Suicide Prevention and the National Curriculum

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer, and to follow the many thoughtful, heartfelt and, in some cases, difficult speeches. I pay tribute to the families who are in the Public Gallery for their powerful campaign, and to 3 Dads Walking for all its work to raise awareness. My constituency of Barnsley East has the highest number of children, adolescents and young adults admitted to hospital for self-harm in Yorkshire and the Humber. For every 100,000 young people, 638 are admitted—almost one and a half times the national average.

Child and adolescent mental health services are at breaking point. Wait times for treatment are months and sometimes years, and local mental health charities simply cannot get the funding required to treat the people who are falling through the gaps of NHS treatment. A number of local charities are working hard with young people. Hey!, which came to Parliament last year to meet the health Minister, and the Samaritans support young people experiencing suicidal thoughts across Barnsley.

My office is regularly contacted by desperate parents who are not sure how to help their children through mental health crises and are terrified that self-harm will progress to suicide. Last year, a mother contacted me about her child, who had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and had a very low mood, including suicidal thoughts. After they waited a year for treatment, it was delayed further as there was a debate about where it should take place. Because his school was in Rotherham, he was told that he must have his treatment there, despite the fact that he lived in Barnsley. That resulted in him being removed from his waiting list and placed on another one, which had a wait time of another 12 months. His mother was desperate and terrified that a longer wait for her son’s treatment could lead to his mental health deteriorating to the lowest point possible. Following an intervention from my office, a decision was made to start his treatment in Rotherham, but it should not have taken that.

The process may seem overly bureaucratic, but it is driven by low budgets and an inability to manage waiting lists when demand outstrips the available services by a huge margin. The mum says her son is doing much better since starting treatment, which of course is very welcome news, but it is unacceptable that, due to a lengthy waiting list, he was allowed to sink so low for so long before he was given the help he needed.

Another of my constituents was suffering from depression and severe anxiety. She missed a lot of school and occasionally self-harmed. She had to wait more than six months for an appointment with CAMHS, during which time her schoolwork suffered and she was put into lower sets for key subjects. Following her initial appointment, she had to wait a further three months to start treatment. At the time, she was studying for her GCSEs—a vital time in any young person’s life, when life chances can easily be decreased due to a lack of timely and effective treatment.

Those are just two examples of the many people who have been in touch, and sadly they are not unusual. The Government need an urgent plan to look at and deal with this crisis. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell): this will be the most important debate that the Minister takes part in.

Teaching children and young people about good mental health and improving their resilience from a young age will be hugely beneficial in helping them to grow up and be aware of their feelings and the pressures that surround them. Life for the average teenager has changed beyond recognition in the past generation with the advent of social media, and of course there are other pressures at home, such as a lack of money and poverty. We must keep up with the changes if we are to give young people the best chances and skills to navigate the extra pressures that they face today.

However, if we are to give schools and teachers that extra responsibility of support, there must be a plan of action to accompany it. The answer to the mental health crisis is not to give teachers and support staff more work. As a former state school teacher, I know that staff are already struggling to find resources for the same, and in some cases less, pay. We need a wide-ranging approach. A review of the RSHE curriculum must take on board experts’ views about how to add worthwhile, appropriate contact to the school syllabus in a way that has a positive and educational impact on all young people.

As someone who has taught RSHE in school, I see the benefits and would welcome the change. Adding suicide prevention to the school curriculum would be an important step in the right direction. We must learn the lessons from this mental health crisis and use all possible means to safely equip the next generation of children as they navigate their way towards adulthood.