Yet, the boarding school experience, especially for Indigenous peoples, includes deep emotional and mental trauma that can extend for generations past as well as into the future. Psychotherapist Joy Schaverien has identified a condition known as Boarding School Syndrome, characterized by its four key components: abandonment, bereavement, captivity, and dissociation. This syndrome comes from the terrible trauma suffered by these children during their formative years in these boarding schools. For these and many other reasons, some people value their boarding school experiences. For many others it feels as if they are “broken” or “damaged,” uncovering the complex nature of this psychological phenomenon.
Recent studies document how profoundly and permanently these experiences affect young people. Here’s how Boarding School Syndrome can harm empathy, self-awareness, and mental health in general. These letters from former boarders recount their experiences, and they demonstrate the fact that this syndrome hurts more than just people. It affects social interactions, including access to leadership positions in corporate spaces.
Understanding Boarding School Syndrome
Boarding School Syndrome is based in the experience of children raised in boarding schools. Even worse, most of these children are still suffering severe emotional trauma from the separation from their families. Schaverien’s ABCD framework includes abandonment, bereavement, captivity, and dissociation. This framework is useful in understanding how these traumatic experiences converge and accumulate to create pervasive, chronic trauma.
The abandonment aspect addresses the sense of being abandoned or rejected by family at key childhood developmental junctures. Just like many other children, when children go to these boarding schools, some of them may feel alone or separated from their support networks. Bereavement quickly ensues, as these children grieve not only the loss of their parent but the separation from their traditional family interfaces and activities. Captivity gives voice to the limited, often highly controlled environment of other boarding schools, and how this lack of individuality can kill a person’s spirit. Dissociation may act as a form of self-preservation. In order to cope with these extreme stressors, children typically disconnect from their emotional selves.
These elements may combine to have a serious psychological impact, stretching from self-esteem issues to a diminished ability to empathize with marginalized people. Most adult ex-boarders describe challenges forming emotional bonds with others, especially those who show weakness or require nurturing. This void of compassion may grow from their own emotional abandonment as children themselves — often with a lack of care and understanding that persists through generations.
Impact on Mental Health
The effects of Boarding School Syndrome reach into virtually every aspect of mental health. Studies have found a clear connection between this syndrome and the development of other psychiatric disorders. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as well as eating disorders including anorexia, commonly manifest in concert with. What that trauma in childhood might do is make people turn to unhealthy coping skills or develop anxiety around being themselves.
People who have suffered from Boarding School Syndrome frequently describe experiencing shame, guilt, and self-blame. These feelings come from an internalized belief that they are bad or undeserving people. The journey toward self-acceptance is made all the more difficult when society throws expectations and pressures into the mix. Former boarders do not have the emotional tools to navigate these feelings without proper resources. They will struggle to build and maintain positive relationships, too.
For many of them, going home for holidays can easily become a time when they’re reminded of and returned to their boarding school experiences. For others, the picture is more complex—the prospect of family gatherings may trigger anxiety, not celebration. While boarding school provides a more predictable environment, home life may be much less stable and even chaotic. This disparity frequently exacerbates the sense of vulnerability and terror.
The Broader Implications
Boarding School Syndrome doesn’t only impact those who had bad experiences. Even those who had the best experience at boarding school still go on to deal with its adverse effects for years to come. Taken together, these experiences tell a frustrating tale. It seems to be a fairly typical narrative told by former boarders, again whether they’d experienced a so-called positive or negative outcome.
The impact of Boarding School Syndrome even seeps into leadership and positions of power. Continued boarding school research has shown that most CEOs and top executives hailing from these institutions were traumatized by their experiences. The emotional struggles experienced in their formative years influenced the way they lead and the way they relate to their peers and subordinates in corporate spaces. These dynamics can cascade to maintain an ever-recurring cycle of emotional disconnect and misinterpretation in professional environments, impacting both workplace culture and employee health.
Additionally, Boarding School Syndrome transcends geographical boundaries. People from different ethnicities and countries, like the UK and Spain, have similar pains from their time in residential schools. These challenges ring true regardless of culture or circumstance. This universality means that a serious lack of awareness and understanding of the effects of the syndrome on various populations must be addressed immediately.