Ben West on Changing Mental Health in the UK and In Schools!

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Mental Health in the UK and in Schools

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Becky,

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hello, and welcome back to the JenUp Podcast. If you’re struggling with an eating disorder and feeling lost, you’ve come to the right place. Both myself and Becky Stone are former sufferers of eating disorders, and we understand the challenges that you’re facing. So, join us for inspiring, educational, and relatable content, whether you’re seeking support, guidance, or just someone who understands, we are here for you.

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So, I’m super excited to share with you our guest today. We have got Ben West on the show, and so, following an unexpected and devastating event in 2018

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Ben West has become one of the most engaged mental health campaigners in the UK. He has successfully influenced national government policy to improve education and support for children in schools, advises the NHS on engagement and involvement, and the importance of lived-informed decision making, and works with organizations on creating mental health and suicide prevention strategies that address the root cause

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of these issues, so it’s so great to have you on here, Ben. Thanks, Jenny. Thanks so much. I was really looking forward to this, this podcast recording today. I’ve been going through so many boring meetings today, and I was just like, quite.. I’m so excited to just sit down, have a good chat about things that obviously mean a huge amount to me.

Unknown Speaker  1:26 

Yeah, no, that’s great. It means a lot for you to come on here and share your story, so be really good, you know. For our listeners who might not know your story, could you share like what first motivated you to start campaigning for Bento for better mental health awareness and suicide prevention.

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Yeah, of course. So, really, for me,

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this is not something I ever thought I’d end up doing. So, when I was growing up, I wanted to go into the armed forces.

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I was pretty set on that. I grew up in Kent, and it was me, my two brothers, my mum and dad, and our dog, and honestly, we just had such a.. I had such a good childhood, like it was just so perfect, and I felt like I was really ready to like take the next step, knew what I wanted to do in life.

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And then when I was 17, my younger brother Sam was diagnosed with depression.

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Sam was 15 at the time. I had no idea what depression was. No one had ever told me about mental health, talked to me about what it meant. Definitely hadn’t ever told me about depression.

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So I, I just sort of went, how can you be diagnosed as sad? It doesn’t make any sense, just sort of get up, get on, get on with it. That was sort of my, my reaction when I was told,

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and then very, very sadly, Sam took his own life in January 2018

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and died when he was 15 years old.

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You know, that was obviously just horrific

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in terms of the grief, but obviously, as well, you know, as with, as a lot of people, if anyone’s lost someone by suicide. It’s

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also very, very traumatic way of losing someone if you’re, if you’re there when it happens. And sadly, I was, I found him with my mum, so incredibly traumatic thing to go through.

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And then, obviously, the grief on top of that was just pretty unbearable.

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And I realised very quickly that I didn’t want what happened to Sam to happen to anyone else ever again, and I realised that actually a lot of things that happened to Sam didn’t need to happen or didn’t happen,

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and it was actually when you look at what happened to Sam, there were some simple things that went wrong,

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and that’s quite frustrating, but also

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it’s also quite exciting and hopeful, because if it’s only a simple thing that went wrong, it’s only a simple thing to fix. So I’ve sort of gone into the policy and campaigning side of this now, where I’m really trying to make those small changes, the important small changes that really would have made an impact in Sam’s story, and obviously, as you mentioned, really focusing in on young people in schools, and the role that schools play in a sort of joined up system that needs to be better at supporting young people. So, yeah, that’s what that’s what keeps me busy in the day, is doing all of that.

Unknown Speaker  4:14 

Well, that’s amazing that you’re doing that, and you’re making no such a difference, and of it is great what you’re doing, and much needed, like,

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and so, what? So, what are you currently trying to, in terms of like policies and stuff? How are you trying to initiate this change? What are you doing at the moment? Yeah, so my big campaign, which I’ve been working on since 2018 so pretty much as soon as Sam died, and started, I started looking into this. It was, it was sort of the first thing I, I wanted to work on was that essentially to become a teacher in the UK. When you go through training, that training is based around what’s called the initial teacher training framework, and it sort of forms like the basic requirement of to.

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Teacher training, and I found out in 2018 that mental health didn’t feature once at all in the entire teacher training framework.

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It is completely absent, so that means that to become a teacher, there is absolutely no requirement to learn anything about mental health in any way at all.

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That seemed a little bit of an oversight, particularly when at the time we were talking about improving the curriculum for children, starting to teach mental health in schools, and I just thought, How can you do that without teaching teachers first?

