U nailed it with the SNA argument @Colm. Well done

Class sizes are getting bigger, guidance counsellors losing jobs, teachers taking on three or more subjects. Sad not much help will come from the government apart from a piece of paper!

Lorna
What sort of training should these Counsellors have and where should it be obtained. This is an issue in Ireland that causes more loss of life than Road Traffic Accidents ever did and yet as a Society we largely pay but lip service to the idea of confronting it.
We also eulogise those who have taken their own lives in such a way that others could potentially suggest that we have glamourised something that is anything but wrong and deeply unacceptable as a means of dealing with issues.
The Department of Education is the wrong Body to be put in charge of any preventative Programme and instead we need the experts from the Psychological and Psychiatric Services to devise Community based learning that confronts this head on. People like Doctor John Connolly of Castlebar need to be engaged with International experts to guide us on the complexity of dealing with this Public Health Crisis.
But let’s not do any of this but in the Home , in our Communities and in the Streets and on Line as a multi faceted approach to halting this terrible waste of life.

It needs to be done properly in schools and also in the community with a whole community approach to positive youth mental health – vital that young people are involved in setting this up themselves (see http://www.jigsaw.ie).

For the work in schools there are any number of blue-prints – you are not just tackling suicide – you are facilitating young people on an ongoing basis to learn how to look after their own mental health and also to know how they can connect up to different kinds of help. Young people know what they need and what they say they want is to learn in school how they can look after their own mental health. A high majority of parents and teachers in surveys have also said they want this. There is no reason whatsoever that schools cannot deliver this kind of training – indeed the revised Senior Cycle that is currently being drafted has a considerable percentage of time spent on positive mental health. Clearly there would need to be an investment in training and also fully qualified outside people delivering this training in schools (as is currently the case with a number of organisations who can deliver evidence-based programmes in schools, but the schools themselves have to be interested first and get the people in themselves – and pay for it).

Young people say strongly that they also want to learn how they can recognise if their friends are down or suicidal and help them by talking to them and steering them towards support – examples of this kind of training could be a modified version of safeTALK, a worldwide half-day training where you learn how to recognise the signs that a person may be suicidal, ask them the question and connect them up to the help they need – this training is allowed to be given from age 16 up in some countries, but in Ireland you have to be 18.

Peer support is recognised as vital in many countries as most young people in research say that they would talk to a friend first if they were down or suicidal and would not be at all likely to talk to a teacher or a counsellor – though they would like to be able to go to a counsellor themselves without their parents’ permission from age 16. However much we think we would prefer them to go to a counsellor or teacher, we absolutely must have peer support in place as a first step for the many who do not. It is a common thing if you have teenagers to hear them talk about so and so who is really depressed, a bit crazy at the moment and even keeps saying they want to kill themselves. Luckily there are many of these peer support programmes in place in schools in different countries that work very well, so we would not be re-inventing the wheel.

So what do we need now? The real political will and some funding…

See My World survey on youth mental health that shows what a large number of Irish adolescents said about their mental health – what stresses and hurts them – and what they need http://www.headstrong.ie/sites/default/files/My%20World%20Survey%202012%20Online.pdf
See report of suicide seminar here (scroll down on page) where a large group of Transition Year students said they wanted to get training in school on how to look after their own mental health and that of their peers.

See here for info about a brilliant Be Well Youth Mental Health Seminar run by young people in Bray (with support) – this is the kind of work we need to be doing.

Sorry those links: http://www.brayareapartnership.ie/2012/10/be-well-youth-mental-health-seminar/
http://www.brayareapartnership.ie/publications/ (scroll down for report)

Totally agree

Parents can only do so much, really. While ask.fm gets a bad reputation, it’s really just a service that people use like facebook. There are far too many ways to bully someone online and off. It’s the duty of wider society, not just individual parents, to tackle this.

I agree it is a problem for society but little steps and all that.

Also those sites are nothing facebook. It’s an anonymous site that really has no rules. Sign up – abuse – leave. What service does that really provide?

I’m completely against censorship on the internet but when it comes to teenagers and children the parents must be the censor.

