Staff experiences of pupils’ self-harming behaviour in an independent girls’ boarding school
Written By: Author(s): Emma Margrett
9 min read
Emma Margrett, Head of the Prep School, Radnor House, Sevenoaks, UK
Background
In recent years, a number of pieces of research have been published that suggest that self-harm in adolescence is increasing (Hall and Place, 2010; Beauchaine et al.,2014; Garcıa-Nieto et al., 2015). Heath et al., (2006) found that a majority of school teachers shared this view. In their study, 74 per cent of teachers surveyed reported a first-hand encounter with self-injury in school. The topic of self-harm is receiving more coverage in mainstream media (Dutta, 2015; Money-Coutts, 2015), suggesting a rise in public consciousness around mental health issues including self-harm. The extent of mental health problems among adolescents has also been publicly acknowledged by the Department of Health, who stated in 2015 that ‘over half of mental health problems in adult life (excluding dementia) start by the age of 14 and seventy-five per cent by age 18’ (Department of Health, 2015, p. 9).
Research into
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