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And so really, I started that campaign back in 2018 which went, we need to change the initial teacher training framework to include mental health,

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and to make that a part of the basic requirement of teach training, so that every teacher gets that education, and I think they deserve education.

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And we’ve had a bit of a significant step forward, which is that from this September, the new Initial Teach Training and Early Careers Framework includes mental health for the first time ever, which is really exciting,

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but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. So, for me, I’m still working on trying to really explore how that can be expanded now, and so that that framework is up for review by the Department for Education in 2027

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So, at the moment, it’s really about trying to get support across the industry, so unions, schools, teachers,

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children, charities, experts, people like that, and also find the evidence and the research that says, you know, what a teacher that’s well educated in mental health stays in the profession for longer, feels more capable of doing the job, and actually provides better outcomes for children, and then presenting that back to the Department for Education, and going boys in your court now get

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it done, that’s the plan, and it’s actually a lot more difficult than it sounds.

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Yeah,

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doesn’t it? I think the biggest thing is trying having that voice and pushing through and getting people to listen and understand,

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yeah, it’s so difficult to get heard,

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and this is the thing, like, I had no idea how to do any of this stuff when I started, I was, I just started a petition online

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because I thought that’s what, how stuff gets done, I didn’t know anything about it, and I even, you know, I was, it was quite a funny story, actually. I was at an event in London, and I decided to get a bit at a few, a few too many to drink, let’s say. And then I ended up having dinner with the Prime Minister. It was all a bit random, it was very, very random.

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I managed to tell him about what we were working on, and he invited me to Downing Street, and that was all, it was all great, but nothing actually happened, and you realise very quickly that change is so slow, like it’s decades to get stuff like this done, and so it was really for me, I’ve sort of learned as I went along, and I spent a lot of time in parliament, and if there is anyone in parliament that used to be a teacher or has some connection to education. I’ve probably emailed them and probably asked for a meeting and probably met them or tried to meet them. So it’s all about trying to build relationships and, and then build the evidence, and then basically just not stop bothering these people until they listen to

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you. Yeah, I think building the evidence, evidence is the hardest part, isn’t it? So hard. Yeah, need the data, don’t I assume you have to get that from schools and stuff, and kind of,

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yeah, schools, and then you’ve also got

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international precedent and international research, so we can see what

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America is doing, and we can see what Australia is doing, and Finland, I think, so they’re all doing this really well, and then you can start looking at some of the stuff that’s going on there, and that’s quite helpful, but it’s very difficult. Any, any way of measuring mental health is quite difficult to do, because it’s very, very, very complex. What, because mental health is everything, right? Every single interaction you have in your entire life feeds into it, so it’s very difficult to prove that one thing affected that

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cause, and you know, causation

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is so, so, so hard to find,

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which obviously it’s really important to be able to go, this intervention works, or this training works, and this doesn’t.

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So, anyway, it’s one of those hoops that I’ve got to jump through somehow, and I’m trying to, trying to find out how I’m going to do that.

Unknown Speaker  9:24 

Yeah, no, there’s a lot to Becky’s going to say the same thing a lot. Yeah, he’s really, really complex. I think when I used to work in schools, like, there wasn’t a lot of funding, so they put all the money into the funding. I think consistency with funding, I think it’s a really big thing with mental health in, because, like, I used to work for an organization called Young Healthy Minds, which was a government-funded

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agency, but by the time I started working, took eight months to get up and running, the backlog of all the referrals, all these kids have been like holding on, used to walk into school, and his kids were like, “Who are you? I’m like, “Oh, I’ve got your referral.

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They’re all like, don’t know what you’re talking about, and then we did a good two years worth of work, and then the funding got cut, so then we’re having to wind the whole service down again, so you have like this middle window of like focus work, and I think funding and consistency, I think it’s incredibly important with mental health. I completely agree, I completely agree, and you see so many really great projects that get launched don’t ever have quite enough money at the start anyway, and then can never prove, and I’ve done some work with, so I was doing some work with the Department for Health

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around opening neighbourhood mental health centres, and

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their funding is so restricted because it’s basically entirely given on the basis that they’re going to reduce any admissions,