The point is that you can’t really censor young people on the internet because they will find a way – you just won’t know about it. Much better to do the emotional work with them about how to be ‘bully proof’ and do facilitated group work also in schools about what it feels like, how bystanders can play a role in intervening, what is going on for the people who bully (often adolescents will bully and be bullied at different times in their lives). In other words, if something is going on for a group of people and individuals, more rules and punishments that ignores any role for the people themselves to be involved in tackling their own problems simply will not work.

Also sadly bullying and teen suicide were a problem before the internet. The problem now is we can’t put a face on the bullies. Rather than looking for someone to blame in the aftermath we should be looking to prevent the bullying in the first place.

Michelle, your post reads to me a bit like when people suggest victims be “rape proof” instead of dealing with the social attitudes that trivialise rape in the first place.

It’s the same with bullying. It’s the bullying that needs to be tackled first and foremost, then a good support network second. Everything else, while perhaps important, comes after that.

But Leigh, all of the approaches that really work do have to deal with everybody involved and tackle the root causes of bullying, alongside having a zero tolerance approach to bullying that is clearly understood by all.

We do want something that is evidence-based and proven to work, and that is preventative, so that less bullying situations happen in the first place don’t we?

I suppose I was referring to child psychologist David Coleman’s recent TV series on bullying called ‘Bullyproof’ where he worked with the victims of bullying to help them to become more ‘bullyproof’ – that is not saying at all that it is their fault they were bullied.

And whether we like it or not, the same young people can be bully and bullied at different stages. He did group work with young people in schools, and work with individuals on how to stand up to bullying (become more ‘bully proof’), but he also worked with groups of young people on the whole dynamics – who stands by and sees it and is too scared to do anything in case they get targeted too, what could they do to be stronger and stand up for people being bullied (if everybody stood up to bullies on behalf of those being bullied, the bullies could not continue). He also brought a young man who had been a bully into talk with a group of teenagers in a youth club and explain why he did it and what they could do to stop it…

The whole point is that if the Government really want to make a difference, they only have to put the resources into it and get the experts in to devise an approach that will actually work based on the thousands of successful anti-bullying programmes that have been run in schools around the world. They just have to DO IT!

I agree Leigh
As a councelor I had a call out for a 9 year old only last week and as you said it was a symptom of a whole family dissfuction all which had to be addressed
sad but true,

*suicide not sucrose – apologies for autocorrect

So can i ask you,as a school principal..what programmes do you run in relation to emotional awareness learning for your students? Mental health/social and emotional health programmes?anti bullying guidelines?countering homophobic bullying?is it a whole school approach to these issues or is it allocated to the usual guidance counsellor/sphe department?are you proactive about seeking support in these areas for your teachers and students?do you insist that all your teachers upskill and attend courses relating to these areas?

@EP primary school, we operate SPHE curriculum in school which is underpinned mainly by walk tall (substance misuse), RSE (relationship and sexuality)& Stay Safe (child abuse prevention programme) each year we operate a water safety,fire safety&road safety programme in school at opportune times,each class does one anti bullying lesson a term (4 per school year) while we have a very strict anti bullying policy and discipline policy,all of these lessons, initiatives are based people showing respect,takin personal responsibility,showing tolerance and understanding and being willing to resolve conflict!my own experience of cases of bullying that I’ve come across is that when parents intervene in a positive way then the problem is solved but when responsibility is shirked and the issue blown out of proportion the problem,gets greater!Bullying went on when we were young,back then we had better coping strategies, no mobile phones, loads of homework and household chores, football training,no computers and when we misbehaved at school and got a clip from the master we daren’t tell our parents,all of these values are a thing of the past,it’s gone too much other way in my opinion,we need to bring back a bit of toughness in dealing with these situations,nobody afraid of consequences anymore,we do plenty for to combat cyber bullying in my school,the local JLO gave a good talk last week, website has plenty of info for parents, etc on downloads section http://www.ballyconnellmixed.ie check it out!

