Diana’s mental problems to be used in school health lessons
PRINCESS DIANA will be used as a role model for schoolchildren in lessons on how to overcome mental health problems.
Diana, who died almost 20 years ago, talked about her experience of depression, the eating disorder bulimia and self-harming in her 1995 Panorama interview.
The Princess is among a number of figures, including footballer David Beckham and the late Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher, who are set to feature in the lessons about battling conditions. The aim of the scheme is to reduce the stigma surrounding such issues.
Welcoming the schools’ initiative, Diana’s friend Rosa Monckton t old The Mail on Sunday she believed the late Princess could prove an inspiration to young people.
Miss Monckton said: ‘ There is no doubt that mental health is a huge issue with the youth of today, and it was in the public domain that Diana had these problems. ‘To have overcome them in the way she did while being in the public eye was fairly extraordinary.’ Former England football captain David Beckham has spoken about his mania for neatness – saying he has ‘ obsessive compulsive disorder’ that drives him to put ‘everything in a straight line or in pairs’. Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, struggled with manic depression and drug addiction throughout her life. The actress died last December aged 60. The classes in mental health will be piloted in scores of schools by the Department for Education, with children as young as eight being taught mindfulness and relaxation techniques.
In a separate trial, children in secondary schools will have classes from teachers trained to deliver The Mental Health And High School Curriculum Guide.
This was developed in Canada and, according to officials, showed ‘significant improvement in measures of mental health knowledge’.
The curriculum includes a module in which pupils are asked: ‘Which famous people lived with a mental health illness?’
The class is presented with a list of prominent figures and then asked to identify both their ‘area of greatest contribution’ and their ‘type of mental illness’.
Those on the list include Winston Churchill, who suffered from ‘black dogs’, as he described his bouts of depression; novelist Virginia Woolf, who was bipolar or manic depressive; pop star Karen Carpenter, who died of anorexia; and Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, who was also bipolar and was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) as a child.
The module also lists Abraham Lincoln, who battled clinical depres- sion; Charles Darwin, who suffered from agoraphobia – a fear of open spaces; singers Janet Jackson (depression) and Britney Spears (who has spoken in the past about being bipolar); and actors Robin Williams (depression and dementia) and Jim Carrey (bipolar).
The initiative follows a promise by Prime Minister Theresa May to ‘transform’ attitudes to mental health, and calls by Sir Anthony Seldon, former headmaster of Wellington College, for schools to boost children’s wellbeing.
The Department for Education said: ‘It is vital that all children and young people get the help and support that they need and deserve. It is up to schools how and whether to measure the wellbeing of pupils.
‘ We know that schools often want to provide specific interventions to promote the mental wellbeing of their pupils, but sometimes struggle to know which approaches to use.
‘That is why we have announced plans to do further research trials in schools on what interventions work best.’