📚 Getting a Grip on Mental Health
Reflections on the SW London Mental Health Conference 2025 and Mental Health Awareness Week
For more than a year now, I’ve been sitting around the table at a school academy board, and one topic keeps coming up: attendance.
That might sound like a dry statistic — but attendance is a keystone of learning. Each lesson builds on the last. Miss a day, and it’s like skipping an episode of a complex drama: the characters, the plot, the connections start to slip. Covid broke that sequence for many children. And for some, school has never quite made sense since.
But the second — and deeper — part of the story is mental health.
A Word We Never Had
“Mental health” is a phrase we didn’t use when I was growing up. It barely existed in public discourse ten years ago — yet now it dominates headlines, school staff rooms, and family conversations.
Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation makes a compelling case that the explosion in childhood anxiety is inextricably linked to digital life. Adolescence, once a private and physical journey, now takes place online — emotionally, academically, socially.
I think back to my own childhood in the 60s and 70s, sitting on the front doorstep waiting for friends to come out on their bikes. We didn’t have a television, let alone TikTok. We had time, imagination, face-to-face conversation. We had real life.
Wake-Up Call or Disconnect?
This week, the government called for action: “Getting a grip on mental health”. The evidence is clear. Poor mental health is now visibly affecting:
- School attendance
- Academic performance
- Long-term employment outcomes
- The wider economy
For many older people, this feels like a long-overdue wake-up call.
But for the younger generation — many of whom view mental health as their defining priority — it may sound more like a shock, a disappointment, or even dismissal.
What’s Driving the Crisis?
The government is rightly expanding mental health support in schools. But many, including speakers at the SW London Mental Health Conference, say we must also look at home life — particularly parental phone use. The role modelling children see from adults glued to their screens cannot be ignored.
One of the most practical solutions could also be the simplest:
- Reduce or eliminate phone use in school
- Keep phones off the table during meals and homework
- Create screen-free bedrooms, especially at night
These aren’t radical ideas. They’re common sense. But they require a cultural reset — and adult buy-in.
Bigger than Schools
The mental health crisis doesn’t end at the school gate. It spills into families, into hospitals, and into the economy. The cost is already too high to ignore.
If we want to build a healthier, more resilient generation, it’s not just about services. It’s about habits. Time. Talk. Presence.
And maybe a few more afternoons sitting on the doorstep, waiting for someone to come out and play.
Find out more about Tolworth Hospital £150m redevelopment due 2027 and Barnes Hospital £17m redevelopment. Both will be transformational for mental health provision in our joint Richmond and Kingston NHS Trust Foundation.
https://swlstg.nhs.uk/ceo-messages
Watch here for an update on the site and the redevelopment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzx-CJBCUwY
https://swlstg.nhs.uk/latest-news/mental-health-awareness-week-2025-nhs…