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so and that’s such a narrow way of looking at impacting someone’s life, so the only measure of success for this this commuter, this neighbourhood mental health centre is whether it reduces any admissions, that only happens over years of building trust in a community and building that, and so it’s, and I saw, I completely agree with you, Becky. It’s like this consistency is so bad, and unfortunately, the people that spend the money, the Chancellor and the sort of Chancellor’s Office, they just, they just look at spreadsheets all day, they never really go out there and sit in these places and speak to people that are using them and understand the lived experience side of this. They, they make financial decisions and funding decisions just based on spreadsheets, which is sort of, I guess, important for the money side of things. We can’t run out of money as a country, but you know, I think a lot of it gets lost in the data a little bit, sometimes, and the, and the human stories, and that’s why you know, from my point of view, you mentioned at the start, Jenny, like the work I do with the NHS, about trying to bring patients and communities’

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voices into decision making, and making sure they’re involved, because you can’t make good decisions just on numbers, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work for this way, for this world, you can’t. You have to have them involved, otherwise you’re just going to make silly decisions and spend lots of money on things that didn’t need to happen. When there’s lots of stuff that does need money, that would make a big difference, in my opinion. Anyway, it’s sort of my little, my little project that

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I will, the hill I’ll die on is that we need to do better at bringing lived experience into rooms.

Unknown Speaker  12:25 

Yeah, no, I definitely agree. And then, with your to know, back to with the training, that is, you know, it’s going to be sorry, re-reviewed in 2027 You said, yeah, yeah. Okay, so what do you hope to see in that, and kind of in the, what do you, what your hopes for that? Yeah, I mean, so stop me if this becomes really boring, because this is sort of

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talking about frameworks. It’s sort of, you two lose people sometimes, so stop me if it goes boring. I basically, at the moment, the line that they’ve put in from this September is every trainee must know who to contact with any safeguarding or mental health concern.

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When I was told that by the Department for Education, my immediate response was, Can you tell me what a mental health concern means?

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And they sort of went, yeah, understand, you want, obviously, want more, but you know, you can’t put, you must know who to contact with mental health concern without also putting trainees must know what a mental health concern is. So I think it’s sort of just expanding it, like what do teachers actually, what’s going to make a difference to a teacher’s day is understanding normal healthy child development, understanding signs to look out for, understanding the safeguarding process from a mental health point of view. Who can they contact? What’s available? What they can they do,

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dealing with disclosures. Obviously, we’re making teachers teach about mental health in the classroom. We’re seeing an increase in the number of disclosures, because teaching about anxiety, someone’s probably going to come up to you and be like, ‘Hi, Miss, I think I have that. So, you’re seeing an increase in disclosures. You’re not seeing training for teachers about what to actually say when you come across a disclosure, so that should be included in it, and I just, but I just think fundamentally, and this is this, it gets into a bit of a more deep conversation,

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I don’t think I don’t think mental health should, should, should just be a bolt on course or a bolt on module, I think every aspect of education should be designed around mental well-being,

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so really for me the gold standard would be a teacher training framework, which is built around good understanding of child development, child psychology, and mental health. So it’s how do you, so it’s not just sort of this is how you teach, this is how you teach, because this is why this is why a child’s brain works the way it does, and this is how you’re going to do it. And I think everything has to be,

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if mental health is everything, then everything should be designed around mental health. It shouldn’t just be a bolt on, but at the moment, with the review, the goal is to just expand that, so you get a few more things in there. Trainees should know

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what a mental health.

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Concern is how to handle disclosures, how the safeguarding process works, which sort of cover at the moment, and a few, few more things like that. So we’re not talking about really big changes, but it just sets the baseline slightly higher, so that everyone’s caught by that same knowledge.

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Most training providers, by the way, will do far, far more than this, you know, most of the training providers I work with already do really, really good quality training. What debate what the frameworks about is just making sure those training providers that aren’t doing a very good job have to meet that minimum requirement, so that every teacher gets the same access to that knowledge,

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basically. So that’s my little, that’s my ramble about frameworks. You can see why it’s, it can very easily become a boring conversation,

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because I think lots of people

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shy away from mental health because they don’t know what to say. It’s that uncut, like when somebody passes away, for example. Most people just don’t know what to say. They either avoid the subject, or like, oh, I’m really sorry. Well,

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it’s happened, but it’s been able to have those right words to say, “Look, what you’re going through is really hard, and take each day as it comes, but there is no words that can make this stuff better. But being able to even just voice something is better than nothing. But, like, through my experience through mental health, a lot of people either run away from it soon as I say a therapist, they’re off, or I get people gravitate towards me. But it’s really interesting watching people soon as you say mental health,

