Quite Interesting Things about ... April John Lloyd

Mental health. Now there’s a pair of words that seems to encapsulate the Zeitgeist.

People babble on about it, often nonsensically and without any thought about what they are saying.

‘Oh, he’s got mental health,’ they’ll say, shaking their heads. Well, of course ‘he’ has. We all have – what is concerning is when ‘his’ mental health is poor.

Schools are, at the moment, very concerned about the mental health of both their students and their staff. Caring messages are regularly emailed to us, assuring us that our mental health is a top priority and ‘signposting’ us to websites where we can receive help.

I must have filled in some quiz (or is that too light-hearted a word?) about how I was feeling before Christmas, as I received an email from the Head showing concern at my state of mind. It was probably just after I’d kicked my recycling bin round the classroom and cried in front of the Assistant Head, but I’d forgotten all about it by the time the email came.

Most days I don’t feel low any more – just fed up. I’ve worked out how to teach a computer and faceless children, I walk the dog a lot and I sit by the fire and read. I, along with most of us, am surviving.

But, as an adult, I have the resources to survive. We oldies know that ‘time and the hour run through the roughest day’, but even the students to whom we’ve taught Macbeth find it hard to believe this. When you live as much in the moment as many teenagers do, it is very hard to be able to look forward. All they’ve worked out is that they wish they were back in school, which surprises and even unnerves them.

Boys are finding it harder than girls. Girls would rather hang out in the shopping centre, but will accept a walk in the park as a way of meeting and talking to friends. Girls use social media to converse much more than boys do. Boys do not see the point of going for a walk. They want to play football but they are not allowed to.

Boys are (alas) less likely than girls to give in to the joys of a good novel. I was reading John Boyne while walking my dog this morning, and felt a physical shock when I left Tsarist Russia and found myself back on a muddy hillside. But I revelled in the shock, loved the fact that for a while I’d left the rain, lockdown and endless gloom and had totally given myself up to someone else’s story.

But those who don’t read, who can’t escape their increasingly stifling reality, are finding life increasingly hard. Many of my students say they’re not even bothering to leave the house for exercise much; I fear we will be dealing with a generation of agoraphobics.

Our Prime Minister has come up with a spiffing plan to help with the problems that are going to be the next National Health crisis. He has created a Mental Health Youth Ambassador to advise the government on better mental-health provision.

On many levels, this is obviously a step in the right direction, but I can’t help but be a little cynical. Dr Alex George, who has been appointed to the role, has been a campaigner in this field for a while – particularly since his brother killed himself last year. He is also well known as a TV ‘celebrity’ since he appeared on Love Island, a downmarket ‘reality’ programme.

His appointment certainly makes Johnson look as though he is taking the problem seriously and as though he cares – and a Love Island celebrity is going to provide many more column inches than any other doc. Dr George will also sit on the new Mental Health in Education Action Group, which Number 10 says will look at how the Government provides well-being support for young people as they return to school and university. And they will need it.

The question, as ever, will be where the money will come from. Help with suffering children has already been cut to the bone.

Johnson has to do more than appoint an (unpaid, natch) celebrity advisor. He has to do something he does not always seem very good at: he has to listen to advice – and take it. It is not just young people’s GCSES and A levels that are going to suffer. If we aren’t careful, many more lives will be lost to COVID without even the smallest cough.