It’s Saturday afternoon and my friend’s five-year-old daughter is lying next to me on her living room floor. She explains to me that she does this at school. She lies on her back with the rest of the class and they do something called the body scanner, where they all pay attention to various body parts in turn. I know she is describing a mindfulness exercise, because I’m a psychologist who researches mental-health lessons. I listen as she explains it all to me, but in my head I’m thinking something else: she shouldn’t be learning mindfulness at school.
On the face of it, mental-health lessons in schools seemed like an excellent idea. Young people’s mental health is worse now than it was in the past, and one-to-one treatment is hard to access. If you teach young people about mental health at school – which often includes teaching techniques based on therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) or mindfulness – it’s more accessible. If you teach these concepts to everyone in a class – so-called universal interventions – you avoid missing the under-the-radar kids who aren’t seeking help, and avoid the potential stigma of singling anyone out. If you teach the information when pupils are young enough, even better: you might prevent mental-health problems from starting in the first place.
