September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness month.

Over 200 school children are lost to suicide every year in the UK and these stats are only released for children 10-14.

According to the British Journal of Psychiatry as quoted by an article in The Guardian, about 7% of U.K. children have attempted suicide by age 17 but we don’t talk about suicide in schoolchildren.

Despite a surge in the willingness to talk about mental health since the pandemic, suicide understandably remains a difficult subject to discuss. A terrible shame because confidence issues, anxiety, feelings of low self-worth and “not enoughness” are at an all time high since the pandemic.

Which is why the strides PHSE and SEMH continue to make is amazing because it’s never too early to start reducing risk factors and increasing the protective factors in children’s lives with approaches which build the right mindset, support mental health, develop life skills and promote the development of positive relationships. These will surely facilitate a healthy transition into adulthood.

Here are some fabulous books we curated as part of the latest delivery to the Junior School library at Northampton High School GDST. Teaching children to be able to self-regulate is powerful but more than that is teaching them to identify, process and transform the thoughts which lead to their feelings.

What other titles would you recommend? Please share in the comments