Adolescent Mental Health and Achievement in the Neoliberal School Environment Coproducing Knowledge with Students as Stakeholders

Contents

Endorsements

Preface

Acknowledgements

Key Terms and their Implications in Educational Policies

Part I: Education and Mental Health

• Chapter 1: Introduction: The Quest for Formal Education—and My Quest!
• Chapter 2: Problematizing Education and Mental Health: Discourses, Policies, and the Neoliberal Paradigm

Part II: Knowledge Co-Production and Early Findings

• Chapter 3: Doing Co-Production of Knowledge through Participation and Ethnography in an Educational Setting
• Chapter 4: Towards Generating Key Themes and Co-Producing Analysis
• Chapter 5: Subject Positions and the Mental Health Spectrum: A Starting Orientation

Part III: Making Sense of Adolescent Struggles

• Chapter 6: Responsibilisation and Adolescent Mental Health through Motivational Drivers
• Chapter 7: Performance and Adolescent Mental Health under Neoliberalism
• Chapter 8: Transition and Adolescent Mental Health While Progressing to University and Work

Part IV: Managing Uncertainty and Crafting Closure

• Chapter 9: Conduct and Resistance as Determinants of Subjectivity and Mental Health
• Chapter 10: Conclusion: So! Does Schooling Influence Mental Health? 

Afterword: Conceptual, Methodological and Practical Implications for Policy Engagement and Transdisciplinary Reach

Index

Biography

Danilo Di Emidio is a Post Doc Research Associate, Global Public Health Unit/Centre for Public Health and Policy, Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, UK.

'This timely book addresses one of the most fundamental issues facing schools today: adolescent mental health. Through an important ethical move that avoids individualising mental health as a personal failure or psychological deficit, Danilo Di Emidio invites us to consider the psycho-social harm of the institution of schooling, from its performative cultures to its exam-driven benchmarks for success. Through ethnographic thick description and participatory research, Danilo Di Emidio captures adolescent mental health as a socially generative form intimately connected to the history and culture of schooling. The result is a richly theorised account of adolescent mental health as pathology and governmentality.'

- Dr. Andrew W Wilkins, Reader in Education, Goldsmiths, University of London

'This important book engages with a vital, and too-often neglected area of education, the deteriorating mental health of our young people. Offering a re-imagining of schooling, it demonstrates the possibilities for a different, caring and democratic educational system where all young people can flourish.'

- Prof Diane Reay, Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge

'This is a book every English parent should read before sending their children to school. Our school students are highly anxious and stressed. Using a careful and rich mix of participatory research, ethnography and social theory the book unpicks the causes of the rising incidence of mental health problems in schools. The unrelenting pressure of performance indicators central to government policy has dire consequences for the mental health of our school students. This book is provocative, shocking and important.'

- Prof Stephen J Ball, Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education at UCL, Institute of Education

'This book offers a compelling and forensic critique of the ways in which England’s neoliberal education system impacts adolescent mental health. Grounded in participatory and empirical research and informed by Foucauldian theory, Di Emidio expertly exposes the damaging contradictions that lie at the heart of government education policy and the complex and chilling way in which this influences young people’s mental health.'

- Dr Bronwen MA Jones, Lecturer in Sociology at UCL, Institute of Education

'Danilo Di Emidio offers a razor-sharp, creative and powerful critique of neoliberal policy and its implications for adolescent mental health. This book is at the cutting edge of Foucauldian theory and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the ‘therapeutic turn’ in education.'

- Dr Patrick Bailey, University College London, IOE - Education, Practice & Society

'This timely book addresses one of the most fundamental issues facing schools today: adolescent mental health. Through an important ethical move that avoids individualising mental health as a personal failure or psychological deficit, Danilo Di Emidio invites us to consider the psycho-social harm of the institution of schooling, from its performative cultures to its exam-driven benchmarks for success. Through ethnographic thick description and participatory research, Danilo Di Emidio captures adolescent mental health as a socially generative form intimately connected to the history and culture of schooling. The result is a richly theorised account of adolescent mental health as pathology and governmentality.'

- Dr Andrew W Wilkins, Reader in Education, Goldsmiths, University of London

'With adolescent mental health currently a highly topical issue, the arrival of this formidable work of scholarship is both timely and bracingly on target. Crucially, in combining carefully balanced, forensically precise research with a child-centred approach, as much in its form as in its content this book provides a well-aimed riposte to those one-size-fits-all, efficiency driven education policies which for too long have insufficiently taken account of students’ psychological well-being. As rigorous as it is humane, it sets out to restore the learner to their rightful place as the complex one among the too often undifferentiated many.'

- David Foster, MA, MSET, Teacher, writer. Author of The City Torn up into Small Pieces