We All Knew: Mental Health Lessons in Schools DO NOT Help

[SweetSue92]

And they might even make children's mental health worse!

Anyone with common sense can understand this. If you are already mentally healthy--and most children are--cogitating on what is wrong just makes you feel worse. What helps? Learning things. Engaging. Facing challenges and overcoming them.

Lucy Foulkes is a UK psychologist who has studied this. Her article is enlightening. Except and link here:

Researchers have now run many studies testing the impact of universal school mental-health interventions and have found that they don’t really improve mental health. When improvements are found, they’re small – a tiny average shift on a symptom questionnaire – and the quality of the research is often poor, meaning it’s hard to trust the findings. The best-designed studies show that interventions don’t work at all: no improvement in mental health symptoms, either immediately after the course of lessons or later down the line.

In fact, some studies have found that universal mental-health lessons actually make things worse. There are now high-quality studies showing that school lessons based on CBT, mindfulness, dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) and general mental-health awareness lead to a small increase in symptoms of mental-health difficulties. There is evidence of other bad outcomes too, such as decreased prosocial behaviour or decreased relationship quality with parents.

Mental-health lessons in schools sound like a great idea. The trouble is, they don’t work | Lucy Foulkes. First seen in Education | The Guardian. By Lucy Foulkes. – From the School Gates

It’s Saturday afternoon and my friend’s five-year-old daughter is lying next to me on her living room floor. She explains to me that she does this at school. She lies on her back with the rest of the class and they do something called the body scanner, where they all pay attention to various body…

fromtheschoolgates.co.uk

 

[excalibur]

As with the failed Head Start program here, they'll just keep funding it because, feelings.

 

[1srelluc]

OK dems, the ball is your court....Why aren't you good neighbors?

 

[Woodznutz]

Teachers should explain the parameters that support good mental health and let the kids measure their lives against those parameters.

 

[braalian]

Since teachers are not mental health professionals, I’ll agree with this.

Let teachers teach

 

[Unkotare]

Since teachers are not mental health professionals, I’ll agree with this.

Let teachers teach

We have guidance counselors, social workers, special ed professionals, etc. actively helping kids who need it. General topics in mental health come up in Health class, but not that often.

 

[braalian]

We have guidance counselors, social workers, special ed professionals, etc. actively helping kids who need it. General topics in mental health come up in Health class, but not that often.

I guess it depends on what the OP meant by “mental health interventions”. I got the impression she meant teachers (such as herself) are being tasked with providing actual treatment for psychological issues, preventing her from doing her job

Of course teachers seek to help kids they believe need it. I think that’s something they do without being “made to”.

 

[toobfreak]

And they might even make children's mental health worse!

Well, DUH, Sue! I mean, what knucklehead thinks that mental health is a matter of mere education and /training/? As you say, such efforts would likely just push more people over the edge.

Mental health is organic, like a dragonfly's need for a clean environment. It begins within, emotionally. If a person's emotional psyche and being is not sound, they can have no true mental health.

 

[Woodznutz]

Teachers need to understand that many mental/emotional problems arise in their schoolhouses, but most turn a blind eye to the often-brutal social order within those walls.

 

[SweetSue92]

Since teachers are not mental health professionals, I’ll agree with this.

Let teachers teach

We are not and have been drafted into this. Most of us do not like it, to say the least. While we are babysitting the mental health of a few kids, the rest of the kids' education suffers.

 

[SweetSue92]

I guess it depends on what the OP meant by “mental health interventions”. I got the impression she meant teachers (such as herself) are being tasked with providing actual treatment for psychological issues, preventing her from doing her job

Of course teachers seek to help kids they believe need it. I think that’s something they do without being “made to”.

It means that we are now having to use techniques like "mindfulness" and "social emotional learning", etc. In the latter case, students are taught that everything begins with their emotions. That's a laughably terrible life lesson. But they are taught explicitly that they can't learn if they're a little sad, a little angry, a little frustrated.

Yeah.....

 

[SweetSue92]

Well, DUH, Sue! I mean, what knucklehead thinks that mental health is a matter of mere education and /training/? As you say, such efforts would likely just push more people over the edge.

Mental health is organic, like a dragonfly's need for a clean environment. It begins within, emotionally. If a person's emotional psyche and being is not sound, they can have no true mental health.

It's teaching kids that they cannot be expected to function if there's not completely emotionally satisfied first. It then becomes a brutal cycle where their first check-in, for anything, is their capricious feelings.

Needless to say

Life doesn't work like that

 

[braalian]

We are not and have been drafted into this. Most of us do not like it, to say the least. While we are babysitting the mental health of a few kids, the rest of the kids' education suffers.

So what exactly does this entail?

