The Ed Stu

ISSUE NO 8 | Winter/Spring 2023 VOLUME 1

Greetings from some of the journalists in this issue! From left to right see Chloe

SUPPORTING CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH IN AN AGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Third year Education student Chloe Gardiner discusses what schools can do to support future generations in a world of climate change and pandemics.

Why Words Matter

Marnie Mitchell, Masters student in Disability

Studies, considers the role of language in empowering or stigmatizing individuals with impairments.

KEEPING YOUR EYE ON THE GOAL

Rebecca West, second year Education and Criminology student, shares her tips on how to make university work for you.

Education Policies and Education Archives Education students

Grace Last and Josh Reid consider different ways of thinking about education, from current schools policy to learning from newspapers in the past.

Lockdowns, climate anxiety, and children’s mental health: perspectives from teachers in a secondary school in Northern Ireland

Chloe Gardiner, a third year student in Single Honours Education, shares her research on the intersecting impact of lockdowns and climate anxiety on children’s mental health, and what schools can do about this in the future.

Should climate change be taught in in more detail, with guidance for students to identify, and manage, the new emotions of eco-anxiety?

Since the Covid–19 outbreak within the UK in 2020, the lockdowns associated with this, and the climate change leading to climate-anxiety, there has been a rapid rise of mental health issues, especially in secondary school children. In the following article, I explore the impact of lockdowns and climate anxiety on children, and whether there is a link between these phenomena.

Children process things differently compared to adults. Research on this area therefore provides an opportunity for educators to help their students adapt their coping mechanisms to deal with climate anxiety, to provide them with these mechanisms should a similar situation like Covid – 19 happen again in the future, and to help them improve on their current mental health situations more generally.

I make suggestions based on my findings from academic literature, and personal encounters with teachers in a secondary school in Northern Ireland. Some changes that I recommend in order to support young people’s mental health range from further school workshops on climate change, discussion of climate anxiety in schools, through to a commitment to mindfulness activities in educational settings.

I. Key findings about children’s mental health during the Pandemic

Newlove-Delgado et al., 2021, state in a report that there had been an ‘increase in probable mental health problems reported in adults also affected 5–16 year olds in England, with the incidence rising from 10·8% in 2017 to 16·0% in July 2020 across age, gender, and ethnic groups.’ One of the key findings from a connected study was that children experiencing mental health disorders had increased from one in nine (10.8%) in 2017, to one in six in 2020 (16%) (Vizard et al., 2020).

(Waite et al., 2020), published an article discussing how children and adolescent’s mental health changed during the early lockdown of Covid – 19 in the UK, with recorded increases in emotion, hyperactivity and conduct.

Many experts agree that further action is urgently needed, including prioritising social and educational activities, addressing socioeconomic disadvantage, enhancing family support, and improving and expanding child mental healthcare provision.

II. Comparisons with children’s mental health pre-pandemic

Four published studies have compared the mental health of children before and during the pandemic in England. One large national study and two small regional studies found that children’s mental health had worsened, with notable increases in depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after the pandemic, but one large regional study in South West England found no change, or even an increase in wellbeing. These conflicting findings are difficult to explain, but might be due to differences in samples, methods, or assessment dates. (Bunn and Lewis, 2021).

The government report, ‘Children’s Mental Health and the Covid-19 pandemic’ discusses different vulnerability factors that may have influenced a rise in mental health issues for children alongside Covid-19. Some of these vulnerability factors are previous mental health and learning difficulties, socioeconomic disadvantages and family stress, age, gender, and ethnicity. The report also discusses a number of ideas to help improving mental health in children.

III. Climate anxiety and mental health

An area that is less frequently considered in terms of its impact on children’s mental health, and certainly in relation to mental health during the Pandemic, is climate anxiety. Climate anxiety relates to the emotional and psychological impact of climate change, and of awareness of climate change. There are many ways in which an individual can be affected by the climate changing, for example, flooding could cause damage to their homes or businesses, severe storms could also have this effect. Oxfam clarifies that climate emergencies also impact people unequally, and that ‘the people who are the least responsible for causing the emergency in the first place are the people who are impacted by it the most.’ (Oxfam, 2022). Factors such as race, age, gender and geographical location can all be interconnected in influencing how an individual or community is affected by a climate emergency. This is called ‘intersectionality’.

In the face of these concerns about climate change, “Eco-anxiety” is on the rise, and young people seem to be some of the worst affected. Research from 2019 shows that in the UK, 70 percent of 18-24 year-olds were experiencing

“eco-anxiety” - helplessness, anger, insomnia, panic - in the face of climate change and its implications (Friends of the Earth, 2020).

“Eco-anxiety”is on the rise,and young people seem to be some of the worst affected. Research from 2019 shows that in the UK, 70 percent of18-24 year-olds were experiencing“eco-anxiety” - helplessness,anger,insomnia, panic - in the face ofclimate change and its implications” who, as a consequence, are not helped by teachers to even identify emotional concerns as coming from climate change, since climate-anxiety is not fully recognised or discussed in the open.