@EP primary school, we operate SPHE curriculum in school which is underpinned mainly by walk tall (substance misuse), RSE (relationship and sexuality)& Stay Safe (child abuse prevention programme) each year we operate a water safety,fire safety&road safety programme in school at opportune times,each class does one anti bullying lesson a term (4 per school year) while we have a very strict anti bullying policy and discipline policy,all of these lessons, initiatives are based people showing respect,takin personal responsibility,showing tolerance and understanding and being willing to resolve conflict!my own experience of cases of bullying that I’ve come across is that when parents intervene in a positive way then the problem is solved but when responsibility is shirked and the issue blown out of proportion the problem,gets greater!Bullying went on when we were young,back then we had better coping strategies, no mobile phones, loads of homework and household chores, football training,no computers and when we misbehaved at school and got a clip from the master we daren’t tell our parents,all of these values are a thing of the past,it’s gone too much other way in my opinion,we need to bring back a bit of toughness in dealing with these situations,nobody afraid of consequences anymore,we do plenty for to combat cyber bullying in my school,the local JLO gave a good talk last week, website has plenty of info for parents, etc on downloads section http://www.ballyconnellmixed.ie check it out

Terence completely agree. As young people do not have the emotional maturity why are they been given free access without being monitored. I know children as young as 10 with a smart phone and iPad. Just because they are popular they are not needed!! Got my own laptop when I was 21 and first smart phone at 24/25 before that it was Internet in our sitting room in front of older siblings and parents while watched and given internet time limits. not once did i get cyber bullied, no 10 year old needs a smart phone or a laptop/iPad, it feels like we are giving an opportunity to be bullied/bully! Back to basics not to be mean but to protect our young!

Terence I hope this is a joke and that you are not really a principal with the disrespectful way you talk about and stereotype young people.

What do you expect teachers to do about bad parenting exactly?

It is modelling of aggressive behaviour that is proven to lead to aggressive behaviour in children – also some children who have been bullied end up doing it themselves as a tactic not to be the victim again themselves, and there is a huge role played by others in groups who are friends of bullies but witness bullying and do nothing because they are afraid that the spotlight will turn onto them.

Yes parents are responsible for there children up to eighteen . But when something happens to the your children by that of a third party how the hell is that a parents fault . We can raise them love them protect them but it only takes a second for someone to destroy all you did for them . Stop blaming parents we are not all like your stereotypical parent .education is one way of trying to deal with these problems and or teachers are one of the best ways to get this out to our kids . They are the people they can confide in and look up to .

I think what people are getting at in relation to parenting is both the parents of the bully and the parents of the bullied….If every parent exercised proper controls over their child’s Internet access then this scourge wouldn’t exist!

Michelle I actually completely agree with you, I got bullied in school and when my mother went in about it the way it was handled was appalling they didn’t have an anti bullying policy until my mother demanded to see one. My siblings have also been badly bullied one of them was physically assaulted for 4 years every day and nothing was done until my mother pulled him from the school and this was approximately 8/10 years ago (not that long ago!!) when it comes to schools I don’t think the teachers have enough training to deal with these situations and what your proposing is only a good thing. My main feeling is to cut the faceless bullying and bring it back to not give someone the chance to bully online. I truly am disgusted at how people can treat another human being, even some of the way comments on this are sent, they are not nice at all and personally insulting and there’s no need. This generations young really have extreme pressures at growing up as it is with added forms of bullying that were not there before. I truly hope something is done as we are loosing too many young to suicide, my area has lost a scarily high amount. I hope your idea comes into play!!

So well put – it is the only thing that will work – children and young people spend most of their time in school and they bring their emotions along with them in the package with their brains and bodies. Emotional security, happiness, ease, good relationships within the school community, teachers who understand enough to support young people in their charge through such difficult stages like adolescence are proven to be vital to good outcomes and learning anyway. We need to be way way kinder to our young people – school could be a supportive and loving place for them, no matter what is going on in the rest of their lives – as things now stand adolescents find school the most stressful thing in their whole lives – see three measures (school, homework, exams) in chart on page 29 of this report: (http://www.headstrong.ie/sites/default/files/My%20World%20Survey%202012%20Online.pdf

You sound like someone who has dealt with this in the past and seems very clued in with kids . More of you needed in this world . Kids find it so hard to understand this cruel world we live in .

Are thumbs down from teachers perhaps?

I’m not a teacher but it’s the tone of the piece that strikes me as off. You act like teachers are constantly being handed opportunities to better educate themselves in these areas. They’re not.

