Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-11T15:33:45.038Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Mental Health and Wellbeing

from Part III - Interaction and Inclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2022

By
Michelle O’reilly  and
Jessica Nina Lester
Edited by
Amelia Church  and
Amanda Bateman
Amelia Church
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Amanda Bateman
Affiliation:
Swansea University
Get access

Summary

Communicating effectively with children is fundamental to educational practice. As children spend a significant amount of time in education settings, there is increasing pressure on educators to promote positive mental health and wellbeing, participate in prevention of mental ill health, and work with children diagnosed with existing mental health conditions. However, communicating about mental health, wellbeing, and emotional regulation with children, and generally supporting those with need, can be a challenge. Educators need a communication toolkit to help them build their confidence and competencies in engaging in sensitive and critically important conversations. To develop this toolkit, we spotlight the communication practices used by mental health practitioners in clinical settings, translating key messages for educators. In this chapter we show how question design is instrumental for engagement, and detail ways to manage the complex endeavour of asking children about emotions, feelings, and wellbeing. The data illustrate some of the discursive techniques used by adults when communicating with children about mental health and wellbeing, illustrating examples of good practice for educators. To demonstrate this, we utilize excerpts of data from the assessments data and translate clinical practice into educational knowledge.

Keywords

childreninitial assessmentsmental healthconversation analysisinterdisciplinarycommunication
Type
Chapter
Information
Talking with Children
A Handbook of Interaction in Early Childhood Education
 , pp. 331 - 351
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, S., O’Reilly, M., and Karim, K. (2019). Why do teachers need to know about mental health? In Cardern, C. (ed.), Primary Teaching (pp. 535–552). London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Barrocas, A., Hankin, B., Young, J., and Abela, J. (2012). Rates of nonsuicidal self-injury in youth: age, sex, and behavioral methods in a community sample. Pediatrics, 130, 39–45.Google Scholar
Bor, W., Dean, A., and Najman, J. (2014). Are child and adolescent mental health problems increasing in the 21st century? A systematic review. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 48(7), 606–616.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brownlow, C., and Lamont-Mills, A. (2015). The production of the ‘normal child’: exploring co-constructions of parents, children and therapists. In O’Reilly, M. and Lester, J. N. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Child Mental Health: Discourse and Conversation Studies (pp. 233–251). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.Google Scholar
Burman, E. (2008). Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burns, I. M., Baylore, C., Dudgeon, B. J., Starks, H., and Yorkston, K. (2018). Healthcare provider accommodations for patients with communication disorders. Topics in Language Disorders, 37(4), 311–333.Google Scholar
Chu, B., and Kendall, P. (2004). Positive associations of child involvement and treatment outcome within a manual-based cognitive behavioral treatment with anxiety. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72, 821–829.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davis, L. (1995) Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Department for Education. (2018). Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0 to 25 years. Available from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/398815/SEND_Code_of_Practice_January_2015.pdf [last accessed 16 December 2021].Google Scholar
Drew, P., Chatwin, J., and Collins, S. (2001). Conversation analysis: a method for research into interactions between patients and health-care practitioners. Health Expectations, 4(1), 58–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frances, A. (2013). Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalisation of Ordinary Life. New York, NY: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Freed, A. (1994). The form and function of questions in informal dyadic conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 21, 621–644.Google Scholar
Gall, M. D. (1970). The use of questions in teaching. Review of Educational Research, 40(5), 707–721.Google Scholar
Hutchby, I., and Moran-Ellis, J. (1998). Situating children’s competence. In Hutchby, I. and Moran-Ellis, J. (eds.), Children and Social Competence: Arenas of Social Action (pp. 7–26). London: The Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Karim, K. (2015). The value of conversation analysis: a child psychiatrist’s perspective. In O’Reilly, M. and Lester, J. N. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Child Mental Health: Discourse and Conversation Studies (pp. 25–41). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karim, K., McSweeney, E., and O’Reilly, M. (in press). Communication in child mental health: improving engagement with families. In O’Reilly, M. and Lester, J. (eds.), Improving Communication in Mental Health Settings: Evidence-Based Recommendations from Practitioner-Led Research. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kiyimba, N., Lester, J., and O’Reilly, M. (2019). Using Naturally Occurring Data in Health Research: A Practical Guide. London: Springer.Google Scholar
Kiyimba, N., O’Reilly, M., and Lester, J. (2018). Agenda setting with children using the three wishes technique. Journal of Child Health Care, 22(3), 419–432.Google Scholar
Kiyimba, N., and O’Reilly, M. (2018). Reflecting on what ‘you said’ as a way of reintroducing difficult topics in child mental health assessments. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 23(3), 148–154.Google Scholar
