Young Women: Self-Harm

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I congratulate the centre the noble Earl works for on its anniversary. He is absolutely right about the pressures of adolescence. Unfortunately, the causes of self-harm are not well understood. One of the hypotheses is that the motivation appears to be stress relief, which is an incredibly disturbing idea. I am aware of Lucy Crehan’s work from my previous work in schools. I do not think you can link school accountability with the kind of pressures we are describing today and how they manifest in self-harm. We want schools to be successful. It is vital that children are well educated. It is also true that that can be done in a number of ways. The best schools, including ones that I have been involved with in the past, practise something called positive education which emphasises not only the academic aspect but also character and well-being. I think that is the approach that we need to follow.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, if I may bring the Minister back to his area of responsibility, is he aware of recent research indicating that at primary level, references by doctors to mental health services are least in the deprived areas in the country and those are the areas where the self-harming is rising most of all? Can he tell the House what steps he is taking to halt that and move it in the other direction?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I would be interested to see that evidence. It is not something that I have seen. All I can say is that mental health funding has increased by more than 8% in the last couple of years so there is more money going into it but clearly it is vital that it is properly spread.