Child and adolescent ‘School Refusal’ is a complex problem that can lead to more serious mental health issues if not recognised and dealt with in the early stages.
School Refusal is when a child stays home, with the full knowledge of the family, because the child cannot cope with the stresses of attending school. This may not be the case for a child who is absent occasionally.
Dr Paul Denborough, head of the Child & Youth Mental Health Service at Alfred Health said, “[it’s a] bit of an emergency particularly if it’s acute because unless you get onto it quickly it can become a really severe problem.”
January can be a difficult time for children preparing to go back to school especially for one to two percent of the population who suffer from this growing problem.
There are several categories of School Refusal but the main motivators are school based issues that children want to avoid such bullying or academic problems, or it could be home based issues such separation or sibling rivalry.
Other issues can include transition to secondary school, fear of teachers, traumatic life event and family stress that may include violence, drugs and alcohol. Sometimes the problem can come from both home and school.
Other observations are that they don’t have a problem at school but they might have some family issue and they just don’t want to be at either place. They want to be out with their peers having fun so they may develop some conduct problems.
School Refusal has been on the rise in the last ten years partly because of the internet and social media where a child’s mental and physical health is in danger of being affected.
“Instead of going to school they stay up all night on the internet,” said Dr Denborough. “That’s become a complication of the problem and made it a lot worse because of the computer addiction and the sleepless problems associated with School Refusal. The three all go together and make it much harder to turn around.”
John Chellew from Bayside School Refusal Clinic specialises in early intervention of certain areas of School Refusal. Mr Chellew’s initial parent/patient contact is to establish the origins of the problem and formulate a strategy for treatment.
Mr Chellew said, “School Refusal can present itself in several ways ranging from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings about going to school to complete school withdrawal.”
Mr Chellew who is an experienced councillor, began his practice last year whe
n he saw a short fall in early intervention counselling. A patient was referred to him by a primary school councillor in the eastern suburbs where his mother who we will call Barbara was having School Refusal problems with her eight-year-old son, who we will call Jake.
“I didn’t know anything was wrong and then one day he just wouldn’t get out of the car, he had white knuckles and just said, ‘I’m not getting out of the car mum’,” said Barbara.
On Jakes first day at school he was anxious like many other children and looked like he was upset so one of the kids next to him in class said, “You’re such a sook.” Unfortunately, the teacher didn’t help with the situation and the teasing continued for a further six weeks until Jake couldn’t cope anymore.
Mr Chellew met with Barbara and formulated a treatment that took about eight weeks. Barbara said, “Jake is usually quite cautious of people he doesn’t know, he opened up to John straight away. John found ways to sort of get Jake to express how he was feeling without prying and forcing him.”
Even though it was a struggle at times, Jake made an effort during the treatment. “John straight away gave him little ways to deal with things,” said Barbara. “After [eight] weeks, he improved dramatically to the point where Jake was the one who turned around and said I don’t think I need to keep coming. That’s a great experience.”
