Student lobbies for courses on mental health
You're taught math and grammar in high school, and you toss a ball around in PE, but you aren't taught how to cope with mental illness, a Grade 10 student in Richmond says.
D.J. Gill is lobbying the province to include mandatory mental-illness education in the curriculum because she says expecting students to seek the knowledge they need is unrealistic. It's compounded by the pandemic and the toll that isolating is taking on teens.
“I believe rather than encouraging students to talk to a counsellor, the mental-health conversation must be brought to us,” said Gill, who has created an Instagram account to go into more depth on the matter, @teachmentalhealthbc.
“We must be taught how to cope with our mental illness, and how to identify symptoms of poor mental health, just like we are taught math and science.”
Students aren't comfortable discussing negative feelings and thoughts, or with expressing vulnerability to school counsellors, she said.
The provincial Grade 10 curriculum does include teaching critical, reflective and creative thinking; communicating and collaborating; a category labelled `personal and social,' which includes positive personal and cultural identity; relationship and interpersonal conflict skills; and students are expected to know the signs and symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression. It's not working, Gill said. “The concept of encouraging students to talk to counsellors is ineffective,” she said. “Nowadays, most students shy away from expressing their feelings, especially with a teacher-like figure.
“The conversation must be brought to us involuntarily to ensure that information is not neglected.”
In December, Gill wrote the Ministry of Education an open letter advocating implementing mental-heath education that is effective and inclusive, and is approved by students. She got a response from the ministry's director of mental health, Danielle Carter-Sullivan, stating mental well-being is already covered in the PE curriculum.
Last fall, Carter-Sullivan pointed out, the ministry released a new strategy for mental health in schools, which “outlines a vision and pathway for mental-health promotion in the K-12 education system and will help guide the ministry's actions and investments in mental-health promotion in the years to come.”
The province has hired 245 teacher-psychologists and counsellors in the last three years, she added, and sent links to online resources and the provincial erase program to Gill.
But unless and until students have mandatory mental-health education, the system is going to fail them, Gill said.