Mrs.Devi Venugopal
Educational Psychologist
Indonesia
Dear Readers
I was about to continue to write about GRIT, then the recent increase in the number of 12th Grade suicidal rates among teenagers committing suicide, made me to change the article., rings an alarm in our community, it’s no more an individual problem.There may be a lot of reasons behind why a person teen choose to end their lives, but if we want to take action to reduce the suicide rate, its it’s time for all stakeholders in a child’s life to join hands to take action.Social Emotional Learning (SEL)is very crucial at this point of knowledge era, where all the information is just a click away. We as responsible adults need to be on top of our game, by unlearning our old methods to handle the future generation. If anyone resorting to suicide, it is because they felt that no one can understand their problem or in some cases no one is there to listen to their distress.
It’s an alarm ringing loud and clear
In our kids’ life, we are not the protagonists, we are just sidekicks. They are the protagonist, led them be the heroes and heroines in their stories. Let’s play be the good and kind supporting roles rather than being villains or hysterical yelling personalities. Are we ready to learn some simple yet powerful approaches to address this mental pandemic which is on high rise today.I want to share some examples from international schools how they build the scaffolding around social emotional support for the children.
In Elementary and Kindergarten
The kids start their day with sharing the emotions, are they in green, blue, yellow or red zones of regulation. Posters made clearly to represent the different emotions in different zones such as Green Zone represents happy, calm, and focused; Blue Zone represents tired sleepy, sad, sick or bored; Yellow Zone represents heightened state of alertness such as anxiety, stress, frustration, excitement and silliness; and Red Zone represents extremely heightened state of alertness such as panic, extreme grief, terror, or elation. This is a concept used to help students learn how to self-regulate. First thirty minutes of the day is spent with the Morning greeting, to understand where the child is and the whole class comes with strategies and tools to support each other.
In Middle School (MS) and High School (HS), there are specific class for psycho education according to the age level. Health class is mandatory to get graduation and the kids learn what are the challenges they face in the outside world such as how to say no when a substance such as alcohol, cigarettes or other addictive substances are offered. There are inhouse mental health experts in the school.
Let me share an ideal example of how a child was identified with self-harm behavior and notified to the parents with the encouragement to reach out to counselor. Students in MS and HS get to do free writing based on the curriculum, let it be narrative or persuasive writing. A Grade 7 girl wrote a story in which the protagonist self-harm, commit suicide and die. The school counselor escalates a red flag to the parent and follows up on the steps the parents take to support the child. After six months of CBT counseling, the child has come out of the self-harm behavior.
Let me show how it will look like in Elementary, a Grade 2 boy was given a HEART MAP to show what matters to him, the child started drawing guns, shooting, making bombs. This is immediately addressed by the school counselor; the child was playing highly violent video games not appropriate to his age.
In HS, it might look a teenager having an eating disorder, due to the psycho education and health class, the friends if they notice such behaviors in class will reach out to a trusted adult. If the teenager seems to be in distress and sharing suicidal ideations, it comes out in some representation before they act. If we as responsible adults in a child’s life, notice the cues and respond quickly, we can prevent and reduce such disasters.
Parents, you are the best judge about your child’s behavior, let it be things like they become overly quiet, not enjoying things what they used to, or their art, writing, or music represents such ideations. Please reach out for support, let it be another trusted adult or mental health professional.
As educators, let’s give professional development to teachers, parents and all other stakeholders in a child’s life about the importance of cues for red flags and equip them with basic training to support the young minds in the very beginning. For this to happen, we need the support of the whole education system, to allot a particular time for this specifically and not using it to finish the curriculum. Allocating funds to provide resources and training so everyone is on the same page. We all know it is mandatory to undergo Child safeguarding training to work in a setting with children, let’s invest in that training to be reoccurring and educative.
This is a time to bring the revolution about mental health, to break the taboo around counseling, therapy and support. Let’s join hands to make this happen, let’s not allow even a single child to slip through the crack. We have given the powerful tools such as Internet, social media, AI in the hands of the young mind, let’s strengthen their inner core through psychoeducation and strengthening their GRIT.
This is a new era, where the uncertainty is knocking us down more often than before, the teens and young adults are struggling to understand how this is all working, they feel overwhelmed by strong emotions and get into mood disorders such as anxiety, depression, grief, body shaming, gaslighting, addictive habits and relationship issues. The thoughts which trigger these negative emotions are all due to distorted thinking, in one of my previous articles I have written in detail about the ten distortions which drives us crazy and fogs our perception.
The first step is to question our belief around mental health and break the taboo, and ask for support, at the same time, the schools and government must include mandatory trainings for the teachers to support the need of the hour for the students. Second step is to increase the awareness about the mental health among all the stakeholders and the children themselves, so they can handle the situations through right coping strategies. Finally, don’t wait for something bad to happen, prevention is better than cure. So, use some powerful tools which are available for free online. There are so many podcasts out there to understand how CBT works, when you notice any change in a child’s behavior, understand rather blame or push away the child. Let’s come together to bring the suicide rates to come down. =
