Today’s Education in the Media blog looks ahead to World Mental Health Day, which takes place on Wednesday, 10 October, and the work the government is doing to support children and young people’s mental health.
World Mental Health Day
The Guardian has published an article today, including comments from Universities Minister Sam Gyimah, looking at the issue of student mental health following a number of suicides.
In the piece the minister makes clear that he wants all universities to ask students when they enrol for their permission to contact a parent or other trusted person if they are facing a mental health crisis. This is something Bristol University is already piloting to help tackle this issue - 94% of their students have opted into the new system. The minister held a summit in the summer to look at ways to improve student mental health and wellbeing provision in higher education. A new mental health charter, led by Student Minds, is being developed to help raise the standard of provision that is on offer by universities.
This work is part of wider changes from the Department for Education to support all children and young people.
At the heart of that ambition to promote good mental health, is the new Relationship, Sex and Health Education curriculum. This curriculum will be mandated from 2020 and will seek to promote strong mental and physical health understanding among children.
We are also spending £1.4 billion to transform mental health services for children and young people and are on track to ensure 70,000 more children per year have specialist mental health care by 2020/21.
Last month we published the Government’s response to our Green Paper on Children and Young People’s Mental Health. The key proposals put forward in the Green Paper which the Government will now implement include a mental health staff lead in every school and colleges.
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