Picking a Side

Imagine sitting in a classroom. You are 16 years old and struggle with depression. Your teacher walks into the room and declares that all the students will learn today about mental health. Your heart starts racing. Your knee starts to shake. Your breath becomes heavy. You are worried others might find out about your secret. Your mental illness. They’ll think you’re weird. They won’t want to be friends with you. You are the only one here who is depressed. The teacher rambles on about statistics and other senseless facts, but one thing catches your attention. She says, “You are not alone.”

Some argue that the way mental health is presented in school stigmatizes it even more, as the curriculum is taught much differently than physical health. When talking about heart conditions, a physical ailment, teachers tell students what it is, what causes it, and what they can do to prevent it, such as limiting salt intake and exercising regularly. But when talking about an anxiety disorder, teachers only explain what it is or get students to do an informative project--not preventative measures. This teaches students that mental health is not the same as physical health and that the two are not related, which is completely false. “Young people’s mental health problems are on the rise -- it’s time we took this as seriously as their physical education.” (1) Furthermore, it exemplifies that mental health should not be talked about. If mental health education is modified, the stigma surrounding mental illness will decrease.

Improving the way mental health education is promoted in schools will ultimately help students in the future. By opening up about mental illness, those students who are victims will feel less ashamed and embarrassed by their disorder and realize that they do not need to keep their feelings private. By voicing their struggles, they can get help which will allow them to learn to cope with symptoms and improve their performance in school. Also, if teachers provided insight into coping mechanisms, students could gain skills without having to go see a counsellor incase that was not an option for them. These coping mechanisms do not apply strictly to someone with chronic distorted thoughts, as most people will experience elevated anxiety levels at some point in their lives, where these skills will be very helpful. One example is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT which teaches someone to analyze their own thoughts to filter out the distorted ones, such as jumping to conclusions of catastrophizing a situation. If students gained this knowledge during high school, they could overcome the stressful situations they will experience later in life by putting these skills to use.

Acknowledgement that mental illness and struggles are legitimate can help decrease teenage suicide rates. One of the biggest reasons why teens are suicidal is that they feel they have no one to talk to or they fear that if they do speak out they will be labelled as “attention-seeking” or “delusional”, or that they might not be believed. If teachers talk about mental illness without stigma attached to it, this behaviour and attitude will transfer onto the students. If the students feel there is less stigma surrounding mental illness, they will reach out to someone if they are struggling and receive the care and treatment they need, with a lower risk of them turning to suicide to escape their pain and ultimately lowering suicide rates. If classroom discussion opened up, it has the potential to show students mental illness should not be whispered about behind closed doors and that their suffering is recognized and it is valid.

Imagine sitting in a classroom. You are 16 years old. Your teacher walks into the room and declares that all the students will learn today about mental health. You glance around the room. Everyone looks bored already. Why do we have to learn about this, you say to yourself. I’m fine, I’m healthy, and I’m definitely not suicidal. This is stupid. Dumb. Redundant. Why is she wasting my time?

On the other side of this debate, thoroughly exploring mental wellness with students can be unnecessary and possibly more detrimental than positive. If students who suffer from depression have to take a class about this topic, it might stir up unwanted thoughts. For example, a teenage girl could have struggled for months with self harm and finally seeked help and was clean for a few weeks. If she was forced to take a mandatory class that discusses self-injury, it might trigger her to want to harm herself again. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, mental illness affects ⅕ canadians (2), meaning there are 4 other canadians who are not affected. Certain students feel that if they do not struggle with mental illness they should not have to be taught about it.

Despite several positive outcomes of improving the mental health aspect of the education system, many are still skeptical. Not all teachers have a psychology background, so it is unclear who would teach students and how qualified educators would need to be. There is also a risk that if a teacher without the proper training is designated to educate students, they could feed students incorrect information, which completely contradicts the purpose of teaching them about it. Since mental illness and suicide can often be a dark subject, parents are concerned that their kids will be exposed to serious topics that they do not need to be exposed to.

Improving mental health can be beneficial or detrimental to students. It can improve their success in school, but it can also trigger students who self harm. It can decrease the stigma while educating students about the subject, but students can be misinformed by uneducated teachers. It can teach students coping mechanisms for stressful situations, but some students may never need these skills. It all depends whose side the school system picks: help suffering students, or not force unaffected students to attend an unnecessary class.

(1) Morse, Ben. “Let’s Put Mental Health Education on the School Curriculum.” The Guardian, July 2013. Web. April 2017.

(2) “Fast Facts About Mental Illness.” Canadian Mental Health Assosiation, 2016. Web. April 2017.