Mental health and our kids, who hasn’t noticed that topic making the headlines? In school districts across the country it has risen to prominence as an issue schools need to tackle, and wellness centres have begun popping up within school buildings. Workshops on anxiety are featured in pro-d offerings. All of it sounds so good and gives the impression of action being taken to help our kids.
As well-intended as it may be, it is unfortunately rife with denial and it substitutes genuine attention and response with superficiality, and, as such, misdirects our youth. This is not to say that wellness centres in schools are a bad idea nor that mental health modules should not be in school curricula. Both can be quite useful and, for some kids, needed.
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However, when we treat anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, substance abuse, risk behaviours, peer conflict, aggressive or bullying behaviour, and virtually every other manifestation of internal distress as some kind of abnormality that our kids’ can randomly fall victim to, we are either wilfully or ignorantly in denial. Kids are like thermometers: there behaviour and moods register the reality they live with.