Mental Health in the Classroom

Whether we like to admit it or not, mental health has touched our lives.  Either someone we know or ourselves have been affected by mental health illness in one way or another.  And the really sad part is, we don’t like to admit it.  The stigma around mental illness is so strong that people would rather hide and hurt than reach out.  

Before grade 11 the word suicide had very little significance to me.  I knew what it was but I never imagined it could ever directly impact my life.  It was one of those things that you heard about happening in other places but not in your own school, not to people you knew.  Walking out of basketball practice on the night before the first day of the new school year will never leave my memory.  My teammate turned to us as whispered, “Josh committed suicide.”  I looked at the faces of the girls around me, shock and disbelief radiated through us all.  I saw tears hit a few of the girls faces but all I could do was stare.  Walking into school the next morning felt so alien to me.  I was surrounded by crying classmates and teachers attempting to console.  We were immediately called to the gym for an assembly to announce the tragic news, and offer up services that the school would be offering to any students who needed to talk.  

Two weeks later it happened again.  I walked into school to have a friend pull me aside and tell me that my friend, the boy who attended my first birthday party had committed suicide.  The school went into a spiral.  What was just one tragic event had turned into an epidemic.  Over the course of the next two years there would be 6 suicides between my school and neighbouring ones.  Even after watching the turmoil that was happening in the schools, how it tore everyone apart, and listening to the speeches asking people to reach out… no one did.  

Coming from a small town there was not a single person who was unaware of what had happened.  Someone was always connected by a parent, or a sibling, or a friend.  The entire community was is mourning over lives taken too young.  ‘Permanent solutions to end temporary problems’ my mother called them.  Schools were forced to address issues that had never been present before; suicide, depression, and mental health all became a main focus.  Every teacher was on the watch for ‘at-risk’ behaviour, and every student mourned the death of a peer.  From this point onward, our community would never be the same.

But what are we really doing to stop the epidemic? Small steps are being taken, sure, but is it enough?  Even widely popular awareness events such ‘Bell Lets Talk Day’  and ‘To Write Love on Her Arms’ are only once a year.  This is why mental health literacy is such an important concept to include in the classroom.  

Employing mental health literacy in the classroom teaches students how to promote and maintain good mental health as well as how to be there for others.  By teaching mental health literacy we will be able to reduce the stigma that surrounds this topic and show students that this is not something to be ashamed of, there are options and resources available.  Even starting small as teaching students to understand their own identity, recognize the impact of their actions, and learning how to be resilient, as the Ontario Curriculum now includes (2015).  

It is our job as teachers to create an environment which fosters positivity and empathy for others.  Guest lecturer, Dr. Mark Castrodale, discussed how mental health literacy is connected to so many other topics as well such as race, gender, and sexuality (M. Castrodale, Personal Communication, February 3, 2016).  It is also important to discuss mental health literacy in the context of other concepts as well.  We can’t look at someone and say “they committed suicide because they were mental ill” end of story, we need to do a better job understanding the reasons behind their actions.  We need to understand what were the reasons that caused all those young kids in my hometown to take their lives and improve those, not just use a band-aid solution on an underlying wound.  

The reason I chose to make this blog so personal is because I know that these experiences are going to greatly shape my life as a teacher.  As Drake, Reid and Kolohon (2014) note, teachers make meaning of their practice through their own personal experiences and beliefs.  In an effort to become a ‘reflective practitioner’ (Drake, et. al., 2014) I would like to use these stories to grow and guide my teaching practice so that the voices of my students do not go unheard. What my community experienced is not something that I would ever like to repeat and because of it mental health literacy will always be a big part of my classroom.  

Reference

Bell Canada (2014). Bell lets talk: Suffering in silence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tri5ZQaiM7M. (Video).

Drake, S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohon, W. (2014). Interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Ontario Ministry of Education (2015).  The Ontario curriculum grades 1 to 8: Health and Physical Education.  https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/health.html