How To Support Children's Mental Health With SEL
May is Mental Health Awareness Month! In celebration, we have created this post to help parents and teachers learn about mental health in children, as well as provide a fun resource to practice mental health and wellness with your kids or students!
What is mental health?
Broadly speaking, mental health is a person’s psychological and emotional well-being. To get more specific, we can refer to the definition of the World Health Organization (WHO), which is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” The term mental health encompasses so many aspects of a person’s well-being, and is much more than just the absence of mental illness. Regardless of the terms and diagnoses that we may or may not have, our mental health (like our physical health) is something that we all must tend to.
Mental health starts in early childhood
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), anxiety and depression are among the top diagnosed mental disorders in children ages 3-17 in the U.S., with 4.4 million diagnosed with anxiety and 1.9 million diagnosed with depression, and numbers only on the rise. We also know that these struggles can carry onto their early adult years. The American Psychological Association recently published that one in three college students report symptoms consistent with a diagnosable mental health disorder.
While adults may often talk about the importance of our own mental health, it is important to realize that children struggle with mental health, too. We should even consider how to support those children who do not seem to be struggling with mental health, because mental health is something that everyone will face at some point in their life. Educating all children on mental health may help a child with a later mental illness, with helping a friend who is struggling, or in just dealing with stressful moments and challenges.
Teaching mental health to help kids thrive
Mental health is not instinctual, meaning that humans are not born with the skills needed to care for this aspect of their health. We can help our children in improving their mental health by providing thoughtful and reflective learning opportunities. When we do this, we can help kids be more aware of potential conditions and the services they may seek. Undiagnosed, untreated, or inadequately treated mental health conditions can affect a student’s ability to learn, grow and develop. We additionally reduce the stigma around mental health when we educate children on it early. Unfortunately, 60% of people inaccurately believe that individuals with mental health conditions are violent. For the mental health of all children, education around mental health is crucial and many educators have realized it.
The state of New York, for example, now requires mandatory mental health instruction for K-12 students. Additionally, schools across the country have embraced “SEL” (or social emotional learning) in the classroom. This kind of instruction allows children to learn and practice valuable skills that they can use throughout their child and adult lives. The main pillars of SEL, for example, are skills and abilities that adults use daily to better maintain their mental health:
Does it remind you of the mental health definition the World Health Organization gave us above? The kind of mental health instruction and SEL happening in classrooms can lay a strong foundation for children’s mental health later in life.
Have Fun With This Mental Health Awareness Calendar
To celebrate Mental Health Awareness month, Better Kids has created a May calendar to help you all find quick daily ways to tend to mental health.
This calendar is full of ideas to try with your child and promote positive mental health. Print this calendar in two pieces to hang on the wall and mark the days as you complete the activities.
Alternatively, visit our Instagram to bookmark it or post to your story as you complete the daily activities. You can also check out our mental health quotes to discuss them with your child. We hope you have fun taking this month to focus on your and your child’s mental health!
A prior version of this article was originally published on May 1, 2020.