Roose, Yazdani, and John (2003) fou

Roose, Yazdani, and John (2003) found that a sample of 10 and 11 year olds identified difficul-
ties of friendship, bullying and changing schools to be significant in understanding mental health.
Attitudes of 12–14 year olds towards characters labelled as ‘mentally ill’ were reportedly medi-
ated by whether they could identify with them on the basis of age or gender (Secker et al., 1999),
with causes for mental health problems being attributed to experiences that threatened the young
people’s self-esteem, such as parental problems, peer rejection and bulling (Armstrong, Hill, &
Secker, 2000). Older children’s labels of the mentally ill were found to be negative, following the
theme of something ‘missing’ (Bailey, 1999), whereas another study reported largely positive
attitudes to mental illness in a sample of 14–16 year olds (Foster, Beck, & Wright, 1986).