The UK’s mental health “crisis” is “blighting the lives” of children across the country, but campaigners are determined to combat this by sending a letter to Theresa May every day until she agrees to put the subject on the curriculum.
The Self-Esteem Team are today launching #letters2tess.
It comes after a campaign that targeted David Cameron with 76 letters, and led to a meeting with the Department for Education.
But the group, comprising former children’s mental health tsar Natasha Devon, Nadia Mendoza and Grace Barrett, said that meeting “amounted to nothing”.
Now they are now restarting their campaign with the new prime minister.
The Self-Esteem Team writes: “We’ve spent a decade travelling the UK, working with more than 70,000 teens, and our multi award-winning lessons in mental wellbeing help students cope with the pressures of modern life.
“After all, grades mean nothing if we don’t have our health.
“The problem is, whilst we are currently visiting an average of five schools per week, there are three of us and 25,000 schools in the country. Enter you, stage right.”
The Self-Esteem Team emphasises the need for mental health wellbeing to be taught in schools by stressing the fact that suicide is the second biggest killer of 10-24 year olds in the UK.
The campaigners say they have trialled their Get SET initiative in schools nationwide and have created 35 exercises, every one of which can be practiced in 10 minutes.
The exercises can be introduced and practiced during form time, as part of a PSHE lesson, or woven into the fabric of other classes, the Self-Esteem Team says.
The letter continues: “By teaching positive habits, simply and cost-effectively, we impact not only the individual, but the culture of their school and family life too.
“We have teamed up with UCL who are collecting data to measure the programme’s efficacy, and now we would like the opportunity to present these results to you.
“We’re not chasing tea and biscuits in Downing Street, we care only to make a real, deep-rooted change.
“We know there’s a mountain to climb, but we hear you’re a fan of hiking.”