Teachers seek help for disturbed

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34000, 14 November 1975, Page 12

Teachers seek help for disturbed

The communityseemed content to ignore the fact that 8000 NewZealand secondary-school pupils might be emotionally disturbed, it was suggested in Christchurch on Wednesday..

Mr W. A. Carson, the chairman of the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association advisory committee on counselling, said a recent survey by the P.P.T.A. had shown that about 6 per cent of pupils were emotionally disturbed. “Yet it is indicative of the attitude which people generally take to these problems, that even though this was made public, the communities seem content to brush these facts under the carpet, despite the fact that unless the cause of these problems is found untold miser.’ will result for manv thousands of young people.”

Mr Carson said that if it were proved that 8000 people were suffering from a disease there would be an outcry for immediate action.

“But in this case, where ' we have detailed facts on the level of emotional disturbance among third and fourthjform pupils, there has been I no public response at all.” PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY The P.P.T.A. had aimed for 'many years to identify the amount of emotional disturbance in secondary schools, and now this had been done, the only wav to attack the problem would be for the community to take its share •of the responsibility. Many adults could help voung people, but generally |New Zealanders preferred to leavn such work to a comimunity agency. ’ Mr Carson said there was no single major cause for the emotional disturbance among .secondary school pupils. I

However, there was significance in the number of parents who bought their children off bv flooding their lives with money and possessions instead of giving them the love and direction they needed. “Some of the most unhappy pupils are those who say their parents do not care what they do. This is the point: so many parents simply do not care enough to give guidance, and so manv young people do not I see freedom as a privilege, 'and therefore they cannot accept limits.” MANY WITHDRAWN

Mr Carson said the survey had shown that many pupils were seriously withdrawn, ■isolated, and neurotic. “It is almost impossible to help these young people in ■the school situation. The rowdy ones who make themselves a nuisance are doing 'this to command attention,

and we generally can help, but for this other large group there is little we can do on our own.” Secondary schools could treat the symptoms of emotional disorder, but were unable to help when it came to the causes. “We can help these people until they leave school, but we are not fitting many thousands of pupils with the right personal growth to fit into the popula- >»

Unless the community faced up to its responsibility to disturbed children, then it would have to face the problem again later when the young people became the charge of the State through admission to Borstals, detention centres, prisons, or psychiatric hospitals. “If you want to look at it in purely monetary terms, it would be far better to employ more social workers,

say on salaries of $7OOO a year, even if they only saved a handful of children from some sort of half life. It certainly costs more than $7OOO to keep people in Borstal or other forms of detention for a year,” Mr Carson said.