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When I was a kid flinging insults around in the playground I remember us saying: 'You're a looney. You should be in the bin.' It was offensive and things have moved on. But it still felt significant this week to hear Theresa May urging people to overcome the stigma that attaches to mental health difficulties and announcing initiatives aimed at children and adolescents. The bad news is the spiralling mental health crisis that prompted her speech. According to the charity Young Minds, over half mental health problems start by 14 and three quarters of the young people affected don't get the help they need. It seems to me that something very troubling is happening in our society. Whatever the underlying social causes, I hope the response doesn't end with some extra provision when problems have already occurred. As a Buddhist I think we need to put a concern with our minds and mental states at the heart of our culture. A helpful analogy is with our bodies. As well as treating disease when it happens, looking after the body means eating well and exercising. Then we can do more than just survive, we can flourish. For Buddhism, our minds are central to our lives. That's obvious in a way, but in practice we usually don't think much about our minds - it's just me getting on with my life. But, as I see when I teach mindfulness courses for people who are struggling, that changes when something goes wrong. If you can't get to sleep or you can't stop worrying, it doesn't work to just try harder. Medication and psychological healthcare are vital for many, but in addition, the Buddhist tradition encourages people to turn towards their minds and explore what's going on. It teaches that an attitude of curiosity and friendliness helps, rather than, for example, one of impatience and grumpiness. The next step is learning to guide the mind in a more helpful direction. This is the broader meaning of the mindfulness-based approaches that have been drawn from Buddhism. Breathing meditation and slowing down to better pay attention are techniques that can help you work with the mind; but in Buddhism itself they're part of a holistic approach that includes beliefs and behaviour. I'm happy that mindfulness is being adopted in schools across the country, but we really need to face up to the scale of the mental health crisis and respond proportionately. I believe it's not just individuals who can benefit by turning their attention towards their minds. It's society as a whole.