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there’s still a fear around it and a stigma, and actually I think from what I’ve noticed with people, I think the real,

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or one of the real issues that we’ve got

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is in terms of like internalised stigma, so sort of the attitudes that people have towards mental health is

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control, and I think when I’ve, when I’ve sort of thought about why I am not very good at talking to my male friends about mental health, and how I’m doing, which is ironic, because I do it all on a podcast all the time, but I very rarely have that conversation with my mates, and the really it’s about control. Like, I just think there is this idea that that you don’t want to

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either give up control or admit you don’t have control,

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and I find that, like, I want to give this impression that I’m doing really well,

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and I don’t want to give that power of my situation to someone else,

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and it, so I think that’s that’s a big one as well, and I know it’s something that I struggle with, is going, I just want to have all my ducks in a row and just control everything and have everything, and that’s my business, and I just get on with it, and it can be really, really, really difficult, and I’ve had to do it, and I find it really uncomfortable, really difficult to be like, can I go for a walk with you, because I need to talk about some stuff that I really don’t have control over anymore. That’s a hard, that’s a hard thing to do, but we only, we only get better at doing it by being vulnerable and setting the example, and that’s what I try to do with the podcast, and

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doing as much as I can to sort of be like I find all of this quite uncomfortable, I find talking about Sam quite uncomfortable, but I’m going to do it anyway, because it’s a really, really important thing to do, and also I just, you know, I think from my point of view it’s really important to keep Sam’s memory alive and talk about him, because I, I speak to a lot of people that go through grief and go through difficult things, and

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it feel, you know, people stop talking about these people,

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and I just think that’s, that’s such a shame, because Sam’s life should, I don’t think, should be defined by his death, like he was a really important part of my life for 15 years,

Unknown Speaker  18:38 

and yeah, the last two of them weren’t particularly great, he was. It was not particularly easy to live with at the end, as anyone that’s lived with someone with a mental health condition will probably understand. But you know, you’ve got, you’ve got to talk about these things, and I, I just think it’s really important that you set that example,

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not in like a, not like a righteous way, but only in a way that that shows people it is possible, and also it’s possible to do this and still find it uncomfortable, and it’s also rewording it, so like vulnerability is a word that can be like very shame, because you’re allowing yourself to be exposed. I always say that vulnerability shows courage. I think you have to have that belly roaring courage to be vulnerable in the first place,

Unknown Speaker  19:22 

yeah. 100% 100% This is what I don’t understand about this whole stigma around mental health, you know, the people I know that have mental health conditions or have attempted suicide in the past, or both of you that have gone through really, really serious issues with eating disorders, which is terrifying, and really dangerous, and really horrible.

Unknown Speaker  19:44 

You’re all this.. I haven’t had to go for a mental health condition, but everyone I meet that has gone through, gone through that. They are such strong people, and I just think it’s really strange. Like, the stigma tells us that it’s really weak. They must be weak to go through all of it, and then struggle and reach.

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For help and talk to therapists, I’m like, there is not a single person I’ve met that’s gone through a mental health difficulty that I would talk to and go, I think they’re pretty weak. Everyone I know that’s gone through it is just such a strong person and strength I would never understand and be able to sort of replicate. So I completely get, get that, Becky, like being able

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to talk and be vulnerable with

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God, it takes a real, like,

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a lot of courage to take that step and have that first conversation, or that fifth conversation, or the 100th conversation. They’re all, they’re all just as difficult, but it’s, it’s definitely a difficult one. It’s even like when clients, I’ve had a young lady reach out to me today, and I literally, she sent me a little text message, and said, “I can’t wait to meet you, and thank you for having the courage to reach out. That was it in a text message, because I just think that bit, that reaching out and following up a conversation,

Unknown Speaker  20:53 

that’s the first step of the journey, whether she comes, whether she doesn’t, that’s the bit where she knows if she does come back, she can reach out again, and it’s okay. She didn’t get rejected, and she didn’t get silenced, because I think, yeah, sorry, yeah, no, no, is that bit? I think, as professionals, it’s just acknowledging that courage.

