Mental Health Awareness in the School Curriculum
Mental health is equally as important as physical health.
With the prevalence of mental health issues in our society, it’s surprising that we still tend to stigmatize mental illness. Many mental health myths still exist.
Mental health issues often begin during the school-age years of childhood. It follows, therefore, that learning more about mental health should also start at an early age. Because children spend so much of their daily life at school which includes studying for longer hours, mental health education logically should begin in schools. Mental health awareness is an important issue for all educators, who are often the first line of defense for their students. Education professionals and parents have recognized the impact that a student’s mental health has on learning and achievement, and they realize that there’s a great deal that can be done to help students with mental health problems. Although we often can’t see it with our bare eyes, a mental health problem can cause serious impairment to a person’s life and well-being. For us to work on mental health issues prevention, we need to raise awareness about these problems. Schools are one of the places where mental health awareness needs to be at a high level because many of the peer-related problems start from there.
The importance of mental health awareness in schools is immense. Let’s break it down together and take a deeper look at why we need schools on board with spreading awareness about mental health.
1. Closing the mental health Gap
Schools are supposed to help our younger generations prepare for the world that awaits and all the impediments or troubles they might run into.
Most schools today teach:
Physical health
Nutrition
Crafting
However, there’s a gap when it comes to mental health. Without proper education on mental health, students won’t’ know how to:
Recognize the problem they’re experiencing and be aware of it
Open up about it
Look out for help
Help other peers with similar or other mental health issues
This gap needs to be closed and the children need to have a chance of dealing with mental health problems just like they’ll deal with any other problem.
2. Suicide & Mental Illnesses
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death ages 10–25, observed among both girls and boys worldwide. Besides, most of the people who have committed suicide, have suffered from a mental illness, since they didn’t have anyone to seek help from or anyone who is that. To lower the increasing suicide rate and prevent young people from taking their own lives away, we need to raise awareness about mental health in our schools. Learning about mental health illnesses will leave a positive impact on the students struggling:
They’ll learn about therapy and how to recognize and treat their problem
They’ll be more ready to talk about it openly
They’ll acknowledge that they have a problem and embrace it
All of the above will hopefully lower the suicide rate and offer the young people a solution and hope to live other than ending their life.
“Schools need to adopt the policy of advocating mental health awareness and speaking up about your problems. Our students need someone may it be teacher/ mentor to push them in the right direction and help them start a journey of therapy and healing.”
3. Early Intervention- The Importance of Mental Health Awareness in Schools
Just like with any other disease or health problem, early interventions are important in mental health too to overcome the problems that students are facing which interferes with their working. Teachers, school counselors, parents, school psychologists, and peers need to learn about:
Identifying the early signs of mental health issues
Spotting the meaningful changes in the behavior of a person
Acting at the first sign of a potential mental health problem and inform an adult about it.
If the mental illness is in its early stage, there’s a chance of stopping it from being a full-blown disorder when they grow up. Everyone involved in a typical school day of a person experiencing mental health problems needs to be in the process and help them deal with it.
4. Social Media Influence
While we love using social media to get informed, find entertainment, and connect with our friends, there’s a dark side to it that not many people are talking about. The truth is, social media can leave consequences and deep scars in the minds of the users, especially the younger generations as they are more addicted to it. Watching rich, famous, successful, and celebrity people on social media can cause mental health problems with young children as they may feel insecure about themselves in the following ways:
Low self-image
Not satisfied with their bodies
Depression
Anxiety
Since social media is on its rise, with nearly 3.5 billion active users worldwide, the effect it has on the young people around our schools is mind-blowing. With this kind of a new threat, schools need to raise the bar in mental health awareness and ensure their students are learning about more pro-social behaviors such as:
Self-love
Empathy
System of values
Loving everyone
Not judging people as everyone has their reason behind the way they act.
Talking about their insecurities openly
This would be beneficial for the proper development of students and preventing them to feel demoralized or depressed and help them increase self-esteem.
5. Eliminating the Cause of Mental Health Issue
While it’s important to learn about the negative effects of mental health issues, and how to treat them, it’s also important to learn about the main causes and symptoms. Learning about the causes of stress, depression, or anxiety is important and the school can be a major trigger for most students experiencing mental health issues. Students feel stressed out due to:
School pressure
Peer pressure
Bullying at school
Overly strict teachers
Too much workload of assignments or projects
The pressure to have high grades from teachers and parents
If everyone in school knew what stressed out the students the most, they would find a way to eliminate these stress factors and create a welcoming, safe and relaxing atmosphere at school. This will further help the children find their peace and balance and the sense of hope that people are there to understand them and support them and eliminate the feeling of pressure, anxiety, and stress, which could further develop into even more severe mental health issues.
6. Final Thoughts
It is highly important to raise mental health awareness in schools since small children are seriously affected by mental health issues every day. They need a system they can rely on and a source of information to guide them through the process of dealing with their inner conflicts. Schools need to initiate changes and get as many people, students, teachers, and other school staff to work on raising mental health awareness. Start with yourself and initiate a change in your school today.
How Can We Promote Positive Mental Health in Schools?
Teachers and school staff have a responsibility to promote mental health in schools. Often, even small changes can go a long way in helping somebody feel better internally or make their day joyful.
Encourage Social Time
Schedule 30 minutes or an hour every week where students can be social and learn more about each other and focus on something other than the curriculum. Encourage them to chat with their peers and complete a task together, like a difficult problem or a challenge or engage them in a group project.
Run Lunchtime Clubs- Allow students to take their mind off things at lunch by running lunchtime clubs. These clubs could be for any activity — arts and crafts, baking, drama clubs, book clubs, painting, dance, etc. The sense of community will help students feel included and will relieve the pressure of work for a while.
Have an Open-Door Policy- Students must know they can come and talk to you about any issues or concerns they have with their teachers or other school staff. Communicate this to your students so they know you’re always there to listen and provide them a helping hand. You could even appoint a designated teacher or a counselor for each year group who can support any students struggling. This person should ideally have training in mental health and know-how to help.
Organize a Wellness Week- To put wellbeing at the heart of your school, arrange a wellness week in your school. This will benefit both staff and students at the same time. For your wellness week, you could:
Encourage connections — get students to talk to each other and interact with people they wouldn’t usually talk to.
Host a sports/activities day — Exercise is known to boost endorphins, so make use of this and get students and staff involved in a range of activities. Encourage students to set themselves goals (nothing too major) so they get a great self-confidence boost when they achieve it.
Give to others — Organise charity events, such as a bake sale or a fancy-dress day, and donate the proceeds to mental health charities. Giving to others is known to reduce stress and improve emotional wellbeing. They also learn the importance of sharing/ helping and feel good about themselves.
Be mindful — Host mindfulness sessions and create a calming environment.
Meditation classes- It is important to include meditation in everyday practice with school students. We can initiate this by asking students to sit in calm and comfortable positions, think of positive things, saying 5 things they are grateful for, and play certain mindful/anxiety-reducing/ boosting self-confidence music. Conduct this every day for 15 min before the lecture starts and at the end of the day.
Include psychology as a subject- Students gain not just social and emotional learning skills but academic ones like how to conduct and analyze research. Studying psychology could help promote many of the social and emotional learning (SEL) skills that are crucial to students’ academic achievement and mental health. Learning SEL helps them gave greater insight into self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, social awareness, and responsible decision making. Not only these students learn many ways to manage their emotions, think effectively, and prevent them from being controlled by their minds.
-By Archie, SDF Batch 11, Smt. Maniben M.P Shah College, Mumbai, Maharashtra
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