Teachers have had to deal with kids’ various behavior problems since as long as schools have existed

Or are you saying you’re actually expected to provide mental health care?

There’s a difference between those two things

 

[braalian]

It means that we are now having to use techniques like "mindfulness" and "social emotional learning", etc. In the latter case, students are taught that everything begins with their emotions. That's a laughably terrible life lesson. But they are taught explicitly that they can't learn if they're a little sad, a little angry, a little frustrated.

Yeah.....

Mindfulness actually really works in many situations. Anxious people who are ramping themselves up benefit greatly from mindfulness exercises.

I can see where incorporating it into your class time would not be practical, though

 

[SweetSue92]

So what exactly does this entail?

Teachers have had to deal with kids’ various behavior problems since as long as schools have existed

Or are you saying you’re actually expected to provide mental health care?

There’s a difference between those two things

No, we have always dealt with behavior problems and "community care and rules", like share, be polite, use kind words.

I'm talking kids are expected to do a kind of mental health wellness check multiple times in the school day. They are taught they can't learn in any zone but the "green zone", and so must then babysit their emotions until they get there.

That's not even mental health practice I imagine, just more terrible education policy that sounded good but in reality is just....stupid.

BTW, I'm near retirement so I laughed at the "zone" materials and never posted them. "You feel sad, junior? Come make music with us. You'll feel better." Works like a charm.

 

[braalian]

Nursing is full of similar claptrap, thought up by people who haven’t worked bedside in decades and waste hospital money with their pointless and unnecessary office jobs

I’m guessing schools employ similarly pointless people who wouldn’t know how to run an actual classroom if their lives depended on it

 

[toobfreak]

It's teaching kids that they cannot be expected to function if there's not completely emotionally satisfied first.

Who wants complete emotional satisfaction? Last time I had that, I just wanted to smoke a cigarette, turn over and go to sleep.

It is the quest for complete emotional satisfaction that drives a person to achieve in life, to even get out of bed in the morning. Life does not BEGIN with complete emotional satisfaction, if any at all. I would not even know how to begin trying to teach one other person how to attain it, much less tell them they need to get that FIRST before anything else begins...

And for another thing, learning how to cope with the lack of it is what helps build character.

Thinking you are some sort of victim denied your rights if you don't have complete emotional satisfaction as a child, I cannot think of any better way to fail them and F them in the heads. No wonder all these kids are marching around unhappy and angry.

They've been fed absolute horseshit completely divorced from reality. At the very least, it inevitably must lead to the conclusion that the people running the world are idiots.

I had an advantage--- growing up as a youngster, I was pretty sure those running the world were for the most part at least not idiots who knew what they were doing, but just not always wanting to do good things...

 

[luiza]

We have guidance counselors, social workers, special ed professionals, etc. actively helping kids who need it. General topics in mental health come up in Health class, but not that often.

Putting aside the children
Who oversees the teachers--- many of whom are literally brain diseased, as distinct from just being often misguided ?

Nutters teaching kiddy -winks .
Critical as AI increasingly hides distinctions between Best Available Info ( Facts) and personal opinion ?
Let alone deliberate Misinformation .

 

[Unkotare]

Putting aside the children
Who oversees the teachers--- many of whom are literally brain diseased, as distinct from just being often misguided ?

Nutters teaching kiddy -winks .
Critical as AI increasingly hides distinctions between Best Available Info ( Facts) and personal opinion ?
Let alone deliberate Misinformation .

?????

 

[SweetSue92]

Who wants complete emotional satisfaction? Last time I had that, I just wanted to smoke a cigarette, turn over and go to sleep.

It is the quest for complete emotional satisfaction that drives a person to achieve in life, to even get out of bed in the morning. Life does not BEGIN with complete emotional satisfaction, if any at all. I would not even know how to begin trying to teach one other person how to attain it, much less tell them they need to get that FIRST before anything else begins...

And for another thing, learning how to cope with the lack of it is what helps build character.

Thinking you are some sort of victim denied your rights if you don't have complete emotional satisfaction as a child, I cannot think of any better way to fail them and F them in the heads. No wonder all these kids are marching around unhappy and angry.

They've been fed absolute horseshit completely divorced from reality. At the very least, it inevitably must lead to the conclusion that the people running the world are idiots.

I had an advantage--- growing up as a youngster, I was pretty sure those running the world were for the most part at least not idiots who knew what they were doing, but just not always wanting to do good things...

I saw this on a podcast and it's so good: helping your children with everything, never letting them struggle, feeds YOUR self-esteem and destroys THEIRS.

Yes.

Because it's what you overcome in life that gives "emotional satisfaction".

No profession is as stupid as mine, I'm convinced.