Unknown Speaker  21:14 

You’re so right, and this is where I think people get a little bit frustrated. I’m not a professional, I’m not a clinician at all, but this is where I think professionals get a little bit frustrated with mental health,

Unknown Speaker  21:24 

is that it’s, it’s very difficult to treat, right? I mean, it’s not people, I don’t like when people use the comparison of like a broken arm, because it’s nothing like a broken arm, a broken arm you put into the blaster, and in six weeks it’s six weeks, it’s fine again with mental health, it’s just incredibly difficult to treat, and it can feel a bit like

Unknown Speaker  21:45 

a very, an impossible task, but you are so spot on, like it’s just those little things that can make a massive difference. So, I volunteer with Shout the Crisis Text Line, and most of the people we, or a lot of the people I’ve spoken to on there, have had some really, really, really serious social issues, and live in some pretty horrific environments, and you’re like, nothing I can say is going to stop this environment from being absolutely horrific to live in, but if I can meet them and be like, I tell you what,

Unknown Speaker  22:18 

you have just displayed the most remarkable amount of strength being able to spend an hour talking about what’s going on at home with me, and you just, you can just find little ways of

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identifying those strengths, that’s what they’ll take away from that conversation, and that’s huge. And if someone told you that, like I remember people telling me that when Sam died, and you remember that, like I remember those people, I remember them telling me that, and it’s, it’s a really important thing to do, so sometimes I think we get, we over complicate treating mental health a little bit, and we think about antidepressants, which, of course, sometimes they have this, they have their place, but I think a lot of the time it’s that, and how lovely Becky, I mean, so she must be so nervous coming to a therapist to be like, to have that strength, for like, recognise, it’s just huge, it’s just so huge. Yeah, and also just something through my, my own jewellery journey, and my own story is mine’s the reaction of people’s faces. So, when I share my story,

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because my background is domestic violence, so when I share my story in my childhood, people’s jaws drop like they don’t know what to say, and then they say, Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t bear that word, and because they don’t know what to say, and then they go to me, Have you been through therapy, and I go, Yeah, I’ve had hundreds of hours, and it’s not going to change what’s happened to me, I’m afraid,

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so I think actually, if any professionals listening, I think how people’s faces react as well, and go, actually, thank you for sharing that with me, like instead of somebody going, oh, I’m so sorry,

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actually just say that sounds like it’s been a really tough time, that’s it, and I think how we respond is so important,

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and also

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I don’t know what to say. I just think that’s an underused thing. Why does everyone always have to have something to say? Actually, if someone’s just told me about horrific domestic abuse, I don’t know what that’s like. So, there’s no point me going, “Oh, I can imagine that’s really hard. I’ve got no idea how hard that is. I just be like, I really don’t know what to say, and what’s that amazing Brene Brown quote

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when she talks about vulnerability? The best response is, I don’t know what to say, but I’m so glad you told me. Oh, I love that, that’s great,

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Brene Brown,

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but it’s that it’s just meeting people with empathy, and this isn’t just for professionals either, it’s everyone, like you get someone coming to work and they’ve lost their partner or something, or something bad’s happened. It’s just being honest, or just being like that sounds really, really horrible. Like, how can I help? What, you know, what can we do? What to say?

Unknown Speaker  25:00 

Or a nice little one is what do you need from me. Yeah, I always say that. What do you need from me right now, and it might just be nothing. Okay,

Unknown Speaker  25:10 

or sometimes people just go, can I have a hug? Yeah,

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it’s those little human things like will make such a big difference for people to open up and trust mental health and share experiences without being shamed and rejected

Unknown Speaker  25:28 

and not always thinking about

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the the medical side of all of it, because I know from from looking at Sam’s story,

Unknown Speaker  25:37 

I think one of the frustrations he had was he was seen as a medical case to fix,

Unknown Speaker  25:45 

and, and that, that I think he each, I think, from it’s difficult. I’m never going to be in his head, so I don’t really understand what he was thinking, but I imagine from what I’ve looked at, he felt like he was just being treated as a case

Unknown Speaker  25:59 

and being considered,

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and it’s like, what that gave to him was this sense of complete loss of control. He felt like he was

Unknown Speaker  26:09 

really, really significantly unwell, when actually maybe he, maybe he might not have been,

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and and it was just, it was just

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very, very, I mean, must have been terrifying. You’re in this horrible, and they are usually quite horrible, these horrible mental health centres. You’re being, you’re seeing someone that’s talking, talking about you, not to you,

