I’m a psychologist – teaching year 1s about anxiety and mental health problems is a very bad idea

Ever heard of the ‘nocebo effect’? It’s why we need to stop training kids to think every minor setback is a mental health crisis, writes child psychologist Clare Rowe.

I’m a psychologist. I spend my days helping children with genuine mental health struggles.

So when my son’s year 1 teacher said the class was starting an “anxiety program”, I politely smiled ... and immediately was against him taking part.

It’s called The Anxiety Project – a program designed to help kids “understand and manage anxiety.” And look, I get it. This comes from a place of care. Teachers want to equip kids with skills to cope.

But here’s the thing: my seven-year-old doesn’t have anxiety. He’s a normal kid who sometimes gets nervous before a spelling test or annoyed when his sister gets the bigger ice-cream scoop. That’s not a mental health condition – that’s just life (and sibling rivalry 101).

Somewhere along the way, we’ve turned every wobble, every tear, every pang of nerves into a pathology. Kids now hear the word anxiety before they’ve even lost their front teeth.

They’re told that feeling worried is a problem that must be fixed. And the more we teach them to scan their feelings for symptoms, the more they find.

Psychologist Clare Rowe.

In psychology, we call this the ‘nocebo effect’ – when simply learning about a condition can make you feel like you have it. It’s like reading the side-effects on a medicine packet and suddenly becoming convinced you’ve got them all.

So when a year 1 class sits down for six weeks of lessons on “spotting the signs of anxiety,” many kids will start noticing every heartbeat, every sweaty palm, every racing thought – and leave thinking something’s wrong.

And here’s what my experience, and the research, tells me: mental health education delivered en masse to children who are not struggling can do harm.

Repeated exposure to mental health language in schools risks training children to look inward constantly, to interpret everyday ups and downs through the lens of illness. We create a generation hyper-focused on emotional states rather than living in the moment.

Instead of encouraging kids to get on with the swimming race, we encourage them to catalogue their nerves and search for “coping strategies” before they’ve even had a chance to see the feeling pass naturally.

We’ve replaced everyday life lessons with a curriculum of constant self-monitoring. The result? Children as young as six describing themselves as having “mental health issues” when really, they just had a bad day. And ironically, the more time they spend dissecting their internal world, the less resilient they become when genuine hardship strikes.

And yes, I know what some people will say – that I’m calling for a return to the 1950s when we suppressed our feelings and never spoke about mental health. But that’s not it at all.

Clare Rowe argues that kids build resilience by navigating life’s endless challenges – not through lessons in mental health before they even know their times tables.

Somewhere along the way, we had a healthy middle ground, and we’ve blown straight past it.

We’ve gone from normalising seeking help when you’re genuinely struggling, to normalising the very presence of mental illness itself. Now, everyone has anxiety. And who wants to live in a world where that’s the default setting? Not me.

The uncomfortable truth is that resilience isn’t built through a classroom PowerPoint. It’s built when kids live through manageable challenges without an adult rushing in to smooth the path.

It’s the butterflies before the swimming carnival that disappear after the first race. It’s figuring out how to patch things up after a fight with your best friend. It’s losing a game and realising the world doesn’t end.

Of course, there are children with real anxiety disorders who need specialist help. Those kids should be identified and supported individually.

But rolling out a blanket program to an entire class of six- and seven-year-olds assumes a problem where there might not be one. And that’s a dangerous message.

Because when we teach children that discomfort equals danger, we rob them of the chance to learn that they can handle it. Nervous before the school play? That’s normal. Feeling shy at a birthday party? That’s normal too. The best way through isn’t to diagnose it – it’s to experience it, and see yourself come out the other side.

“When we teach children that discomfort equals danger, we rob them of the chance to learn that they can handle it.”

I politely expressed my reluctance towards my son participating in The Anxiety Project. Not because I’m against teaching kids about feelings, but because he’s already learning about them the best way possible: by living life. By climbing trees, negotiating playground politics, getting muddy knees, and occasionally being devastated when he gets the “wrong” coloured cup.

What I want for him is not a vocabulary of mental health terms before he can multiply by two.

I want him to have the confidence to face tricky moments without a six-step worksheet.

I want him to know that big feelings don’t define him and that he’s capable of managing them himself.

If we truly want resilient kids, we need to stop turning every blip into a diagnosis. Not every problem is a pathology. Not every feeling is a crisis.

My son will learn about anxiety one day – if he needs to. But right now, the best anti-anxiety program for him is a full, messy, imperfect childhood. Bruises, butterflies and all.

Got a story tip for us? Email [e-mail]

Originally published as I’m a psychologist – teaching year 1s about anxiety and mental health problems is a very bad idea