JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: The dizzying rise of diagnoses of mental ill health is saddling our children with problems for life

JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: The dizzying rise of diagnoses of mental ill health is saddling our children with problems for life

If you are the parent or grandparent of a child attending school in Scotland, prepare yourself for a shock. There is almost certainly something wrong with the youngster which is impairing his or her ability to learn.

It is nobody’s fault. Don’t go blaming yourselves – and certainly not the poor child. It’s just the rottenest of luck.

Scottish schools have been saddled with a lot of this lately. How else to explain the near-600 per cent increase in pupils with mental health issues in the last decade?

Our youngsters have been particularly unfortunate in avoiding what teachers call ASN (additional support needs). Ten years ago, only seven per cent of pupils fell into it. Now it is over 40 per cent. 

If the last years are anything to go by, next year’s figure will be higher still. Soon it will be half. It’s like a disease, ravaging classrooms, and there are multiple strains.

There is, for example, the 303 per cent rise in pupils with communication support needs. So many more of them today than in 2015 for some reason.

Dyslexia has more than doubled while the number with autism spectrum disorder is up 240 per cent. In space of a decade, schools are seeing 150 per cent more pupils with social, emotional and behavioural issues.

What we appear to be witnessing is an explosion of disorders attending Scotland’s youth – one claiming victims so rapidly that, I’m sorry, but it is difficult to see how your child will remain immune.

Dyslexia has more than doubled since 2015, while the number with autism spectrum disorder is up 240 per cent

Indeed, I am not entirely clear why the Scottish Government has not declared a national childhood emergency. Is there something in the water? Or a form of sick building syndrome, perhaps, affecting every state secondary in the land?

More surprising than the figures themselves, surely, is the very absence of surprise which greets them. Not one soul in government seems to be wondering whether a 580 per cent increase in ASN since 2015 can possibly be right.

I hear only credulous acceptance of the data and assurances of more millions being ploughed into support provision.

Possibly I am being obtuse. Those at the sharp end will likely tell you that, of course, the numbers of pupils suffering from one or more of this multitude of disorders has not actually increased as dramatically as this. It’s just that in the modern day we are so much better at diagnosing these issues than we were back in 2015 when medical science was in its infancy.

Yes, in those days, pupils could progress through the education system in blissful ignorance of their mental health issue. Some of them may not even yet be aware of it.

We don’t let that happen today.

We diagnose. Or, more accurately, we over-diagnose. Our schools are obsessed with diagnosis, much of it not very clinical at all.

They have evolved from the dark days of ‘must try harder’. In our enlightened times we identify the underlying cerebral failing which hampered the application of sufficient effort.

Classroom violence? Disruptiveness? Abusiveness towards teachers? Symptoms, almost certainly, of something as yet undiagnosed. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of it. There’ll be a name for it. There always is.

As we learned last year there is even a name for the thing pupils have when they tell their teachers they identify as a wolf or a cat – and it isn’t a cheek.

Their ‘species dysphoria’ is taken at face value and allowances are made – wolves not being noted for their flair for algebra.

My primary school report cards used to say I was easily distracted. Of course I was. What six-year-old doesn’t love distractions?

One particularly cutting remark from a German teacher in a report from secondary school was that my year’s performance was satisfactory but ‘hardly scintillating’.

Back then, we had to take those jibes on the chin. And do you know what stung most about what Mr Macgregor said of me? He was bang on. I wasn’t giving my best and we both knew it.

How, I wonder, would such issues be handled today? Might the fact that my mind wandered have secured me a test for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Would Mr Macgregor have been forced to wonder whether I was on the spectrum and alter his assessment accordingly?

My point is not that these disorders are made up. With the exception of species dysphoria, I am happy to accept that they not only exist but also, in their most acute forms, present a serious impediment to learning.

My issue is with the pile-on effect of over-diagnosis, the rush to explain away everything that is going wrong in our classrooms in terms of alleged defects in our children’s brains.

Therapeutic labels are being thrown around like sweeties to mask institutional educational failings and excuse the deteriorating behaviour which has left many teachers in fear for their safety in the classroom.

It serves nobody well, least of all the mushrooming rump of kids now saddled for life with an ASN badge they should probably not be wearing.

Common sense must tell us a figure fast approaching 50 per cent of Scottish children needing specialised support in schools is a nonsense.

And yet attaching the label to ever higher numbers of youngsters is considered doing them a favour – freeing them from the burden of believing they could have made more of their schooling.

Dyslexia sufferers have long been prone to saying things like: ‘I always thought I was stupid. It turns out my brain is just wired differently from yours.’ And, for those who did think that and now know better, I am delighted.

But we are churning out a generation of school leavers who buy into the fiction that their chances of success are gravely impacted by disorders beyond their control.

‘I had ADHD so, you see, I didn’t stand a chance.’

‘They told me I had communication support needs. Doomed from the start, then.’

We are progressing steadily to the point where no child’s Scottish education will be complete without that diagnostic note to stand as an excuse for life for what is not achieved.

Roll up and find out what’s wrong with you! Keep this letter safe and refer to it any time you are tempted to believe you could have done better at something.

I rather prefer to believe that we can all do better – that challenges, where they genuinely exist, can at best be overcome and at worst mitigated.

Where they don’t exist in any meaningful form, we limit children’s horizons by telling them they do. We indulge half-hearted efforts by letting them off the hook.

I say this as a former schoolboy who knew all the tricks – one who constantly looked for excuses not to study. I say this because my parents, who understood their son well, guessed quite astutely that the only disorder going on here was teenager syndrome and that it would pass.

Has the world changed so very much? Are there any teenagers left who would benefit from that metaphorical boot to the backside – delivered with love, of course –

or are they all safely hived off to the appropriate branch of medical science?

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