The vast majority of teenagers say they experience “emotional distress” after starting secondary school but claim teachers don’t have the skills to help them, research has found.

Four in every five 12- to 16-year-olds in the survey said they felt they had mental health problems but just one in 20 would turn to a teacher for help if they felt depressed, anxious, stressed or emotionally unable to cope.

The poll of 500 secondary school pupils, for the teenage mental health charity stem4, comes as MPs were warned that schools had only a “patchy” ability to pick up and prevent mental health problems in pupils.

The parliamentary health and education committees, which are carrying out an inquiry into the role of schools in promoting mental health, heard this month that while all of them intended to provide mental health support for their pupils, only around half provided counselling, and funded it – and in most cases this was only for one day a week or less.

Theresa May has announced that all secondary schools in England are to be offered mental health first aid training to ensure children and young people get the help and support they need. A third of secondary schools will receive training for teachers and staff this year, with the rest receiving training in the following two years.

However, according to the new survey, what most teenagers want is easy access to mental health professionals rather than being “patched up” by teachers with little training.

Only a third of young people think mental health first aid training for teachers is a good idea, and 36% say the initiative is “woefully inadequate”, because one teacher in a school of over 1,000 would make no difference.

One in five teenagers would prefer to see properly trained mental health professionals in school rather than a teacher, and a third want to see the creation of dedicated young people’s health hubs – away from school – where they can seek help anonymously.

Nihara Krause, a consultant clinical psychologist and founder of stem4, said: “More and more young people are now willing to admit that they struggle to cope emotionally with the challenges of daily life, which are posing much greater levels of stress.

“High levels of stress, if not dealt with at an early stage, are likely to lead to more serious problems in later life. We’ve known for a long time that young people’s health services are at crisis point, barely dealing with moderate to severe psychological problems.

“Young people need better access to early interventions provided by properly trained mental health professionals who can either deal with these problems directly or make referrals to appropriate secondary services.”

The survey found that 79% of children as young as 12 and 13 now experience emotional distress after starting secondary school. Top of the list of anxieties is exam worries (41% of pupils), followed by work overload (31%), friendship concerns (28%), worries about being accepted by peers (23%), lack of confidence (26%), concerns about body image (26%), low self-esteem (15%) and feelings of being overwhelmed (25%).

By the age of 16, one in 10 young people will be diagnosed with a mental health problem. Yet research by the Royal College of Psychiatrists shows that 25 clinical commissioning groups in England, which decide how money is spent on health, planned to spend less than £25 per head on mental health services for children and young people in this financial year, and some areas were spending as little as £2 a head.

A third of parents fear that mental health issues will leave their children unable to enjoy their teenage years; however, just 40% are confident that they could identify problems in their child.

Yet it is parents and carers that teenagers are most likely to turn to for help. A conference by stem4 in London last week offered parents practical advice about how to support children with mental health issues. This included communicating, setting boundaries, praising them and showing love.

Dr Krause said: “We all need to become mental health-literate so that we can spot the early signs. This applies not just to teachers, but also to parents and friends.”

Derran George and his family. Photograph: Courtesy of Miriam George

Case study



Six months after starting secondary school, Derran George was showing signs of severe anxiety.

A catalogue of incidents that the school failed to resolve left the 12-year-old unable to cope.

“He found secondary school a terrifying place,” explained his mother Miriam, 50, a healthcare company owner from Leicestershire who has two older sons.

Within weeks, Derran’s anxiety had become so severe he was only attending school one day a fortnight, and by the end of the last academic year he wasn’t going at all.

“He was paralysed by fear. He couldn’t get out of bed, dress himself and could hardly speak. He was completely dysfunctional,” said Miriam.

Derran’s GP didn’t have the skills to deal with the mental health problems and thought he was trying to avoid school.

For the first seven months, the family were pressured by the school to make Derran attend.

“Although they knew Derran was ill, they didn’t really understand the illness and were prevented from helping him without the correct paperwork. The GP hadn’t provided proof of his ill health so the school was unable to organise home tuition,” said Miriam.

Finally, last October, Derran saw a psychiatrist and was put on the antidepressant Prozac for severe anxiety which helped “enormously”.

“Derran probably had a predisposition for mental health problems – as a baby he suffered from reflex anoxic seizures, where seizures were brought on by being very stressed, which caused him to pass out. My husband, Paul, and I knew that talking therapy was not enough but it was very difficult to get the medical help he needed.”

Twelve months on, Derran is still off school but is now home tutored three days a week. “The idea is that he will become well enough to go back to school, but that is not going to be any time soon,” said Miriam.

Derran said: “I would really like to go back to school one day but not in the state I am in – I wouldn’t enjoy it.”