[ Current issue ] [ Back issues ] [ Special Issues ]

Editor's Letter - November 2007

“We need to be better at understanding how factors such as age or culture impact on how people express mental distress”

The popular psychology section of my local bookshop is twice the size of the psychology section – and growing. Its shelves are crammed with books bearing titles such as Fix your life!, Change your thoughts: change your life and Be your own life coach. Clearly, mental health is big business. Yet, despite the popularity of self-help books and celebrity-driven television programmes about mental health, fear of stigma and discrimination means that people struggling with such difficulties often find social isolation among the problems they face. For thousands of people, accessing learning offers a route out of isolation, a means of building confidence, widening social networks and improving job prospects.

Provision and support for learners with mental health difficulties has improved markedly over the past decade. Kathryn James recalls the isolation of practitioners striving to establish support services to help mental health service users access learning in the early 1990s. Not only were you likely to be the only person in your institution working with that group of learners, you had also to contend with the fears and discriminatory attitudes of colleagues.

That has begun to change. There are now many examples of good practice and successful support of practitioners in the field. It is clear too, Kathryn James writes, that people with mental health difficulties are no longer as bound by others’ low expectations as they once were. As John McClean, Coordinator of Hackney Community College’s Mental Health Education Project, points out, the burden on practitioners is considerably eased when there is organisational support and recognition for the work. His project has had it for 10 years.

The work itself is as varied and unpredictable as the learners themselves. And they, of course, come from every walk of life, at every educational level. One in four people will be affected by mental health problems during their lives, according to the World Health Organisation. John, therefore, has to be flexible in terms of the level and type of support he offers. The service he provides is, he says, ‘student led’, but it is also focused on progression, from discrete provision into mainstream education and employment.

George Llewellyn is one of two learners John has worked with who have gone on to teach at Hackney. His transition back into education and work has been punctuated by serious set backs and relapses, but the support he has received has been constant. While he continues to struggle with depression he can now ‘walk with his head up’, thinking seriously, for the first time in years, about the future. His story demonstrates the positive, sometimes transformational, impact being in learning can have on an individual’s mental health and how it can support recovery. Practitioners too continue to learn, often by listening to and involving learners in their work. As Kathryn James argues, we need to be better at understanding how factors such as age or culture impact on how people express mental distress and how they access and experience services. Pam Ringland shows how important it is to forge close links with Early Intervention in Psychosis services.

An important aspect of recovery, as Pam Ringland observes, is to learn to see oneself as something more than a ‘mental health patient’. One way in which mental health service users do this is through art and creative writing. In preparing this issue of Adults Learning we put out a call to support groups and educational projects for writing and artwork produced by mental health service users. The response was overwhelming, often moving, and always engaging. Although we’ve only been able to use a small number of the contributions we’d like to offer our thanks to everyone who took the trouble to share their work with us.

Paul Stanistreet, Editor, Adults Learning