Colman Noctor: Making the case for mental health programmes in schools

However, schools are only one environment in a child’s life. If the skills learned there are not echoed and reinforced at home, they risk being diluted or forgotten

Tue, 07 Oct, 2025 - 01:00

Dr Colman Noctor, child psychotherapist

Childhood and adolescence today are far more complicated than they once were. Social media has transformed how children relate to each other, climate change is no longer a distant concern but a daily headline, and the post-pandemic world has left behind a residue of anxiety and disconnection.

Stepping into this change, schools have increasingly taken on the role of not just providing academic instruction but also offering emotional support. One of the most notable changes in the past decade has been the rise of school-based mental fitness programmes and the inclusion of ‘wellbeing’ hours in the curriculum.

When I first started talking about mental health in schools 20 years ago, most of what I shared was reactive. Back then, our goal was to raise awareness of mental illness to reduce the stigma and encourage young people to speak up if they were struggling. These ‘talk to someone’ campaigns were necessary because mental health was still a taboo subject in many classrooms.

I remember school staff in the early 2000s not wanting us to speak to students, fearing that merely mentioning mental illness would plant seeds in their minds, almost as if mentioning mental health issues could be contagious and should be avoided.

But then we moved on to posters in hallways listing warning signs of depression, teachers wearing badges supporting anti-stigma campaigns, and students hearing visiting speakers share their stories of mental health journeys.

However, these models, while valuable, were limited. They often positioned young people as passive recipients of information, encouraged only to notice problems once they had become severe; the equivalent of telling children about the symptoms of diabetes without ever talking to them about the importance of nutrition or exercise.

These initiatives have evolved to do more than identify symptoms of mental illness. They now represent a movement toward mental fitness, which is the idea that, just like physical health, emotional wellbeing can be trained, practiced, and strengthened. But for these programmes to truly deliver, they cannot begin and end at the school gates. Parents must continue the conversation at home, embedding these emotional skills into the fabric of family life.

Building resilience

The evolution to mental fitness is a subtle but powerful shift. Mental fitness programmes are proactive, teaching skills that build resilience, foster self-regulation, promote empathy, and enhance problem-solving before crises arise. They align more closely with what positive psychology has argued for years, that prevention and flourishing matter just as much as treatment.

Given my support of mental fitness approaches, I got involved in the expert group assembled by the mental health charity A Lust for Life. For the past two years, I have been working alongside several experts from psychology, sociology, psychotherapy, and, crucially, education to develop a mental fitness programme called ‘Rising Minds’, which is planned to be rolled out in secondary schools over the coming months.

The ‘Rising Minds’ programme is a series of workshops which aim to equip students with strategies to cope with setbacks, academic pressure, and social challenges. A key focus of the programme is connection, so the workshops are designed not as content-heavy sessions but as opportunities for students to learn the fundamentals of listening and storytelling, which has become a lost art in a world dominated by screen-based communication. The workshops also emphasise the importance of movement and physical activity, reframing it not just as a physical health intervention but as an essential skill for emotional regulation.

The key is that these approaches normalise the idea that the mind, like the body, can be strengthened through deliberate practice, and we invite young people to see emotions not as something to be feared or hidden but as signals to be understood and managed.

Some may argue that school curricula are packed enough or that mental health belongs in clinics or family homes. But the truth is, schools are uniquely positioned to deliver this content for three reasons:

Access and equality: Every child has the opportunity to attend school, regardless of their background. In contrast, not every child has access to therapy or private support, so school-based programmes level the playing field;
Early intervention: Teachers and staff are often the first to notice changes in a child’s mood or behaviour. Intervening early can prevent minor issues escalating into more severe problems;
Repetition and culture: A message repeated daily in classrooms, assemblies, and playgrounds has far greater impact than a once-off lecture. Schools that foster a culture where mental fitness is viewed as usual are essential to the collective well-being of the school community.

This is not just my opinion; the evidence supports this. A 2021 World Health Organization review concluded that school-based social and emotional learning programmes not only improve wellbeing but also academic outcomes, with students showing better concentration, fewer behavioural problems, and even higher grades. Similarly, a 2022 Unicef report found that children in schools with embedded mental fitness programmes reported lower levels of anxiety and greater peer support compared to those in schools without such initiatives.

Parents’ crucial role

Schools are only one environment in a child’s life. If the skills learned there are not echoed and reinforced at home, they risk being diluted or forgotten.

Think of it this way: a child might learn about healthy eating in science class, but if dinner at home is always junk food, the lesson will feel irrelevant. The same applies to mental fitness. A mindfulness session at school can be undermined if a child comes home to a household where phones are always buzzing, emotions are dismissed, or family conversations never move beyond logistics.

Parents can play a crucial role by:

Normalising emotional language: Ask children not just “how was your day?” but “what made you feel proud today?” or “did anything worry you?”;
Modelling coping strategies: Children learn more from what we do than what we say. If they see us taking breaks, managing stress, or apologising after conflict, they internalise those skills;
Creating downtime: Over-scheduled lives can squeeze out space for reflection. Families that carve out quiet evenings or screen-free dinners create an atmosphere conducive to emotional fitness;
Engaging with the school programme: When schools share these resources, families should take them seriously and show their child that mental fitness is not just a “school thing” but a family priority.

A home-school partnership is not always easy. Sometimes schools launch programmes that parents feel sceptical about, saying things like “mindfulness is just a fad” or “kids don’t need lessons in emotions, they need discipline”. At other times, parents may feel that schools are encroaching on their family territory.

However, the evidence indicates otherwise. When schools and parents work together, outcomes improve. A meta-analysis published in Child Development (2020) demonstrated that programmes combining school instruction with parental involvement had twice the effect on children’s resilience and wellbeing compared to school-only programmes.

In practical terms, this might look like schools sending home weekly prompts (“this week we practised naming emotions. Ask your child to share the three most common feelings they had today”) or encouraging parents to share insights with teachers when they notice patterns of stress or behaviour at home.

There will be some who will say that these programmes are a waste of resources, and as one parent said to me, “there’s no CAO points up for grabs for wellbeing”, and view it as taking away from the critical academic time.

However, I would contend that children today are growing up in a world unlike the one we knew. They are the first generation to carry smartphones in their pockets from primary school. They are bombarded with images of idealised lives and catastrophic futures in equal measure. They face academic and sporting pressures that seem to ratchet up higher each year.

Against such pressures, mental fitness programmes are not a luxury, but a necessity. They provide children with an internal toolkit to manage external chaos. But those toolkits must be opened, practiced, and sharpened in everyday family life.

Of course, we must not assume that these programmes are a cure-all. They cannot replace professional support for children with serious mental health needs. Nor should they be viewed as an excuse to shift parental responsibility onto schools. Equally unhelpful is a “tick-the-box” approach, where schools hold a single workshop and then declare the job done.

The most effective programmes are those that are integrated, sustained, and culturally relevant, and those that are supported by parents who continue the work at home.

When we talk about mental fitness, we are really talking about preparing children for life. Just as schools teach maths not only for the sake of solving equations but to develop problem-solving minds, mental fitness programmes teach children to navigate setbacks, regulate emotions, and build healthy relationships. These are not “extra” skills; they are the very foundation on which learning and growth depend.

As parents, our task is to ensure that the lessons do not remain confined to classrooms or assemblies. By carrying the conversation into family life through open dialogue, modelling resilience, and prioritising wellbeing, we transform these school initiatives from curriculum add-ons into lifelong habits.

The greatest gift we can give our children is not to shield them from every challenge, but to equip them with the mental fitness to face them.