Mental health challenge Last year, Ms Leticia Guerrero-Castaneda’s 11-year-old son, Isaiah, was struggling. He was in the fifth grade when the pandemic shutdown occurred, and his reaction was to shut himself down. He became pathologically afraid of germs and contamination.
“He wouldn’t come out of his room and became afraid of touching anything,” Ms Guerrero-Castaneda recalled. That led to depression and anxiety, which affected not only Isaiah, but also his family. By the time he returned to the classroom, Isaiah was in seventh grade and, like many students, was experiencing behaviour problems. Seeking help, Ms Guerrero-Castaneda attended two workshops run by Champ, or Community Health Action Mental Perseverance, last spring at Norma Cooms Elementary School in Pasadena, California. Parents there wrote narratives of their experiences related to events that impacted their families – like Covid-19 and school shootings – and processed those experiences with other parents. mental health challenge , “We came to see we were not alone,” Ms Guerrero-Castaneda said. “We learnt different coping mechanisms and were told not to ignore our feelings or our kids’ feelings. “Most of us were worried about how our children will be affected in the long run. And there was a sense of great comfort in being able to talk about it with other parents.” Champ was created by three faculty members at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena: Camille Huggins and Cassandra Peel, professors of social work, and Giovanni Hortua, an adjunct professor of history and Latin American studies. Prof Huggins said the workshops provided parents a tool kit for coping with grief and loss, for themselves and their children. “This is a self-care exercise that gets them to reflect on their experience, to analyse and make sense of it,” she said. Ms Guerrero-Castaneda guided her son towards individual therapy and is emotionally supporting him as he works his way through his fears. “He started journaling and drawing as a way to express what he’s feeling,” she said. “And little by little, things are improving.” mental health challenge , Champ is one of many innovative programmes and strategies schools nationwide have put in place to help students, many of whom are struggling with the toll the last 2½ years has taken on their mental health. That toll has been cumulative, because distress among young people has been rising for a decade. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the percentage of high-school students with persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness was nearly 40 per cent, up from 26 per cent in 2009, and almost 20 per cent of students in 2019 had seriously considered suicide. Two years later, in 2021, 44 per cent of high schoolers were feeling sad or hopeless. And suicide is now the second leading cause of death among children 10 to 14 years old. College students are also struggling. Emotional stress is one of the top reasons students consider dropping out of college, according to a report released in April from Gallup-Lumina, a private foundation that advocates for equity in higher education. Colleges and universities have lost nearly 1.3 million students since the pandemic began, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
The Connection Project, developed by clinical psychologist and psychology professor Joseph Allen at the University of Virginia, helps ease difficult developmental transitions, like the one from high school to college, and guides students towards forming authentic, meaningful friendships. (The high-school version is known as the Teen Connection Project.) The programme grew out of a study Prof Allen conducted that followed 184 13-year-olds in Charlottesville, Virginia, for 25 years to learn about the friendships and social connections they formed. The research showed that deep, early friendships enhanced a teen’s sense of belonging and reduced loneliness and depression, both in high school, college and beyond. The teen project consists of semester long weekly meetings of about eight to 10 students led by two trained and supervised student facilitators (in high schools, facilitators are trained adults). “We know over the last 10 years that rates of loneliness and depression among young people have gone up more than 60 per cent,” Prof Allen said. Data from a randomised trial of the Teen Connection Project published in May showed a reduction in loneliness and depressive symptoms. mental health challenge , The project’s groups use specially designed exercises to help students connect with one another across social groups in a short period of time. The programme was developed in conjunction with Wyman, an organisation based in St Louis that develops evidence-based programmes for teens. It is now in seven high schools and the University of Virginia, where it began in 2018 as Hoos Connected and served 27 students. This year, about 1,000 will participate. Ms Megan Turner, 21, a Hoos Connected facilitator and former group member, said Hoos Connected helped a great deal with her transition from high school to college. “For the first time, I was surrounded by people where I felt I could share when I wasn’t doing well, and I received a lot of empathy and kindness.” Students living in rural areas face significant challenges accessing mental health services, according to the Rural Health Information Hub, a national clearinghouse for information on rural health issues. Rural communities often lack local psychologists, psychiatrists or social workers and suicide among youth has historically been highest in rural areas.
Source: This news is originally pblished by straitstimes