SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING
& MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS
MENTAL HEALTH WORLWIDE
Schools need to be concerned with the whole development of the child both physically, mentally, and emotionally. Thus, mental health is a topic that must not be left out in the conversation since a not adequate care of child’s mental health can lead to negative consequences in academic, social, and personal life. In order to prevent this, schools around the world have been adopting different measures to identify early a sign of mental health struggles in their student body such as providing more counseling options or to foster a good school climate. However, there is still a gap that needs to be close and be able to normalize mental health conversations, assign more funds towards the issue, and provide the enough care for every student.
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
UNITED STATES
FUNDING
During the summer of 2022, the current US administration announced initiatives to address youth mental health crisis in schools. First, it will disburse nearly 300 million dollars to expand mental health services in schools. This already have begun during the FY2022. It aims to help schools to hire more school-based mental health professionals. Its objective is to “double the number of school counselors, social workers, and other mental health professionals”. This is essential because the ratio of students to mental health workers will decreased, in that way, the staff will be able to provide a more individualized care to students. Even more, some schools across the country will have mental health staff for the first time.
TRAILS
TRAILS is a program that help students by bringing mental health strategines to the school seeting as well as training school staff to provide the necessary support students need. “TRAILS programs strengthen the well-being of all students, while helping students with depression, anxiety, and other common mental health difficulties cope with the symptoms they face”, which it is really valuable because they do not only help in an preventing and educating way, they also worry about the students who are already experiencing mental health challenges and support them in the journey. TRAILS provides three tiers. The first is Universal Education and Awareness which includes Social and Emotional Learning in order for student to develop life skills that will help them in the present and in the future. Tier 2 is Early Intervention which consists of Coping with COVID-19 and CBT and Mindfulness these offerings help students to take care of themselves as a result of the health crisis and learning mechanisms for managing mental health concerns. Finally, tier 3 is about Crisis Intervention where it is offered suicide prevention and risk management which reduces the stigma surrounding mental health and encourages students to ask for help. To date TRAIL has impacted more than 10 000 school staff.
"The TRAILS program, it's managing to do something that's never been done before -it's coming to schools, they're giving these kids the tools and the language to understand it all- and it's truly changing the future for our children"
School Mental Health Professional
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
PERU
In Peru, the government destinates only 0,2% of the total annual budget for the public sector in mental health prevention and monitoring which is only 1,6% of the total budget destinated for the health sector which mainly goes to mental health centers and rehabilitation. There is a lack of prevention and education of mental health inside schools. As a result of the pandemic, 33% of children and teenagers present mental health struggles. Sadly, even with these numbers the budget destinated to mental health is still the same as it was before the pandemic. Recently, in November, the government modified the Law n.° 30947 to strengthen the prevention and promotion of mental health in children, adolescents, and other vulnerable populations that have been affected by the pandemic. Thus, it is established the hiring of psychologists, the incorporation of mental health contents in the curriculum, the elaboration of a mental health plan with a community approach and the participation of teachers and family, among others. Although there are efforts to fight and eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health, it is imposible to notice that those efforts came after a global pandemic hit.
MEXICO
In Mexico, there is only 820 child psychiatrists which does not reach the recommended rate of one psychiatrist per 100 000 inhabitants. Additionally, 80% of the total budget destinated to mental health is used for psychiatric hospitals. There is too much focus on an psychiatric intervention, that the prevention of mental health is forgotten and the government does not invest on it. During Novermber of last year, it was proposed by a federal diputy that the state have to guarantee mental health for children and adolescents, to guide parents and tutors about actions they need to take for the betterment of their children’s mental health. During this year, it was proposed to create a national campaign in favor of youth and child mental health. The Mexican government has neglected how important is mental health, there is no national program destinated to mental health. Additionally, the Mexican President López Obrador pointed out that he could not increased the budget to hire more psychologists for schools because there are other priorities. This reflects the mindset ingrained in Latin America society about mental health awareness because there are things that people consider more important and more worthy to sacrifice in exchange for their mental health.
COMPARING
Comparing developed countries to developing countries in terms of mental health awareness, there is more funds avaialble in the former to continue growing actions and initiatives to promote a good mental health for the children. Sadly, for developing countries the mindset adopted by society and governors puts mental health in one of the least priorities and as a consequence it has nearly no funds to promote awareness. Additionally, although there have been implementation of SEL initiatives in developing countries which by itself include an education of mental health it is unclear if the initiatives / proposals have been implemented and how they have been working so far. Indeed for Mexico, it was stated recently —in one of the articles— that there is no budget for social emotional education. It is important to create campaigns that can change the population mind and have a more welcoming approach towards mental health resources.