Burnt out By School

Why are so many of our teenagers so withdrawn?

I regularly ask parents what they would like me to talk about in a webinar (and I would love to hear from you, if you have an idea). One topic comes up again and again, and it’s teenagers who are no longer going to school.

Parents get in touch in desperation, telling me that their bright and curious children have withdrawn into their bedrooms, that they are no longer doing all the things they used to enjoy, and that everything they say makes things worse. Some young people have always found school hard, but others seemed to be managing fine until something happened. Others tell me how the pandemic was a crisis point for them, that their teenagers never really came back out of lockdown. Schools reopened, but their young people couldn’t go back.

It’s hard for these parents and young people to get help, because teenagers who don’t go to school are usually seen negatively. “Drop outs’ is one of the politer terms I’ve heard. The problem is almost always thought to be in the family - maybe parents aren’t pushing hard enough, aren’t supporting the school enough, or maybe the young person just needs to ‘wise up’. Parents tell me that schools say they should just insist, as if the problem is their lack of effort. CAMHS have waiting lists which are years long, and unless a young person is actively suicidal, they often do not get prioritised.

The reasons why this happens to young people are complicated, and there is definitely not one explanation. However, I think there are useful ways that we can think about the psychology of what is going on, and one way is using the model of burn out. There’s a lot written about burn out in adults, and not much written about teenagers, but I think that a lot of it applies.

One of the interesting things about burn out is that it is not considered to be a medical condition (unlike other mental health diagnoses) - but something that happens as a result of chronic stress in the environment. The World Health Organisation says in the ICD-11 (the international manual for categorising diseases and disorders). “Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

What if lots of our teenagers (and particularly the PDA/autistic ones) are suffering as a result of chronic school stress that has not been successfully managed? What might that tell us about how to help them? And what are the stages of recovery?

This is the topic of my mini-course, specifically aimed at parents of teenagers who are burnt out by school. I hope that it will give you a new way to think about what’s happening for your teen, and some ideas as to how to help.

Burnt Out by School?