Students as young as 13 are resorting to self-harm and school refusal amid crippling academic pressures in the wake of Covid, EveryYouth, the national charity for youth homelessness, told the Independent.

Frontline mental health workers from EveryYouth’s national Network of Delivery Partners have reported a crisis of school disengagement among 13, 14 and 15-year-olds, some of whom were as young as eight when the pandemic started in 2020.

The number of young people presenting with a safeguarding risk to mental health services within the EveryYouth Network has also soared, with services struggling to access the right support for young people with increasing complex needs.

EveryYouth Trustee Matt Garrod, who is Director of Operations (Housing and homelessness) at the Benjamin Foundation in East Anglia, said: “We’re seeing more and more young people coming into our accommodation services with complex needs and with mental health challenges. We’re suffering from the fallout from the pandemic.

“Our young person population hasn’t recovered from that yet. It has created a perfect storm nationally, in terms of young people’s mental health challenges and a lack of services and counselling support.”

At youth homelessness charity Step by Step, which delivers free counselling to hundreds of children aged 11 to 25 in Surrey and Hampshire each year, safeguarding alerts and self-harm incidences among young people have risen sharply.

Safeguarding alerts have jumped from seven in the three months April to June 2020, to 98 in the three months January to March 2023. This is partly due to increased reporting on referral, but mainly due to increased levels of need.

Safeguarding alerts can include any wellbeing concerns for a child or young person, including self-harm, suicidal behaviour, exploitation risks and abuse. Reports of suicidal behaviour have also increased, with 66 cases in the three months April to June 2024, and 53 reports of self-harm.

“Young people are using self-harm as a coping mechanism,” Step by Step Counselling Service Lead Praveena Pakium says.

“The minute exams approach or a new school year starts, we start to see anxiety building among students as they face pressure to deliver good grades. Often young people say that pressure comes from schools, as they try to meet certain targets, as well as parents.”

Ms Pakium says young people are talking about self-harm among their peers and this could be contributing to an increase.

“We don’t want it to be a taboo thing. Talking openly about self-harm is good, but it appears there’s an increase within this age group because they’re all talking about it,” she said.

“Young people are using self-harm as a coping mechanism.”

Ms Pakium says there is a direct correlation between self-harm incidences increasing among young people and crunch points during the academic year.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing an incline in young people using our mental health services during spring mock exams in February, because we’ve seen that before. We also see an influx at the start of each new academic year in September, whether someone is going into college, university or moving up a year at school.  

“It does show that young people’s mental health is directly affected by academic pressures.”

EveryYouth Delivery Partners are reporting a similar trend among young people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness.  These are often young people whose families were already struggling, many chronically unable to give their children the support they need.

Llamau, a Delivery Partner in Wales, has seen the number of young people in its supported housing services identifying at risk of self-harm steadily increasing in the last five years, with a total of 154 in 2020/21 rising to 174 in 2023/24.

EveryYouth Delivery Partner Aberdeen Foyer is seeing a worrying trend in school disengagement among young people it supports in North East Scotland.

Educational Psychologist and Service Manager at Aberdeen Foyer, Martyna Lambon, says: “We forgot we left these kids behind after the pandemic. Nothing was normal for them growing up during that time, and now resilience is something they really struggle with.

“We forgot we left these kids behind after the pandemic.”

“Some 16 and 17-year-olds appear to have lost all hope if they fail their final exams or leave school earlier. They no longer believe in themselves or their future, convinced they have no chance of achieving anything.”

EveryYouth’s mental health programme, EveryYouth Healthy, helps Delivery Partners to provide young people with up to 12 free counselling sessions within weeks or months of being referred. This is double the six sessions offered by the NHS, which some young people wait years to access.

A total of 245 young people were supported by EveryYouth Healthy in 2024, with 92.6% reporting an improvement to their self esteem. A  total of 89.6% said they felt positive about their future.

EveryYouth CEO Nick Connolly says: “Students struggling to stay resilient under immense pressure from schools, parents and social media must have quick and free access to counselling, whatever their postcode.

“Students experiencing homelessness face even bigger challenges to their academic performance and are 7.5 times more likely to have reported frequent absences from school. Often these young people find themselves without a home due to unimaginable trauma, abuse or neglect, which can contribute further to self-harm and suicidal ideation.

“The mental health crisis can only be solved through a holistic, early intervention approach, which is why EveryYouth is looking to raise funds to scale the first, national mental health programme for young people experiencing homelessness.”