Boarding School Syndrome: Homesickness or Deeper Grief?

by Lucy Windridge-Floris PhD

Sending young children to boarding school may be considered a particularly British form of child abuse and social control. The trauma of the rupture with home may be followed by other ordeals such as emotional deprivation and, in extreme cases, physical and sexual abuse.

(Schaverien, 2004)

Boarding school syndrome encompasses a wide range of psychological difficulties. Labelling a child’s distress as homesickness, which is generally understood to be a mild emotion, oversimplifies and belittles the profound grief children experience when separated from their homes and families. This is not just a simple longing and, to describe it as so, is reductionist and dismisses the complex psychological and long-term impact of loss and grief. 

We know that the disruption of being sent away, the separation, loss of familiar home environment and attachment figures, can trigger overwhelming emotional damage. Nick Duffell writes,

Sending children away as a socially normalized tradition and privilege … causes wide-ranging trauma for individuals and our class-riven society. Coming from families able to part with their children for social advantage, foregoing attachments in the latency period, facing puberty without parenting and then being expected to emerge a self-reliant winner is not actually a privilege.

(2012)

Boarding School Syndrome can present a particular nuance for girls, especially those attending boys’ boarding schools which traditionally run a patriarchal system. Many girls experience exacerbated feelings of isolation at the expense of their emotional well-being. Their struggles can be overlooked or dismissed in a male-dominated setting, leading to voicelessness. The only lifeline becomes a phone-call home, yet even this solace is fleeting. Parents may be unavailable, dismissive of distress, or the girls themselves may feel huge shame and inability to articulate the problem, leaving them trapped in silent suffering.

The ramifications of this particularly British tradition are more than individual psychological pain. They are deep-seated and wide-reaching.  These psychological patterns ultimately ripple through and affect our broader societal fabric. For many Western leaders, early exposure to a background in institutions which prioritize resilience, superiority, bullying and control over emotional expression results in leaders who struggle to empathize with the experiences of those outside their elite circles, thereby impacting their decision-making and perceived authenticity.

They have this false sense of entitlement, a false kind of individuality, a false adulthood. Look at … them … We can see it, our body language knows it. They are people who make a lot of noise and they appeal to those who are actually in a lot of fear about the way the world is going. Because they mistake that noise for strength. It’s not strength, it’s bluster.

(Duffell, 2019)

There is increased awareness of Boarding School Syndrome with the recent release of the film Boarding on Insanity: Are Our Leaders Traumatised? featuring Gabor Maté and Joy Schaverien and the publication of The Un-Making of Them: Clinical Reflections on Boarding School Syndrome (2025) edited by Nick Duffell.

Bibliography

Duffell, N. (2012) British Journal of Psychotherapy ‘Boarding School Syndrome’.  Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1752-0118.2012.01315.X 

Duffell, N. Why boarding schools produce bad leaders. RNZ 9:37 am on 4 August 2019.  Available at: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018707127/dr-nick-duffell-why-boarding-schools-produce-bad-leaders 

Schaverien, J. (2004) Journal of Analytical Psychology, ‘Boarding school: the trauma of the ‘privileged’ child’. 49, 683–705