Kiyimba, N., and O’Reilly, M. (2020). The clinical use of Subjective Units of Distress scales (SUDs) in child mental health assessments: a thematic evaluation. Journal of Mental Health, 29(4), 418–423.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Larson, J. S. (1996). The World Health Organization’s definition of health: social versus spiritual health. Social Indicators Research, 38, 181–192. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00300458CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leiter, V. (2007). ‘Nobody’s just normal, you know’: the social creation of developmental disability. Social Science and Medicine, 65(8), 1630–1641.Google Scholar
Lester, J., and O’Reilly, M. (2019). Applied Conversation Analysis: Social Interaction in Institutional Settings. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Mash, E. J., and Hunsley, J. (2005). Special section: developing guidelines for the evidence-based assessment of child and adolescent disorders. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychology, 34(3), 362–379.Google Scholar
Matheson, L. (2014). Your Faithful Brain: Designed for So Much More! Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press.Google Scholar
McCabe, R. (2006). Conversation analysis. In Slade, M. and Priebe, S. (eds.), Choosing Methods in Mental Health Research: Mental Health Research from Theory to Practice (pp. 24–46). Hove: Routledge.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, M., Adams, S., Whiteman, N., Hughes, J., Reilly, P., and Dogra, N. (2018). Whose responsibility is adolescent mental health in the UK? The perspectives of key stakeholders. School Mental Health, 10, 450–461.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, M., Hutchby, I., and Kiyimba, N. (2019). Children’s competence in assessments. In Lamerichs, J., Danby, S., Bateman, A., and Ekberg, S. (eds.), Children’s Social Competence in Mental Health Talk (pp. 480–499). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, M., Karim, K., and Kiyimba, N. (2015). Question use in child mental health assessments and the challenges of listening to families. British Journal of Psychiatry Open, 1(2), 116–120.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, M., and Lester, J. (2017). Examining Mental Health through Social Constructionism: The Language of Mental Health. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, M. Muskett, T., Karim, K., and Lester, J. (2020). Parents constructions of normality and pathology in child mental health assessments. Sociology of Health and Illness, 42(3), 544–564.Google Scholar
Persson, S., Hagquist, C., and Michelson, D. (2017). Young voices in mental health and care: exploring children’s and adolescents’ service experiences and preferences. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 22(1), 140–151.Google Scholar
Prout, A., and James, A. (2015). A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance, promise and problems. In James, A. and Prout, A. (eds.), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood (Classic edition) (pp. 6–28). Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Public Health England. (2017). Secondary school staff get mental health ‘first aid’ training. Available from: www.gov.uk/government/news/secondary-school-staff-get-mental-health-first-aid-training [last accessed 16 December 2021].Google Scholar
Reinke, W. M., Stormont, M., Herman, K. C., Puri, R., and Goel, N. (2011). Supporting children’s mental health in schools: teachers’ perceptions of needs, roles and barriers. School Psychology Quarterly, 26(1), 1–13.Google Scholar
Rothi, D. M., Leavey, G., and Best, R. (2008). On the front-line: teachers as active observers of pupils’ mental health. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 1217–1231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, D., Crossin, R., Ogeil, R., Smith, K., and Lubman, D. (2018). Exploring harms experienced by children aged 7 to 11 using ambulance attendance data: a 6-year comparison with adolescents aged 12–17. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15, 1385–1398.Google Scholar
Shanley, D., Reid, G., and Evans, B. (2008) How parents seek help for children with mental health problems. Administration and Policy in Mental Health, 35, 135–146.Google Scholar
Svirydzenka, N., Aitken, J., and Dogra, N. (2016). Research and partnerships with schools. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 51, 1203–1209.Google Scholar
The Guardian. (2017). Demanding workload driving young teachers out of profession. Available from: www.theguardian.com/education/2017/apr/15/demanding-workload-driving-young-teachers-out-of-profession [last accessed 16 December 2021].Google Scholar
Theobald, M. (2016). Achieving competence: the interactional features of children’s storytelling. Childhood, 23(1), 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Theron, L. C. (2016). Toward a culturally and contextually sensitive understanding of resilience: privileging the voices of black, South African young people. Journal of Adolescent Research, 31, 635–670.Google Scholar
Thomas, F., Hansford, L., Ford, J., Wyatt, K., McCabe, R., and Byng, R. (2018). Moral narratives and mental health: rethinking understandings of distress and healthcare support in contexts of austerity and welfare reform. Palgrave Communications, 4(39).Google Scholar
Ungar, M. (2012). Researching and theorizing resilience across cultures and contexts. Preventive Medicine, 55(5), 387–389.Google Scholar
United Nations. (1989). Conventions on the Rights of the Child. New York, NY: United Nations.Google Scholar
Walsh, B. A., and Blewitt, P. (2006). The effect of questioning style during storybook reading on novel vocabulary acquisition of preschoolers. Early Childhood Education Journal, 33(4), 273–278.Google Scholar
Walsh, B. A., Sánchez, C., and Burnham, M. M. (2016). Shared storybook reading in head start: impact of questioning styles on the vocabulary of Hispanic dual language learners. Early Childhood Education Journal, 44(3), 263–273.Google Scholar
Walsh, R. L., and Hodge, K. A. (2018). Are we asking the right questions? An analysis of research on the effect of teachers’ questioning on children’s language during shared book reading with young children. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 18(2), 264–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolpe, J. (1969). The Practice of Behavior Therapy. New York, NY: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
World Health Organization. (2014). Mental health: A state of well-being. Available from: www.who.int/features/factfiles/mental_health/en/ [last accessed 16 December 2021].Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×