Understanding Mental Health of Students and Connecting Mindfulness

 Last week in the mindfulness at home blog for families, I talked about social media and metal health. This past weekend while listening to one of my many podcasts which help me find topics for this blog I was again presented with the idea of youth and mental health.

On Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard (now on Spotify, if you want to listen), Dr. Harold Koplewicz, psychiatrist and founder of Child Mind Institute, spoke on youth and mental health.

In this podcast Dr. Koplewicz spoke on the 20% increase in youth suicide over the last four year. The yearly number of suicides is 6,120. Dr. Koplewicz spoke on how every news station would jump to talk about an increase like this if it were Covid, but teen suicide is overlooked.

Last week an article came out presenting information regarding social media and youth self-perception and mental health. Social media has created a negative impact on the mental health of our students.

During the pandemic we have been asked to stay home and save lives. Unfortunately, for our youth staying home caused a concern for their mental health and lives.

Dr. Koplewicz in this interview talks about ways to support students with mental health. He talked about identifying feelings (Mood Meter) and calming the Amygdala (Mindfulness). 

It may seem an uphill battle when it comes to mental health. On average parents wait 2-8 years from the onset of symptoms before they seek help from a professional. You feel as if you are left asking what you can really do and how do you teach a whole calls while focusing on the students most in need. It's reported that 1 in 6 children have a diagnosed mental health concern...and about 2/3 of children in need of a diagnosis are currently going untreated.

Once equipped with information we can start to work on how we can best support our students.

As Dr. Koplewicz shared we can use mindfulness to start making a lasting impact.

Gifting our students with mindfulness is one of the best gifts to give. It a gift they can carry with them throughout their lives. 

This week try taking a mindful moment to show students compassion.

Don't forget to take care of yourself. 

I wanted to end this week's post by reminding you to utilize Inner Explorer. If you do some looking at your home page, they have added mindfulness for Educators. Take a few minutes to explore. I have been listening and they are as wonderful as the mindfulness for our students.