When I first developed obsessive-compulsive disorder at the age of eleven, I was coming to the end of my time at primary school and beginning to prepare what would undoubtedly be a daunting move into year seven. Now, I'm not saying that everyone else found this thought easy to deal with - moving to a school more than twice the size of your current one where almost everyone around you is a scary process no matter what your circumstances, but in my case, there was one factor that was about to make the switch ten times harder. I could not - and, in fact, still can't - sit or stand with my back to anyone without experiencing serious anxiety, and without any kind of explanation for what I was experiencing, I was stuck. And once I got to secondary school, I was faced with the prospect of having every lesson in a different classroom, and with a different teacher. This meant having to face new classes full of people I had never seen before, walk down crowded corridors several times a day (no mean feat when you're trying to keep the back of your head invisible to every other person) and, worst of all, sit in a different seat in every single class. I specifically remember that I was not sat at the back of the room even once in the whole of my first year, despite the fact that the seating plans were changed every half term. Which meant that, every six weeks, I would walk into each lesson in turn and have to face the news that I would be sitting at the front of the room again.
This continued until the end of year nine (the third year), when I finally managed to figure out what was going on inside my head. When I came back to school at the beginning of year ten, I was genuinely hopeful that things would change for the better. I had a diagnosis, which meant that I could explain my situation and hopefully gain some support and understanding. And, at the beginning, it seemed that I was right. My head of year sent a message to all of my teachers telling them that I would need to sit at the back of the class, and I even managed to explain it to one or two of them myself. So, when I walked into my French lesson at the start of this term and saw that I had been placed right in the middle of the room, I nearly collapsed. If I hadn't known better, I would have run straight out of the room. French is the only lesson I have in which I am physically incapable of explaining my situation to the teacher, who insists that every student must speak only in French from the moment they enter the room. I was angry - why would she do this, when not only my parents but a fellow teacher had specifically told her that I needed to sit at the back? I told myself that she had probably just forgotten, but then I realised that that was not an excuse. If I had a visual impairment and needed to sit at the front, my teachers wouldn't forget. If I was a wheelchair user, they wouldn't suddenly decide that I could handle having a lesson on the top floor. Why should it be different just because I have a mental health problem, rather than a physical one? I decided that I needed to do some research, and find out what rights I have to be given support from my school. The result? It would appear that I have none. I couldn't even find a guideline which suggested that people like me be offered a certain level of support from any kind of primary school, secondary school or sixth form college in the UK.
The issue of schools and mental health was brought to my attention last weekend, when my cousin Clarissa texted me to tell me that her mum would be meeting with her head of year about the panic attacks she'd been having at school. I texted her again yesterday to find out how it went, fully expecting to be told that she'd been referred to her local mental health services and that she was going to get the help she needed. Did that happen? No. Apparently, the best the school decided they could do was to provide my cousin with a red card that she could "wave at her teachers to get her out of class if necessary". Which is fine in the short term, but from a long term perspective actually solves nothing at all. And when I heard that the teacher who allocated said card dismissed her panic attacks as "moments", I was angry again. Is anything actually being done to help her? Seemingly not. Does no one realise that untreated anxiety disorders do nothing but worsen? What we need is genuine support, and when that support isn't given by an establishment where we spend so much of our time, it can almost seem like it's not worth having at all.
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