Mental health and education: Are Kiwi kids being given the right tools?

It is estimated that nearly half of all New Zealanders will live with mental illness and/or addiction at some point during their lifetime. Photo / Getty Images

More and more Kiwi adults are seeking help for mental health issues, so does more need to be done at school to prepare kids for the struggles they may face?

The 2018 monitoring and advocacy report of the Mental Health Commissioner said it was estimated that nearly half of New Zealanders will live with mental illness and/or addiction at some point during their lifetime.

Studies suggest an even higher lifetime prevalence: for example, in the Dunedin longitudinal study, 83 per cent of the cohort had experienced mental illness and/or addiction by age 38. One-in-five New Zealanders live with mental illness and/or addiction each year.

Ministry of Education acting deputy secretary curriculum Pauline Cleaver told the Taupō & Tūrangi Herald children and young people's mental health and wellbeing is a top priority.

"This is reflected in the Education and Training Act 2020 and in the Ministry's key strategic documents, such as the Statement of National Education and Learning Priorities. We know education plays a crucial role in supporting students' mental health and wellbeing."

She says it is important to note that mental health education contributes to supporting learners and their wellbeing, rather than solving or fixing any mental health challenges or illness faced by young people.

"Mental health education is learning 'about health' not 'for health'. Teachers and kaiako are not health professionals."

Mental health education begins early and is built up over time. It is one of the seven key areas in the Health and Physical Education (HPE) learning area of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC).

"We are developing two curriculum guidance documents to provide further clarity and support schools to develop teaching and learning programmes for mental health. These will be released later this year," Pauline says.

The NZC is periodically refreshed to ensure that it continues to meet learners' needs. The last two curriculum refreshes took place in 1999 and 2007 and mental health education was refreshed in line with current best practice at the time.

The NZC is currently being refreshed, in a phased approach, over five years. The HPE learning area, where mental health sits, is planned for refresh in 2024.

"We will ensure all learners' needs are considered in this refresh and will consult widely on proposed changes."

Pauline says while the overall impact of Covid-19 on wellbeing has not been as damaging as expected, for many young people the last two years have been difficult and disorienting.

"In response, we announced a wellbeing package in 2020 to support schools and whānau to better manage learner wellbeing issues throughout this time."

The 2020 $199 million Wellbeing Budget is to support mental health education in schools. This budget gives primary and secondary students greater access to guidance counsellors and counselling support services and increases large secondary schools' guidance staffing entitlements.

From term two 2021, curriculum leads (wellbeing) began in schools, offering frontline support for kura, schools, early learning services and ngā kōhanga reo to support local curriculum design and promote the teaching about mental health and healthy relationships.

Tūrangi's Te Kura o Hirangi principal Henarata Ham says although mental health education is not a specific subject taught at school, it is something all staff at the kura are aware of and ready to help tamariki with.

"Teachers are very, very aware and know our students really well.

"They can identify the signs when a child needs support or when a family needs support. We just call it manākitanga [to extend aroha, love and compassion to others]."

Henarata says she and the staff at the school are "very aware" that there are higher levels of anxiety, particularly in relation to Covid-19 and isolation.

"There are other circumstances also that impact on mental health and wellbeing. We do discuss cases of anxiety among families or with individual children. In saying that, before this latest onslaught of Covid, only one child out of about 240 kids didn't come back after the holidays because of anxiety about the situation."

She says teaching about mental wellbeing "is a huge area".

"Our approach is teaching kids to look out for each other. Often, particularly with our secondary children, it's friends who notice and tell a grown-up - then we take it from there.

"It's knowing what the signs are, if it's something nanny and koro can't deal with, and we need professional help, then we know where to go. There are some kids who teeter, they could fall either way, and we actually need professionals to help with them."

Preparing children to take on the adult world is a challenge.

"We've had kids come back to us and tell us the world is hard out there. I still don't think we do that well enough yet because it's a very different world out there. Employment is not guaranteed, we try to give them the best tools but the way of the world now is it's not so easy to get instant employment.

"There are only so many training programmes you can do and even university is not so appealing because kids often need to make money for their families. It is tough.

"We rely on teachers being tuned into how each of the kids operates and we're fortunate because we have most of them for 12 years. Our main source of information is the other kids and them feeling safe enough to talk to a grown-up."