In a global survey on climate anxiety in young people, Hickman et al., 2021, found that 84% of respondents across the globe were at least moderately worried about climate change, and more than 45% stated their feelings about climate change affected their ‘daily life and functioning’, as well as feelings of being betrayed by the government. Below is a chart taken from Hickman’s article that displays the negative effects of climate change on children and young people from this study.

You can see here just how negatively climate change is affecting children and young people across the globe, with almost 50% of British young people saying they were either extremely or very worried about climate change.

Given the extent of eco-anxiety among young people, it seems likely that its coinciding with lockdowns will have increased mental health pressures on young people.

“Teachers considered school discussions about specific climate-change disasters to be particularly infrequent.”

IV. Impacts of climate

anxiety and Lockdowns: Impressions from a secondary school in Northern Ireland

In the second year of my Education degree at Liverpool Hope, which was in the middle of the Pandemic, I worked with a secondary school in Northern Ireland (from 2021 to 2022) while on placement with the Liverpool World Centre. During this time, I found out a lot about teachers’ perceptions of school responsiveness to climate change, and climate anxiety, as well as their views on the impact of the Pandemic.

My findings from interactions with staff were that the majority of school children were aware of climate change, but that many teachers felt their school needed to do more to support students in their understanding of the issue generally. Teachers considered school discussions about specific climate-change disasters to be particularly infrequent.

While teachers reported that their students felt anger and anxiety in the face of climate change, they also felt that their school did little to increase awareness and understanding of ‘climate anxiety’. This could have considerable implications for students

Clearly, there needs to be more done in regards to climate change and climate anxiety within secondary schools, as these results indicate a lack of knowledge on the current situation of the climate, and also the emotions that are related to climate change, one of which is climate anxiety.

“there needs to be more done in regards to climate change and climate anxiety within secondary schools,as these results indicate a lack ofknowledge on the current situation of the climate,and also the emotions that are related to climate change…”

Although encouraging this emotion of worry – clearly prominent in the U.K. as illustrated by Hickman above - is not the optimum outcome, there is still room for more discussion for the condition of the climate. With such discussion, individuals may be more willing and want to take action faster to make a better environment and climate for them to live in and for future generations. However, it should be carefully done as it is common that when more detail is shared on a matter like this the emotions related tend to rise. Therefore, a system needs to be put in place to enable the recipients (secondary school students) the knowledge of how to deal with their emotions and process in a way which can be beneficial to everyone.

During the pandemic, however, students were experiencing loneliness and anxiety in response to lockdowns in addition to climate anxiety. These are valid emotions given the circumstances that students faced during the lockdowns, missing over a year of face to face learning, being isolated from friends and family, and potentially losing family members or friends to the Coronavirus. Teachers noted that their students had experienced poor mental health as a result of lockdowns, and challenges with motivation once they returned to school.

The teachers that I engaged with supported students through climate anxiety and the pandemic through mindfulness activities. This introduction of mindfulness to help support students is a very positive move and could be one that’s introduced throughout schools across the whole UK, as it would provide students with valuable coping mechanisms and a safe place to share should they wish to do so with their peers.

With this said, teachers also felt that anything done in schools to support students’ mental health in relation to the pandemic and climate-anxiety needed to be supported by complementary actions by the government and parents. This could be addressed by encouraging parents to support the issue at Parent Teacher Associations, or if family support groups were started. Of course this would need to be supported by the government to enable funding.

V. Climate change and the Pandemic – mental health connections, and ideas for the future

Some, such as Ferreira, have linked the Pandemic to climate change by considering changes in temperature and climate as a potential cause of rises in infectious diseases (Ferreira, 2021). By bringing existing research, and my own observations from a school, into conversation with each other, I have sought to show how climate change and the pandemic are also linked by their impact on mental health. Both contribute to anxiety, anger, and feelings of powerlessness among young people in education.

The impact of the pandemic and climate change on mental health is ongoing, and needs to be addressed in education. The education sector, both those working in schools day to day and those who work outside of schools, is in a position to help students and there is a lot more that could be done, even through more widespread use of mindfulness. This is just one example of how students could be supported.

From the perspective of teachers I have encountered in Northern Ireland, students do not know enough regarding climate change and how climate anxiety is affecting them. Again, those within the education sector are in a position to help change this and support students. This could be done by conducting more workshops, having talks regarding the subject, or making a point to cover the topic in detail, in an age specific way, within citizenship education classes. Of course, government support would be required from the designated bodies to supply funding for different approaches, but there is also a lot that can be done without funding.

Given the scale of the problem, with at least 50% of young people in the U.K experiencing climate anxiety at an extreme or high level, and one in six experiencing a mental health disorder more generally, the time to act is now.

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