1 in 4 people will suffer from a mental health problem. Despite this, a lack of mental health education amongst young people is causing increased social prejudice, leaving many young people too embarrassed and ashamed to ask for help. Making mental health an obligatory part of every school's curriculum would increase people's awareness of issues that can arise, and thus hopefully reducing the social stigma attached to problems with mental health as well as improving people's ability to recognise when someone is struggling so that they can receive help as quickly as possible.

Having already emailed the Department of Education directly enquiring whether it would be possible to talk to someone about adding mental health to the science curriculum, I received a response which basically implied that the Government still did not consider mental health a serious issue and that if schools wished to teach their students about the topic then they would have to do so of their own accord in PSHE (personal, social and health education) lessons which from my experience are never taken very seriously.

In England alone, mental health conditions cost in the vacinity of £105 billion a year due to loss of earnings and the associated treatment and welfare costs. Therefore it would surely be in the Government's best interests to invest into educating people from an early age about the basics of mental health conditions, which could allow for quicker recognition, diagnosis and treatment and so an overall reduction in expense (since all the Government ever care about is money).