Delivering subject content through nine life themes
The issue of mental health and wellbeing has generated some eye-catching headlines in recent days. ‘Young people in the West becoming unhappier’ was how the BBC headlined its online report about the publication of the World Happiness Report 2024, though many other media outlets picked up on a phrase about young people hitting the equivalent of a midlife crisis. Meanwhile, ‘Mental health culture has gone too far’ was the headline atop the Daily Telegraph’s interview with the secretary of state for work and pensions. Mental ill-health affects people of all ages, and our response must span the generations – and particularly children and young people. As the World Happiness Report notes, there is evidence that indicates that the best predictor for adult life satisfaction is subjective wellbeing and emotional health during childhood.
The World Happiness Report gives an annual ranking of wellbeing in 140 countries across the world. It is a subjective measure, using respondents’ own assessments of their lives and their positive and negative emotions.
Finland has ranked top for happiness for seven years in a row. Denmark was placed second this year and all five Nordic countries are in the top 10.
This year’s report has made waves primarily because of its finding that the average happiness of young people – aged under 30 – is on the decline across the West. (For the first time the data has been divided by age group.) The UK was placed number 32 for young people and the USA at number 62.
Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the director of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre and an editor of the World Happiness Report, said the research should ring an alarm for policy-makers:
“We documented disconcerting drops especially in North America and Western Europe. To think that, in some parts of the world, children are already experiencing the equivalent of a midlife crisis demands immediate policy action.”
Meanwhile, Mel Stride has been talking about reforms to the work capability assessment (a process used to decide when people qualify for sickness benefits because they are too ill to work). Stride is the secretary of state for work and pensions. He wrote this on X, formerly Twitter, alongside a link to his interview in the Daily Telegraph (with punctuation added by me):
“I’m grateful we are more open about mental health these days. It means many more people getting the help they need. But sometimes everyday anxieties are being labelled as medical problems, and that isn’t right. My reforms will change lives for the better.”
Back to the World Happiness Report for a moment, the 2024 report says this:
There is evidence that indicates that the best predictor for adult life satisfaction is subjective wellbeing and emotional health during childhood, and that the next major influence on emotional health, after family, is school both in childhood and adolescence.
from the World Happiness Report 2024
A recent report from the Resolution Foundation laid bare the impact of poor mental health on young people, warning of the “scarring effect” it can have on someone’s long-term life chances. It pointed out that young people are now more likely to experience a common mental disorder than any other age group – a “complete reversal” compared with two decades ago – and said that mental health problems are “blighting” young people’s experience of education and damaging their ability to get into and then flourish in the labour market as adults.
In our recent blog Offering young people hope we said that:
…whether it is the numbers seeking mental health support, or persistently absent from school, or increasingly drawn to extremist ideas, the evidence that we are failing a significant proportion of the next generation is mounting up. We need to do more not just to support young people in the here and now but also to offer them hope for a healthy, bright and happy future. Education has a crucial role to play because it is all about setting young people up for life.
from our blog Offering young people hope
The purpose of LBL is to make sure that children are ready for life beyond the school gates by better preparing them for the challenges of tomorrow – including but not limited to the world of work.
We need a coordinated national effort to provide children with the emotional resilience to combat the increasing incidence of mental ill-health affecting young people. LBL aims to open the way to this by upgrading emotional development as an equal curriculum priority.
Children need to be healthy in body, emotional resilient and with a mind focused on learning. All three act in harmony; all three therefore receive equal priority.
We want children to:
Life-Based Learning also aims to ensure that we better look after the physical environment, recognising the beneficial effects of nature on our wellbeing and improving the long-term prospects for us all.
Image at the head of this article by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay.
