Search

Despite evidence identifying bullying as leading to severe distress, few studies have focused on bullied adolescents with existing mental health conditions. With increasing prevalence rates, it is necessary to understand how these adolescents can be better safeguarded. To address the issue, this study reports the rarely conveyed viewpoints of adolescents attending mental health services; clinically diagnosed with severe emotional conditions. To complement these perspectives, the viewpoints of their parents and teachers were also obtained. Thematic analysis identified school bullying as a serious stressor, contributing to and exacerbating their mental health need. They were prone to be trapped in a cycle of victimisation, complicated further by their preference for secrecy. Adolescents and their parents felt bullying problems could be appropriately managed if school staff were better tuned into the subtle signs of bullying, and managed disclosure more sensitively by working collaboratively with them and their assigned mental health practitioner. Recommendations were, a need for staff to better detect bullying distress and strengthen multi-agency links when bullying is suspected, to ensure quick, proactive intervention. Furthermore, schools could consider amalgamating the bullying and mental health whole school approaches, due to the intrinsic links between bullying and mental health.

The importance of joint working between educational and child mental health professionals is well documented but there are numerous challenges and only limited training models. While the evidence base and training programmes for educationalists regarding child mental health is growing, training mental health professionals about education is more limited. This study presents the views of 36 child mental health and education professionals from four service localities in England regarding their experiences of joint working and perceptions of training, including a preliminary evaluation of a training programme designed to bridge this gap. The findings indicate that participants perceived that a degree of knowledge in education matters is important, and reported that this could be acquired through the development of relationships with educational professionals, setting up link posts and joint training; they also described challenges related to building experience and to resource constraints. Participants were generally positive about the training package and reported that there was a clear training need in this area. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)