ABSTRACT
A leading authority on mental health in children in the UK has estimated that, in the average secondary school of around a thousand pupils at any one time there will be fifty students who are clinically depressed, a further hundred with significant emotional difficulties, ten affected by eating disorders and up to ten who will attempt suicide in the next year (Mind, 1997). The importance of mental health in children and young people is highlighted by recent concern about increases in:
• children with disruptive behaviour being excluded from schools; • violence in schools and juvenile crime; • psychosocial disorders in young people; • suicides and incidences of self-harm among children and adolescents; • the numbers of children affected by marital breakdown; • the numbers of children involved in substance abuse; • the incidence of children subjected to abuse or neglect.