Unknown Speaker  26:31 

and it’s just.. it must have been really overwhelming. And then, if you’re sitting at home going, I’m going to feel like this for the rest of my life, nothing’s ever going to get better, you can start to see why suicidal thoughts will will and naturally inevitably end to your head, and then over a certain period you’re, you’re sort of experiencing that same cycle over and over again,

Unknown Speaker  26:51 

you know. Of course, those thoughts are going to get more and more intense, so like I can really empathise with Sam as to like how that end up happening,

Unknown Speaker  27:00 

but that’s why you know, with the work I do with the NHS, like, how do you build better professionals in the NHS and have better processes? You’ve got to talk to patients, why do you not like, why do you not like this particular unit, rather than just basically execs in offices going, oh, we should spend 3 million pounds on a new wing,

Unknown Speaker  27:21 

or you know, it’s just, just ridiculous, like it’s got to come from patients, and if you talk to patients, this is exactly the conversation they’ll have. Okay, we want to be treated like human beings,

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as simple to

Unknown Speaker  27:35 

be heard. Yeah, exactly. So this is again, like it comes back to my point, the week it’s quite, it can be quite overwhelming in this mental health space, but the changes are really simple. It is like it’s simple things that we’re doing wrong, and I know that’s that’s also frustrating, because it’s like work, we could just be doing it right, but from my point of view, it’s like it’s so simple, we could just change things in a reasonably short amount of time that would make huge impacts, so training on, or not necessarily training, but being better at talking to people as human beings in the health service and in professional roles, that’s not a, that’s not a big, that’s not a big change, it’s quite small, and it would have a massive impact, so that’s what excites me about mental health, is that actually there is a lot of small stuff that’s going wrong,

Unknown Speaker  28:22 

which is, would be easy to fix.

Unknown Speaker  28:29 

Just going back to what you said previously about what other schools are kind of doing, in like Australia, like the US, and just thought that was quite interesting. It just sparked me to kind of bring that up. Do you know what they’re doing, and kind of like what else in terms of their training. Why is it different to ours here?

Unknown Speaker  28:46 

Yeah, it’s a really good question. So

Unknown Speaker  28:49 

the research that I’ve read looks at America. So it was an international study done by Nina Smith, I’m pretty sure her name is actually no, they’re definitely Nina Smith, and she looked at mental health training in sort of internationally

Unknown Speaker  29:06 

in America. When she went to America, they basically to have it to have your license to teach, you have to go through this training, or sort of type of this training. I think it focuses a lot more on suicide.

Unknown Speaker  29:21 

You have to go through this training every year, and if you don’t go through that training, you lose your license to teach, so it’s like quite significant.

Unknown Speaker  29:30 

Australia, I think it’s in the foundational training, so like our equivalent or their equivalent of institute teach training. Denmark, I think it’s the same,

Unknown Speaker  29:39 

but what she found as well was in America when, when she went

Unknown Speaker  29:43 

there, this is where it’s – I find it funny, because we always look at America as being bad at education.

Unknown Speaker  29:48 

They, they turned around the parents when she was talking about what we have in the UK, the lack of

Unknown Speaker  29:55 

training and things in the UK. One of the, one of the parents turned around and was.

Unknown Speaker  30:00 

Like,

Unknown Speaker  30:01 

why don’t they just sue?

Unknown Speaker  30:03 

Like, oh God, this is insane. We’re behind the US in education. God, this is terrible. But yeah, they do every year this training,

Unknown Speaker  30:14 

so it’s so.. there’s an international prep, which is helpful because we’re not the first people to do it, but we’re a long way back from what they’re doing, it’s a good study. Nina Smith’s can’t remember what the title is, but it’s suicide prevention internationally. I think it’s based around just some really, really good work. But yeah, they do it well. Australia does it well,

Unknown Speaker  30:34 

and I think Denmark.. I think, yeah, I’ve looked at Australia, do well around eating disorder sort of stuff. They have like eating disorder policies as well. I’ve looked at kind of what they’re doing, a very

Unknown Speaker  30:45 

way more ahead than

Unknown Speaker  30:47 

us. Yeah, they are, they are, and then they are with the healthcare system as well. I mean,

Unknown Speaker  30:53 

got all our doctors going over there, so, so, yeah, from a, from an education point of view, it’s good, because you’ve got that example, so it should be, in theory, it should be inevitable that training for teachers improves, so even without me and loads of other people are calling for better training for teachers, it’s not just me, but,

Unknown Speaker  31:12 

but even without us, inevitably I think it would move to better training for teachers, because of what’s going on internationally. I just think we need to make sure it’s done quickly and it’s done really well,

Unknown Speaker  31:25 

rather than just every teacher should know who to contact with a mental health concern.

