Thread by @naomicfisher

'You don't have a clue what it's like'. One of the ways in which people dismiss me is by telling me I'm not a teacher and so I don't understand.'Armchair warrior' they say, implying that I should butt out and let teachers get on with the job in the way that they know is best.1/

Here's why I can't do that, and why we should never accept that 'teachers know best' - or indeed, any other professional. No professionals should be immune to feedback from the outside. For things can look one way from inside a profession, and very different from the outside.2/

I deal with the casualties of the system. The parents desperate for help, whose children are not just refusing to go to school, they are also refusing to get dressed or leave the house - ever. The children who say they want to die because they can see no other way out. 3/

And the adults who tell me of years of feeling invisible and invalidated at school, and how this feeling is still with them now. They tell me of the shame, of public humiliation, of everyone know that they were the 'bad one'. They say they still feel 'wrong' now. 4/

Often it isn't about specific incidents at school although there are sometimes memories of being forced to eat custard, or sitting outside the headteachers office whilst everyone files past. Often it's vaguer than that, more general. It's about how the system made them feel.5/

'I felt like I was just a test score' they say. or 'I wasn't interested in lessons, and they said that the things I was interested in wouldn't get me any GCSEs so I stopped doing them. Now I don't know what I am interested in any more.' 6/

I speak to them because I am a mental health professional. They come to me in the hope that I can help them feel better. There is an endless flow of referrals. I have to turn people away every day because I cannot see them all. 7/

It's like using a mop to stem a river. Or a plaster to cover a gaping wound. No matter how many I help, there will always be more. The system produces them. Our education system is not set up for human flourishing. It is set up to produce winners and losers. 8/

It's an education system based on control and compliance. It's a system which deliberately makes young people reliant on the approval of others for their self esteem. It's a system which uses anxiety to motivate - and then is surprised when young people become anxious. 9/

Our education system doesn't just leave many young people feeling like failures, it literally labels a large proportion of our young people as failures. It is set up to do so. It's not possible for everyone to succeed because success is judged against the failure of others. 10/

The young people I see are usually invisible to teachers, because they aren't in school anymore, or if they are, they keep their heads down. They appear 'fine'. I was one of these - the teachers said I seemed 'fine' when they saw me - I thought 'What other option do I have?'11/

So when I am called an 'armchair warrior' or told that I am just telling hardworking teachers that they are doing it wrong, I wonder, how will this information ever get back to schools, if people like me don't talk about it? 12/

There is no special communication between mental health services and education. No one says, hang on a minute, your practices in school seem to be causing an awful lot of distress over here, could we maybe get together & rethink? No one thinks about YP in an integrated way. 13/

So schools continue, often oblivious to the distress that is going on at home and outside school. And mental health services continue, doing our best to patch people back together again so we can send them back. The waiting list gets longer and longer. 14/

NO. Mental health is so much more than treatment of symptoms. It's about human distress and how we respond to it - which includes looking at causes.I would be failing if I 'stayed in my lane' and got on with therapy, without challenging the system which causes distress. 15/

Just to be clear, I am not at all saying that school is the only source of distress for young people. There are many things we can't change in YP's lives. Poverty, family breakdown, discrimination, abuse, all of these are real. But school is a social institution. 16/

School could be a chance to make a positive difference in how young people see themselves and the world.What if we dropped the competition and control and instead focused on helping YP to develop a sense of themselves as autonomous people whose contribution has value? 17/

There are schools& teachers trying to do this all over the world.They do an amazing job. But they too need to heard from those outside education about the side effects of what they do. Only then can we work together to find an integrated way to do better for all young people.18/