How schools can integrate mental health education into the curriculum

With the rise of mental health a silent epidemic, also affecting young adults and children, there is a growing debate if it should be incorporated in school curriculum. While the intent is noble, it throws challenges at multiple fronts which require deep investigation and debates.

Some of the concerns revolve around mental health being a taboo subject, to make the curriculum acceptable to children and more importantly to parents.

Do children have an appetite to take one more subject? Would our courseware burden them more or will it give relief from academic pressure and move them towards excellence by restoring sound mental health?

How do we set in a structure with the emerging and ever-evolving world of AI that offers a lot more personalisation?

And to go deeper, how do we overcome the challenge of the existing mental health system which is now ineffective to our contemporary times in delivering diagnosis, prevention and cure.

Disease Vs Disorder:

Disease management and treatment is simple. A diagnosis is trusted even if there are no symptoms. The prevention through regular check-ups is fairly precise in terms of predictability of health and evidence-based medication as treatment enables the person a higher degree of freedom giving more control over health. It has become a go-to part of how most people stay healthy today.

This, on the contrary, presents an argument against mental health. A normal person would not accept a mental health diagnosis unless it puts them in a position where they can no longer lead a regular and normal life. Therefore, in this case, a diagnosis is forcefully accepted but it is too late.

Treatment through psychiatric medicines is effective but it curtails the degree of freedom of the mind of a patient in expression to allow regular living. In severe cases, it confines patients within limited surviving capability, which is akin to palliative care but for mental health. Therefore, mental health diagnosis and treatment for the mainstream has limited success and effectiveness.

The true basis for prevention is education. Education is awareness to recognize their emotions and feelings and to equip them with processes, tools and techniques to ground the emotions and dissolve the belief before they escalate to crisis mode. It must ensure that emotions are neither suppressed through visualization, positive affirmation nor flaunted. Suppressed emotions show up later in far more toxic manner and often at the wrong places while flaunting them creates a culture where disorder is normalized.

Mind has been evolving and it is now far more complex than even a few decades back. there is a need to redefine the mind with which our children can relate with.

A New Perspective of the Mind for the Next Generation

We must first reframe how we conceptualize the mind. Both eastern and western traditions have explored the workings of the human mind. Through Patanjali’s Yog Sutra, we learn about the mind as containing Chitt (memory/tendency), Mann (desire), Buddhi (innate wisdom), and Ahankar (ego, Identity). One can note the works of Freud and Jung, whose research established the beginnings of modern psychiatry. Despite these various systems and the commitment to study the workings of the mind, we are now facing a public health and mental health crisis – even in our children. Why? Because the mental and emotional environment we live in has become much more complex.

The children have to process infinite times more information and make far more decisions on a daily basis than we did as children. From choosing what to eat three times a day, to deciding what to wear, who to be friends with and what content to consume, children and young adults today are constantly processing choices and making decisions, all the while dealing with pressure and sensory overstimulation.

Therefore, a curriculum should be in place that helps them deduce the choices and arrive at the decision, because AI is already a deserving candidate to be a guide to them making early detection far more complex.

Illusion of diagnosis: New paradigm of mental health

Mental health is – we decide what we should think. Mind shall not begin to think on its own and drift us from what we are thinking. This can be measured by our attention span. When we perform an activity, our attention must be 100% and without any play of emotions with our thoughts to drift us from the task at hand. This alone leads to escapism, boredom, unworthiness, self-doubt, procrastination, inefficiency, loss of productivity, stress and burn-out. It finally culminates every night in disturbing our sleep. Lack of deep sleep further aggravates these emotions and it triggers a vicious cycle in which we get trapped.

It is the suppressed emotion which affects our attention span. It is safe to say that we all have mental disorders. Take anger outbursts, for example.

We always know that it was not the right way even if we were right. It was a moment when we lose control over our mind when a suppressed emotion seeks toxic and violent expression. What is the source of anger? It is disappointment from an expectation. Does disappointment always lead to anger outburst?

It depends. If we feel safe, we vent out else we suppress it and feel unloved and unworthy. If accepted, it leads into depression.

We always know after the outburst that it was not the right way even if we were right. We lose all our wisdom in that moment and control over our mind is taken over by suppressed emotion in toxic and violet form. It is not necessary that the cause of this anger was the same vs. where it was inflicted.

Mood swing is a struggle between suppression and expression of disappointment. In all these situations, we feel lonely and unloved deep within.

Early detection gets more complex when we realize one event experienced by two different people may result in the same disappointment but two different spectrum of emotions and reactions due to different beliefs. Existing mental health system fails here. The purpose of the mental health curriculum shall be to make children become more aware of themselves by educating them about their deep feelings and its source in their unique belief which creates various choices. Such a curriculum will make children feel loved, intimate, and heard of and will effortlessly deduce the choice and decisions will arrive to them.

(The author is Founder of Saanjh Ai)