I BELIEVE that a robust counselling service has got to be delivered by highly accredited and clinically-trained counsellors who have experience of working with children and young people.

At Place2Be we often work with troubled young people, whose troubles often emanate from previous experience. Although I cannot comment on this particular case, which we were not involved in, I think that what we find is that counselling can help identify the sources of a young person's anger or aggression.

What we try to do is look at the risk and resilience of the child; and carrying out a thorough assessment of the child is another key factor in the effectiveness of the counselling they receive.

When you are working with young people, it's about providing them with a trusted, qualified counsellor who is interested in the child or young person, because the key thing is to give them a good experience of an adult relationship.

What we also try to do is develop young people's self-esteem, and their ability to self manage their feelings.

In terms of diagnosing whether they are psychotic or disturbed, what we would look at is their behaviour.

Sometimes it depends what sort of illness you are talking about. If someone is self harming or has anorexia, external signs are often visible. But with other mental health problems it's not obvious. In those cases we'd look at whether someone is flourishing in class, causing a disruption, has a big social group of friends or sits on their own. In general, girls tend to withdraw, while boys often become more aggressive if there is a problem.

The key thing is early intervention. Children's mental health and adult mental health is absolutely linked and school counselling can prevent mental health problems later on, especially if it is a long-term service.