BPP University Law School will also offer courses on "mindfulness on the go" and "managing your sleep" from the end of the month.

The private university, which has branches in London, Bristol, Cambridge, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, prides itself on creating graduates who are "career ready".

It says that students leave the university "not just armed with academic theory, but also the context, skills and behaviours you need to succeed".

Jo-Anne Pugh, director of programme design and development at BPP Law School, said the new courses are part of a series of initiatives to boost wellbeing and mental health services at the university.

It follows research published earlier this year by the junior lawyers division of the Law Society, which showed that stress and mental health issues among young lawyers were on the rise. Continue reading

For more than 50 years now, we in the United States have been gradually reducing children's opportunities to play, and the same is true in many other countries. In his book Children at Play: An American History (2007), Howard Chudacoff refers to the first half of the 20th century as the ‘golden age' of children's free play. By about 1900, the need for child labour had declined, so children had a good deal of free time. But then, beginning around 1960 or a little before, adults began chipping away at that freedom by increasing the time that children had to spend at schoolwork and, even more significantly, by reducing children's freedom to play on their own, even when they were out of school and not doing homework. Adult-directed sports for children began to replace ‘pickup' games; adult-directed classes out of school began to replace hobbies; and parents' fears led them, ever more, to forbid children from going out to play with other kids, away from home, unsupervised. There are lots of reasons for these changes but the effect, over the decades, has been a continuous and ultimately dramatic decline in children's opportunities to play and explore in their own chosen ways.

Over the same decades that children's play has been declining, childhood mental disorders have been increasing. It's not just that we're seeing disorders that we overlooked before. Clinical questionnaires aimed at assessing anxiety and depression, for example, have been given in unchanged form to normative groups of schoolchildren in the US ever since the 1950s. Analyses of the results reveal a continuous, essentially linear, increase in anxiety and depression in young people over the decades, such that the rates of what today would be diagnosed as generalised anxiety disorder and major depression are five to eight times what they were in the 1950s. Over the same period, the suicide rate for young people aged 15 to 24 has more than doubled, and that for children under age 15 has quadrupled.

The decline in opportunity to play has also been accompanied by a decline in empathy and a rise in narcissism, both of which have been assessed since the late 1970s with standard questionnaires given to normative samples of college students. Empathy refers to the ability and tendency to see from another person's point of view and experience what that person experiences. Narcissism refers to inflated self-regard, coupled with a lack of concern for others and an inability to connect emotionally with others. A decline of empathy and a rise in narcissism are exactly what we would expect to see in children who have little opportunity to play socially. Children can't learn these social skills and values in school, because school is an authoritarian, not a democratic setting. School fosters competition, not co-operation; and children there are not free to quit when others fail to respect their needs and wishes.

In my book, Free to Learn (2013), I document these changes, and argue that the rise in mental disorders among children is largely the result of the decline in children's freedom. If we love our children and want them to thrive, we must allow them more time and opportunity to play, not less. Yet policymakers and powerful philanthropists are continuing to push us in the opposite direction — toward more schooling, more testing, more adult direction of children, and less opportunity for free play. Continue reading

Sources

• Aeon
• Image: Mother&Child

School refusal can occur at any time during a young person's schooling, however it is more likely to occur during high school. An Australian study prepared by Youth Support Coordinators highlights the increased likelihood of school refusal during periods of transitions, such as the move from primary to high school or the move from one school to another (2009). Australian research suggests that up to 9% of school population may experience school refusal at some point in time (Withers, 2004).

There can be multiple factors contributing to school refusal among children. Two significant factors appear to be experiences of anxiety and bullying (Kearney, 2007). Anxiety often manifests as physical symptoms, such as headaches and nausea, which can make it difficult for parents to distinguish whether their child's complaint is medical or psychological in nature. Seeking medical advice and monitoring the timing of physical complaints can help discern the nature of the complaints. Being bullied at school is also another major contributor to children becoming fearful of school and thus attempting to avoid school (The Monash School Refusal Program). Other common factors include:

• Difficulty in peer relationships
• Fear/difficulties with teachers
• Transition to high school
• Family stress
• Traumatic life event
• Academic problems

Warning signs that may indicate school refusal

At school

• Frequent and unexplained absences from school
• Frequent lateness to school
• Absences on significant days (e.g., days on which tests or specific classes are scheduled)
• Frequent requests to go to sick bay
• Frequent requests to call home or to go home during the day

In the home

• Complaints of physical symptoms when getting reading for school, e.g. headaches
• A reluctance or refusal to get dressed for school
• Negative comments about school
• A reluctance to talk openly about their experiences at school Continue reading

Sources

• Essential Kids
• Image: Herald Sun