on implementing key well-being initiatives and ideas for reducing workload.