Top head: We’re too quick to say pupils have anxiety when it’s just turmoil of being a teenager
Teenagers are being over-diagnosed with mental health conditions when it is just the ‘bumps in the road of growing up’, the headmaster of one of Britain’s top public schools has warned.
James Dahl, master of Wellington College, also warns that social media is teaching teenagers the language that convinces themselves and others they are struggling from depression or anxiety.
Mr Dahl added: ‘Society is still over-willing to ‘pathologise and diagnose as chronic the sort of issues that are just the natural ups and downs of being a human and being a teenager.’
His comments follow Health Secretary Wes Streeting‘s announcement last week that an independent review would be held into the diagnosis of mental health conditions in the face of soaring numbers of sufferers.
Mr Dahl, who has previously warned that social media makes teenagers more suggestible about mental health, said: ‘Talking about it more and giving our young people the language with which they can converse about these feelings is good on one hand, but on the other, it is undoubtedly equipping them with the ability to self-diagnose and self-pathologise more convincingly than would have been the case 25 to 30 years ago.
‘We all know the natural developmental bumps in the road of being a teenager are always fraught.’
He also warned that this was heightened by ‘the TikTok-ification of mental health diagnosis’ trend, with suggestions such as ‘watch this video and in 20 seconds we will give you the three questions that will tell you whether you’re depressed or not’.
Mr Dahl, who has led the Berkshire school since 2019, added: ‘We are too quick to attach labels to young people who are just experiencing the sadnesses and joys of what it means to be teenagers and human beings.’
While Mr Dahl did not ‘feel qualified enough to defend or criticise NHS healthcare professionals’, he said he was ‘curious about whether there had been an over-medification of young people who have seen less-than-chronic symptoms of feeling sad or being anxious’.
Pupils at Wellington – founded by Queen Victoria in 1856 and which numbers comedian Rory Bremner, Racing driver James Hunt and novelist George Orwell among its alumni – are given regular opportunities to reflect on ‘what it is to be a human with emotions and how we fit into the world growing up’.
‘This is the kind of issue Aristotle would have discussed 2,500 years ago,’ said Mr Dahl.
And he questioned whether schools were doing enough ‘to educate about the skills and the character they need to develop’.
‘We do a lot to teach them to be really good at maths, to be better at French and to pass the history exam but is there enough space to educate them about how one needs to go about the business of living a normal, flourishing human life?’
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