Are the kids OK? The mental health crisis among Jewish teens

She was not. When her school, in Manchester, reopened in September 2020, Sadie kept missing days or coming home early. Being sequestered at home had been a relief, and she wanted more of it. After three weeks, she was more absent from school than she was present.

In the spring of 2021, Sarah noticed blood on her daughter’s bedding and “angry” scratches on her underarms. Then she saw inch-deep and long gashes on the top of her arms.
That summer term Sadie went to school wearing compression sleeves under her polo shirt. Teachers were gentle, but staff on the gate and reception desk would ask for an explanation every time she came in late or left early, which she found unbearable. The handful of shaky friendships she had managed to form disintegrated until she had no one left to talk to in the classroom or playground. Not a single pupil asked about the compression sleeves.

When she started saying she no longer wanted to be in the world Sarah and her ex took the decision to take their child out of school altogether. This is her GCSE year, but she won’t be sitting any exams. Parenting Sadie has become about keeping her alive.
“To give birth to someone who doesn’t want to be here — it’s your greatest fear, but also feels your biggest failure,” says Sarah.

Before the pandemic took hold, Jews were slightly more likely than the general population to report feeling anxious, but since March 2020, almost two in three have reported a deterioration in their mental wellbeing, according to a study by Jewish Policy Research. The younger respondents were, the more likely they were to report mental distress.

At JCoSS in north London deputy head Liz Weddle, who leads the school on pastoral matters, says there was an 80 per cent rise in safeguarding concern alerts after the first lockdown. “I think the reasons for that were varied, but essentially, kids just didn’t feel safe in the world any more.” And the effect of both lockdowns on girls has been particularly acute, she says. “We’ve seen a marked increase in disordered eating and what is called school refusal.”

As a result, the school has made many more home visits than in previous years to encourage highly anxious students back to school. “It’s a huge investment in time because we never send a member of staff on their own so it can mean two people taking a whole morning or afternoon off,” says Weddle. “But it’s an investment that is absolutely worth making. There is nothing like reminding pupils that school isn’t a big, scary, distant place — it’s actually full of people who care about them. We have the word ‘community’ in our title for a reason.”

The wider Jewish community often excels at pastoral care. But that wasn’t always the case when it came to girls who had experienced trauma, says Naomi Lerer. In 2009, she founded the charity Noa Girls to give girls struggling with poor mental health, emotional and therapeutic support. The charity began with seven girls and a budget of £15,000. Today it provides 192 therapy sessions to 136 girls every week, and currently has a further 52 on its waiting list.

Not all of the girls they support today, most of whom are Orthodox, have had troubled home lives, or experienced significant trauma. Over the past five years, the charity has seen a big increase in girls from stable homes knocking on the door of the nameless, residential house in Golders Green where it operates. These girls have two loving parents and an extended family.
“We used to believe that if you were a good enough parent, your kids will be OK, but we can see that just isn’t the case any more,” says Naomi. “Girls from caring homes with parents who are doing everything they can to support them are now really struggling with their mental health. They are depressed, they are self-harming and they have eating disorders.”

Sarah thinks Sadie’s smart phone is at the root of the teenager’s deeply debilitating depression: “her whole world, the information she gathers, the validation she craves, is now filtered through that damn device.” Naomi Lerer understands her worries.
“Social media can really rip at the core of an adolescent’s self-esteem,” she says. “Adolescence is already a difficult time, but there is no question that social media with its anxiety-producing fixation on likes, adds to the pressure. And when frum girls go on social media for the first time, the results can be devastating. They aren’t in any way prepared for it.”

Some Jewish parents have decided together that their 11-year-olds won’t start secondary school with smart phones in their school bags. “Parents want to protect their kids for that bit longer. We know only too well why Bill Gates refuses to give his kids smart phones,” says one such parent.

The grassroots initiative works because no one’s child is left out, or starts secondary already feeling different. For unless you have strong self-esteem, and many kids do not, feeling different can be devastating.

“When today’s mothers were growing up, they had to be pretty enough and thin enough to fit in,” says Lerer. “Now, their daughters need to shine academically too. For many girls, the pressure of feeling they have to look perfect, have the perfect set of friends and get perfect exam results, is just too much. It feels unattainable. Self-loathing sets in.”
And even with the best intentions, Jewish parents can sometimes encourage this self-loathing. “We are highly invested in our families, desperate for our kids to have the best opportunities in life. The Jewish injunction to succeed runs deep. And most kids don’t want to disappoint their parents. When they feel they are, there’s more self-loathing.”