Four anti bullying lessons a year is standard, you’re not a teacher obviously or you’d realise that there’s 11 subjects to be taught…anti bullying lessons take place and are reinforced…you cannot dedicate an entire SPHE programme to ant bullyingi…there are many more strands to it….one lesson per week over 37 weeks…so much more in relation to mental health than just anti bullying (decisions, peer pressure, self Esteem, values, personal qualities are also part of it as well as personal safety, drug awareness, sexual ed etc…. You’ve mentioned homophobic bullying on a number of occasions, that’s not an issue in primary sch in the main as far as I’m aware but maybe you know more….the tone of some of your responses would suggest that it’s an area of interest,have you contacted your local 2nd level school to offer any assistance? Stretched resources in these schools have opened up plenty of vacuums for volunteers…

Furthermore if you think about child protection guidelines, stay safe programme, RSE programmes and walk tall you’d realise that they all cater plenty for anti bullying….parents need to step up to the mark in these situations, many do but plenty don’t….I agree that it’s incumbent on boads of management to look out for the young and they do via their SPHE and child protection strategies, every sch by law must have an up to date child protection tigon strategy which is monitored strictly by the DLP, Anti bullying is monitored by parents and pupils as well as staff but there’s only so much that can be done….I ask you this…the people in charge of mental health and general health in this country, what are they doing?

Why do you assume im not a teacher? is it because i have issues with the apathy schools show in relation to dealing with issues outside their supposed remits? I have worked in the education sector for over a decade.. My role therein should really be of no consequence.. I never said the sphe prog should be dedicated entirely to anti bullying issues?i just said that the current course was lacking in effectiveness..i mentioned homophobic bullying as it was mentioned in a previous post by another reader. And i can assure you terrence that when twelve year olds come into second level using terms like “faggot” and “thats soo gay” as part of their everyday language, then homophobia is endemic at primary level too.

@michelle.. would you actually be surprised if he was a school principal? what did you expect?asking for the names of courses/online resources in the area of youth mental health… Spouting about the good ol days when children had respect and values.. Sorry to sound in anyway disrespectful, but it sounds about right to me.

How are they to inform and equip themselves? The waiting list for ASIST training is a mile long. Who will run it? The dept of education? At the moment BeLonG To are running homophobic bullying management courses for secondary school teachers. The organisation is too small and too underfunded to get to every school in Ireland but without support from the DoE to “inform and equip” the teachers what are they to do? You cannot simply give someone guidelines but not the requirements for implementing them and then wash your hands of the situation. It’s like hospitals providing manual handling training for hospital staff but not having sufficient staff to take the time to follow proper procedure or simply failing to provide the equipment they are taught about on the course in the first place.

To summarise the government has a greater responsibility than simply saying “Here’s what you should do.”.

EP you sound like you’re an educational psychologist. I fully agree that providing information is not enough. If you apply psychological theories of change, information is not enough to motivate behavioural change. Schools have to be asked what kind of support to need to actually change their behaviour in addressing children with social, emotional and behavioural needs. I imagine it would be something needs driven, specific to the school and practical.

Spot on Michelle, sadly those three things are right outside the box the oireachtas thinks in.

Absolutely right Stephanie – they know that in schools where most young people spend most of their time is the one place they can do this work and make a real difference. it would mean resources and investing in training. It is not rocket science and there are many evidence-based blueprints out there – they just do not want to spend the bloody money, which is really sad considering the situation. It is up to the department to devise what a whole school approach to emotional literacy would look like and to give schools the directives, resources, instructions and training to do it.

Sure terrence,check out a website called activelink for a start,usually good for lots of courses relating to young people and mental health… Prior to belongtos funding having taken a wallop they used to provide training for staff in relation to youth lgbt issues,but im sure you knew that..also the tci training can be quite useful when dealing with conflict situations and dealing with behavioural issues in schools,its a pretty hands on approach but useful nonetheless..also any of the websites like jigsaw or spunout are good for advertising courses and for uploading resources and practical info for school staff..

Nice one….will check them out!

Terence, try http://www.livingworks.org too. Your local HSE has a Suicide Prevention Officer for more ideas.

But there is an option shirley..teachers are obligated to report issues of that nature..as are all workers who come into contact with chidren and young people.

There’s no courses, where do you get your information? There’s a few booklets and the juvenile liaison officers in the Gardai can give talks, etc but there’s no course….could you please inform me of such courses, would like to do one!