Unknown Speaker  31:29 

What is mental health concern? I don’t know, you know,

Unknown Speaker  31:33 

that could be psychosis, it could be depression, it could be self-harm. Like, what does that mean? There’s so much

Unknown Speaker  31:41 

mental health is so complex, you can’t.. it’s, you know, it’s as obviously Becky would know, it’s just that again, like I hope that you know there’s going to be more, you know, in-depth sort of training to come in, because it needs to, because it is mental health is complex, but it’s not, you know, and also giving the teachers time, like, if there’s disclosures there, giving them time to do the paperwork. Yeah, the safeguarding paperwork. I mean, I’m dyslexic, so it takes me twice as long as anybody else, but the paperwork is complex, and if you don’t put the right questions and the right answers, the referrals get dropped, the kids don’t get picked up, it gets lost through the system, so it’s been able to train them as well. We’ve been able to write the

Unknown Speaker  32:26 

right answers down, so they, the kids get heard, but the teachers feel supported in that as well.

Unknown Speaker  32:33 

Yeah, I completely, completely agree with you. And you, you know, when, when you look at what teachers actually, what the actual reality of the job

Unknown Speaker  32:42 

is so much of the stuff they have to do isn’t contracted into their day, and you’re just like, this is insane,

Unknown Speaker  32:49 

you know. I’ve got a friend that’s just started to teach, and he’s just spent 150 quid of his own money on essential materials for the classroom. You’re like, do we just expect the conditions that teachers are working in are just not really compatible with good education or good health outcomes, so I think, as like, as nice as training

Unknown Speaker  33:08 

is, it also, I do fall into this sort of area of going, I don’t, I don’t want this to come across like I’m saying teachers need to fix this, and it’s because everyone that has an issue decides to

Unknown Speaker  33:22 

say education should teach more about financial wellbeing, and they should teach about the environment, and they should teach about cooking, and they should teach about taxes, and they should teach about mental health. And I don’t want to just be another person that’s going, ‘Teachers need to solve this issue, because I don’t think that, and I think teachers deserve to know more about mental health, not forced to do more, but deserve to know more, but I 100%

Unknown Speaker  33:45 

think that the quality sort of conditions that teachers have to work and need to get better. We need more

Unknown Speaker  33:50 

TAs, so that we, the teachers, actually have a little bit more time to do the sort of extra stuff, and to build relationships with children.

Unknown Speaker  33:58 

We need to need to do much, much more to make that job competitive, because otherwise no one’s going to work in the, in the sector.

Unknown Speaker  34:05 

I don’t blame people. Well, I’m working with lots of teachers at the moment that are like, because I work with teenagers within the mental health within counselling, but also with adults as well. So, I’ve got lots of teachers come through that on burnout, they’re

Unknown Speaker  34:19 

knackered in the system, like in working for being

Unknown Speaker  34:23 

a teacher for years and years and years, systems change so much, they’re at burnout and they’re on their knees, so teachers’ mental health is just as important as the kids, and they’re coming away from it, and they’re like, Who am I without being a teacher, because they’re in that structure of that organization,

Unknown Speaker  34:42 

but something’s got to shift, because you’ve got to look after, nourish your teachers as well as nourish your kids. Yeah, 100%

Unknown Speaker  34:50 

And that is something that the mental health training – not to keep banging on about it – we do know, you know, people that go through mental health training

Unknown Speaker  34:58 

do actually see a positive impact on their.

Unknown Speaker  35:00 

In mental health, and that we, from these international study, that was one of the other things they looked at, was that teachers that have gone through mental health training actually stay in the profession longer,

Unknown Speaker  35:10 

that they, they are, they, they’ve got a lower suicide rate among the people that have gone through training compared to not gone through training, so there’s lots of indications that actually going through this training will improve the staff experience and their health,

Unknown Speaker  35:26 

and it’s just I think that’s really important as well, that we, that we give them the opportunity to learn more, but then again, you know, you can tell someone to,

