Teenagers are playing up their mental health problems to appear ‘glamorous’ to their peers, a former Ofsted head has said.
Young adults are being encouraged to ‘see themselves as fragile’ or ‘damaged’ and increasingly boast about their mental health problems, according to Conservative peer Baroness Spielman.
Her comments come amid a dramatic rise in the number of youngsters reporting such issues.
The number of children and young people in contact with secondary NHS mental health services has more than doubled since January 2020, with more than a million under-18s using them in 2024-25.
In trying to remove the stigma around mental illness, the former head of the schools watchdog said we’ve ‘possibly overcompensated’ to the point that it has ‘become glamorous, in some contexts, for teenagers to boast about their mental problems’.
Baroness Spielman continued: ‘It makes them interesting, it gets them attention, it gets them special accommodations. You want to be interesting in adolescence. You want to be different.’
She also criticised the worrying trend to label perceived mental illnesses among young people, saying it ‘gives the child the sense of being less capable than others’ and lowers parents’ and teachers’ expectations of them.
The peer’s comments come after a survey revealed earlier this month that parents are failing to equip their children with basic life skills before they enter primary school. Around one in four youngsters who started reception in 2025 were not toilet trained, according to the report.
The former head of the schools watchdog said we’ve ‘possibly overcompensated’ to the point that it has ‘become glamorous, in some contexts, for teenagers to boast about their mental problems’
Teachers also said that 28 per cent of children were starting school unable to eat and drink independently.
In an interview with The House magazine, Baroness Spielman said: ‘There does need to be a bit of stigma around the parent who doesn’t prepare their child for school in this way.
‘When you’ve lost that push factor on parents to potty train from the unpleasantness of non-disposable nappies, you need a strong cultural expectation to replace it, in order to counteract the convenience of just leaving the child in disposables.’
She also criticised gentle parenting – an approach where parents validate their child’s feelings rather than punish them.
‘It sets up unrealistic expectations for the child of always being able to have everything the way they want.’
Baroness Spielman was the chief inspector of Ofsted from 2017 to 2023. She was appointed to the House of Lords by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch last year.