Let's talk about "Mental Health First Aid"! I recently attended 3 incredible programs through our district related to mental health and safety, and I'm going to outline some of the take-aways. I strongly encourage you to take the time to calendar and prioritize the presentations when you can. They are a helpful way to restock your mental health first aid kit so you can support your family, community and yourself!
The overarching message for all the presentations:
1. Connectedness - just being there for each other makes a difference.
2. Take away stigma - we can talk about mental health. We want to talk about mental health.
The first presentation I attended was "The Well-Balanced Student." This was well attended with parents from all the campuses, grades preschool to high school, wanting to know how to support their students on this complex and challenging educational journey. When we are too focused on grades and performance, we deny our children the time and energy they need to tackle the demanding work of growing up. In this presentation, we got tips on how to establish a healthier home environment for your child, reduce academic stress without sacrificing achievement, and increase your child’s resilience, creativity, and well-being. Students are taking on more than ever, with the additional pressure to take honors and AP classes while juggling extracurriculars. We were encouraged to define and parent to our individual family definitions of success, avoiding that comparison of what everyone else is doing. The presenter noted that sleeping loss does directly correlate to anxiety gain so we need to prioritize sleep. She also strongly promoted engagement (which is the connectedness piece). Students benefit when engaged in a passion at school. And then keeping that grounding connection at home with a family game night or some way to reignite that unconditional love piece that our teenagers might not admit they need, but it does service their soul.
The second presentation was "Social Media and Teen Safety" in a general meeting of the Cougar Club. We were honored to have guest speaker Jenna Fondren, Statewide Director of the Safe School Institute who reviewed social media effects on mental health. She started by reminding us that mental health is simply how you think/act/feel - remove the stigma! Kids today will respond to "what is mental health?" with anxiety and depression instead of mental wellness. Jenna said let’s change this to “I woke up stressed and I need help to address this feeling and stomach ache.” This way we are addressing how we feel and looking for a wellness approach.
Our childhood was so different. The rise of social media changes how our kids interact. It is not normal to have access to your peers 24/7. And unfortunately in studies, technology addiction was shown to be similar to drugs, with actual changes in the neuron pathways of the brain. Three dangers she highlighted were online grooming, bullying and hate speech. Her plan for combatting this - connectedness. She said to make sure you are deeply familiar with all apps on your child's phone and that you make sure it is known that the phone is yours. There are ways to private message inside of these platforms so just looking over the texts won't cover the conversations your child might be having. And we need to be sure our children aren't using social media as an online diary as this leaves them susceptible to predators, bullying and hate speech.
Learning about internet safety makes trauma nursing look easy... there is a lot to understand. Her big takeaway was to remember the brains of our young people are still developing and they will make mistakes. They will see something they shouldn't see. They will say something they shouldn't say. We need to talk them through these mistakes and show them support in navigating this complicated online life. When you support them and stay connected, they will know they can come to you and hopefully avoid the dangers lurking out there online.
The third presentation was "Suicide Prevention" from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Once again, we received more tips and tools for our mental health first aid kit. We can help those around us struggling by leaving space for them to be able to say sometimes I feel this way and that's alright. Sometimes we need to do more. We MUST remove the stigmas to talk about it, and most importantly connect. We have a campus Hope Squad to interact with and educate the student body to reduce stigma and change their community's culture around mental health. Student members are trained to note signs of distress and reach out, connecting peers to help and hope. They meet with trained advisors to talk and learn about mental health and recently held an event to bring more awareness and support.
Our district is offering us great insight into how we can a be a supportive part of our child’s development as they navigate on their educational journey. I’m looking forward to the next presentation. My mental health first aid kit’s volume is limitless and I love the feeling of empowerment I get from education and the inspired feeling I get from knowing I have the supplies in my kit and I’m ready to get to work supporting you, your family and our community!
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