Unknown Speaker  35:35 

to sort of look after their own mental health, but if their job is demanding they work until 7pm every night, and they’ve got a classroom of children that, that need extra support, and they don’t, they can’t deal with it, and they’ve got all these things going on, they’ve got a, you know, safeguarding case to deal with, you know, you can be told how to look after yourself as much as you want, it’s a bit like telling someone with heart disease to eat their five a day, it’s sort of like, you know, a little bit patronising, when actually all you need is some big intervention to help your, to help your, your situation. So, I think you know training is a big deal made of training, and I know I make a big deal of it, but it’s a part of a wider system change that needs to happen. It’s just my part that I’m fighting, fighting quite hard for

Unknown Speaker  36:19 

just one part of it, yeah,

Unknown Speaker  36:22 

and it’s just as you said, it’s a whole change that needs to happen, and hopefully it will over time, and I, you know, and yeah, and good luck to you. I wish you all the best going forward with it, I really do. Keep going, don’t stop. Thank you. Yeah, well, I mean, I’m in far, far too deep now to start

Unknown Speaker  36:40 

minimums, I’ve gone for seven years. I can’t doubt

Unknown Speaker  36:47 

exactly.

Unknown Speaker  36:49 

And thank you so much for coming on. Is there anything, so you know, if we’ve got a young person, obviously we get a mixture of schools, parents, teachers listening to this, like you know, if a young person’s listening to this, any advice that you, you know, like to give that young person if they’re struggling to reach out or struggling with their mental health.

Unknown Speaker  37:05 

Yeah, it’s a good, it’s a good

Unknown Speaker  37:08 

one. Struggling to reach out, one of the best things, and tell me if I’m wrong, by the way, but one of the best things I did when I was struggling to reach out, when I desperately needed help, and I knew I needed help, was

Unknown Speaker  37:20 

I, I practiced what that conversation was going to be like, so I knew who I was going to talk to. It was going to be Student Support University by I practiced the conversation, so I sort of wrote down what I wanted to say,

Unknown Speaker  37:34 

and like word for word the sentence I was going to start with,

Unknown Speaker  37:39 

and sort of wrote down a bit of a script for myself, and then I practiced in the mirror,

Unknown Speaker  37:44 

so I like have the conversation I wanted to have out loud, and then I’d sort of anticipate what they might have might reply back to me, and so I could sort of, when I went into that conversation, it was just a tiny, tiny bit less scary, because I’d sort of been there before, and I knew what I was going to say, and it didn’t feel like I had to sit there and make up on the spot, and I bought that piece of paper with all everything I wanted to say with me, so I, if I really just decided not to talk or didn’t want to, I could just give them the piece of paper, so that was based, that’s what I’d say, if you, if you are struggling and you want to reach out, I just think practice, practice, and write it down, and bring things with you, in case you find it too awkward, and you can just give it, and I don’t know, Becky, if that’s something that you would say is a good idea, but it really, really helped me, because it just may made me allowed me to not panic about it, because I had options, and I knew what I was saying, and it was also very staged, which was helpful. No, I think it’s a good idea, I mean, I’m, I’m like ADHD, so my, I get muddled, and then my brain blanks out when I bought, and you ask me a question, and it’s like, I don’t know the answer, but there is nothing up there, it’s emptied out. So, by bullet pointing stuff down, or being able to rehearse it, or listen to those key words, and I think if somebody is listening, listen to the hot words, as I call it, listen to those little key words, and open up the conversations, because once you are opening up, or you’re curious with those conversations, people trust, and they’re open up and share more.

Unknown Speaker  39:16 

Thanks for that. And thank you, Ben, for coming on and sharing your

Unknown Speaker  39:21 

journey, and you know, good luck with the rest of it, and I’m sure you’re going to succeed with everything that you hope to achieve. Thank you. Likewise, you two, thanks for having me on. And what you both do is just amazing. So, it was really great to have this chat. I wish it is this, the nature of podcasts, a very one-sided, but I would have quite liked to put a lot of questions back to you both, but yeah, thanks for having me on. Maybe that’s another podcast.

Unknown Speaker  39:48 

Cheers, guys.

Unknown Speaker  39:50 

Thank you for listening to the JenUp Podcast. Please subscribe, share this podcast, so others can benefit. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at @askjenup.

Unknown Speaker  40:00 

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How to get help?

Jenny Tomei is a Nutritional Therapist and Eating Disorder coach. See all her credentials on her About Jen page and then should you need help then make contact with her today. Your road to recovery can start now!