‘One of my students told me that we’d kept him alive’

25th January 2019, 12:00am
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‘One of my students told me that we’d kept him alive’

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/one-my-students-told-me-wed-kept-him-alive

One evening in October, a former student, Nathan Clifford, retweeted me.

It led to a conversation. What he told me left me speechless, immensely proud and simultaneously guilty.

“The support I got at college, quite honestly, kept me alive,” he said.

I taught Nathan PE at Richard Taunton College 12 years ago. He was part of the sports academy and I coached him basketball. He was a smart player. It was because Nathan was a “thinker of the game” that staff put his unusually fragile behaviour down to “big game nerves”.

As his “episodes” became more regular, we became more dismissive, with his behaviour being categorised as “attention-seeking”.

Nathan’s recollections are quite different.

“I became very overwhelmed by the pressures of college. I felt that anything less than 100 per cent was a failure, and I never dropped a mark in my studies. I felt very disassociated and struggled with thoughts of suicide,” he said.

We had no idea that Nathan was experiencing this level of distress.

“I started having panic attacks before and after basketball games, because I was unable to cope with the stress of performing well and not letting my team down. I constantly felt as though I was on a treadmill that I couldn’t escape.”

I knew very little about mental health. As a department, we supported and encouraged Nathan, as we did everyone. Pupils would come to our office and engage with us, with one another and talk about sport. We would listen to them, no matter what. But back then, mental health wasn’t discussed in the way it is now.

There was one game in which it all came to a head for Nathan.

He sat at the back of the sports hall, heels up to his backside, disconnected. Quietly panting. I sat with him for what seemed like too long. He was in no fit state to get the train home. I drove him and met his father. Together, we put it down to the pressures of competition. I guess this is why I feel so guilty now. If we only knew better, we could have done better.

Nathan explained to me that since college he has been living with “schizoaffective” disorder, first diagnosed when he was 19.

“I’ve been through trauma. I can experience psychosis. I’ve been detained. I get paranoid. I disassociate. I get depressed. I hear voices,” he said.

He told me that his “journey of recovery” has been “a long and bumpy road”. We discussed how neither of us was equipped to handle the situation back then.

Nathan is in a good place now. He’s working with Southern Health as an “Expert by Experience”, using his own lived experience to effect change within the trust, and engaging and supporting others.

Coming out of this, what I do now is what I can. So that is what I am doing with this article. If it helps just one student, or one teacher, then that’s brilliant.

Kristian Still is a former headteacher

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