The demographic of Jewish schools can also be problematic, she says. “There’s a bigger economic disparity than you find in most state schools. You have kids from very wealthy homes who if they weren’t Jewish would probably have been educated privately, sitting next to kids with parents on ordinary incomes. Again, it raises unrealistic expectations. And when expectations are unrealistic, distress follows.”

It hardly needs stating that treating teenagers’ mental distress, whatever the cause, is not straightforward. Some parents face the most terrible tragedies.
Oli Leigh, the beloved son of Michelle, died on the first of May 2018 when he was 16. He had taken his own life. She had noticed him descend into unhappiness: “He started misbehaving at school so he wouldn’t have to be there. When he came home, he would go to his bedroom, suck his thumb and draw for hours on end. He became very insular and withdrawn.

“I knew he was troubled, but I thought he’d be flying once he got to university. He was too mature for his age, he couldn’t get there quickly enough.” As well as sport, Oli was fascinated by politics. “He could talk to anyone, you could put him with anybody. He was socially and academically intelligent.”
When Oli was four, Michelle had cancer, and three years afterwards his father walked out of the family home. Michelle, Oli and his older brother Scott, a medical student who turns 22 next month, never heard from him again. “Who knows the lasting effect these events might have on my kind, sensitive child? What we do know is that for some people, suicide feels the only way out.”

Michelle tried very hard to get her child the support he needed and deserved. “His school and GP were no help at all. I found and paid for a private counsellor, but he wasn’t right for my Oli.”

Sarah feels similarly. “The school counsellor’s support is just too low level. It amounts to: have a nice warm bath and you’ll feel better.” Meanwhile, GPs aren’t allowed to prescribe anti-depressants to minors, and had they waited for Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to whom Sadie was referred two years ago, Sarah fears her only child would probably now be dead. “I finally heard from them last month. In the meantime, we took the decision to see a psychologist privately. It costs £100 a session and she also sees a psychiatrist who charges £250 per appointment. This is a lot of money for us. And the psychiatrist basically just manages the drugs she’s on, the anti-depressants the NHS won’t prescribe children, but which have definitely helped Sadie.”

Since his death, Michelle Leigh’s charitable foundation, the Oli Leigh Trust has raised £140,000 to help fund youth-focused suicide prevention charities. It offers schools courses in suicide prevention, and this month releases a film. But some Jewish secondaries are reluctant to take up the charity’s free services, she says. “There seems to be this idea that they will encourage suicide. But the trained people we send into schools don’t discuss the ways people end their lives. They tell them how you can pull back from the brink, that there are places you can go, people you can talk to.”

“I don’t think you ever really know why people take their lives,” she adds. But she is hopeful that things will improve now there is more open discussion of these matters. “Covid brought to the forefront that people do suffer, and are on their own. It was talked about.”
Jami, the community’s mental health service, is running a pilot scheme with children and young people to address their mental health needs. “We are filling the gap between the growing numbers of young people struggling with their mental health and the lack of mental health services that are available to them. Parents told us they wanted a service that really got to know their family, and stressed how difficult it is to navigate existing ones,” says Louise Kermode, the charity’s head of services.

“Secondary school children have told me that they now speak to their parents and friends if they are concerned about their mental health,” says senior education coordinator Emma Dorman. “And they also want to know what they can do, and how they can help if friends are in distress.
“We are not talking only about friendships and academic achievement here,” she adds. “Young people can be concerned about world affairs, present and future. Housing, the economy, politics and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they are all on their radar. One 14-year-old told me he was worried he might not find a job, be able to afford a home and family.”

Equine therapist Lotte Carlebach helps troubled youngsters at Archer Academy in London, using her horse Mabel. “This isn’t talking therapy, it’s doing therapy. The kids are usually pretty scared at first, often because they’ve never seen a horse up close before. But after two or three sessions, they are petting and leading Mabel around.” As they do so, she talks to them about Mabel’s mental health — whether Mabel is happy, sad, nervous or confident — and they listen.
She knows the therapy is working because the kids always turn up for their Mabel sessions. Which for school refusers is a big deal.

You can call the Samaritans on 116123 if you urgently need someone to talk to. noagirls.com | jamiuk.org | equine-encounters.co.uk