Mental Health 

the key messages you know about this issue? 

The key message that everyone should know about mental health is that it affects everyone. It affects the way we think, the way we feel, and also affects the people around us, especially if you’re a parent. Mental health can really affect your child/children if you aren’t getting the help you need. Mental health can affect children easily when they see their parents struggling and not understanding what’s going on, only seeing and hearing. 

Mental health influences other issues that affect young children like poverty and addiction and even parenting style, quality of care, and the parent and child connection. I was reading on BC Mental Health & substance use services, they were talking about their research and how three-year-old children show different types of attitudes and thought patterns that could lead to eating disorders are being found in younger and younger children.

 

 

Identify Why should anybody listen?  Shape a strong argument that covers different aspects of the issue (e.g. the economic argument, social justice, prevention, collaboration, health) Be clear, and remember that people outside the child care environment may not know what you’re talking about.  Use research and/or statistics to support your case and bring it home by using a personal story.

 

I found the document online and it’s called Companion Document. It promotes mental health and mental illness prevention.  It’s a booklet/ document that talks about what to do about mental health illness. It’s a highly detailed plan that outlines specific outcomes. It promotes health strategies for mental health. “Mental health problems affect 1 in 10 children and young people.” 70% of children and young people who struggle with mental illness do not have the interventions at an early age. This is why it is so important for us to be educated on mental illness, and why it should be a mandatory class in ECE. We need to have the proper training to see when our children or parents are experiencing mental illness, to have guidelines on how we approach parents, and how to give them guidance to help them. Children’s and parent’s emotional well being is just as important as their physical health. 

 

Doing my research I found a website that said “most children grow up mentally healthy, but surveys suggest that more children and young people have problems with their mental health today than 30 years ago.” “That’s probably because how we live now and it’s affecting our experience of growing up” Capitalism is killing people, it’s causing more and more issues. There’s been a huge increase in exposure to the news. The majority of all news is negative, our world has started to feel more negative than positive.  Our food is less nutritious and people are more stressed now. Most parents are depressed more now than 30 years ago. I believe technology has increased mental illness and plays a key role in our mental health because it is much easier for people to be judged by others and express that judgment in a media form that makes them feel anonymous or less accountable. Parenting has become much more challenging over the last three decades.  30 years ago, people had much less access to the internet.

 

Mental health is to talk more now than it was 30 years ago. Mental health advocates are working toward mental health illnesses being less stigmatized and increasing access for all people to mental health supports. Teens are being educated on mental illness signs and red flags. They are being given guidelines and lists of resources to access when they are concerned about their peers. Why aren’t Educators being given the same kind of access to mental health information and guidelines?

 

We have guidelines to help approach parents with development concerns, for example, speech therapy. Someone from child development comes in to do lots of observing with some of the children, they take notes. Then talk with the supervisor, we then have a meeting with all of us that work in the room, with the person from child development and they talk with us how we can approve and gives useful strategies to help with children who have high energy and behavioral problems. They also give us the right tools on how to approach parents. But why don’t we talk about mental health? 

I work with children with symptoms/ signs of OCD, its talked about with educators behind closed doors, but that’s it, that’s how far it goes, no one has talked to parents, talked about it with anyone. OCD is a mental illness that needs to be addressed. Research showed me “that early intervention and treatment dramatically impact the course of mental illness and that many people can go on to live normal and productive lives with appropriate treatment. Early intervention can help individuals get better more quickly and prevent problems from becoming worse.” That’s why it’s so important that we talk about it now.

We can do better.

Identify and complete your Advocacy Strategy: What do you want people to do with the information you’re giving them? In one succinct statement, make the “ask” – what action do you want people to take? Attach a sample of what they can do RIGHT NOW in response to your information? ie. letter to the editor, to an elected official, join a coalition, etc 

 

I want parents to take this message that mental health is important, that it is nothing to be ashamed about, and it can truly affect everyone around you. I want childcare educators to be provided with this knowledge and warning signs to watch out for in children and parents. I want caregivers to have access to local and provincial resources that we can refer to parents.

I believe that we, as caregivers and child-educators, should receive education around warning signs and we should be able to approach parents, with appropriate guidelines, about our concerns. We should all advocate for each other. Mental Health is a community issue. When parents come up and talk about their children and that they’ve been experiencing anxiety, more anxiety than other children. I would use my resources and guidance and give them more information on a  website that’s online that you can sign up to talk with a professional about the anxiety you’ve been experiencing. Bounce back is a free website that offers help with 15 and up. 

It’s important that we learn about mental illness, we need to have guidelines, the right training. In the ECE curriculum, it should be mandatory to take a mental health/illness course. Every educator should be taught about mental illness and how we can approach parents with proper training.

ECE must demand to have a mental health course as part of this curriculum. We can all contact ECBC and demand or sign a petition that they make it mandatory for mental illness courses we should take, to better ourselves and have the right tools to approach parents. ECE workers can also contact their local provincial representatives to demand that there be funding to educate ECE providers with updated training that includes mental health and more funding for mental health services.

 

Resources for parents and children mental health

http://www.bcmhsus.ca

https://bouncebackbc.ca

https://www.camimh.ca/mental-illness-awareness-week/about-miaw/

https://www.mherc.mb.ca/page.php?id=13

Mental health in kids

https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/deep-dives/mental-health/

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/c/children-and-young-people

https://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/mental-illnesses-children-and-youth

https://keltymentalhealth.ca

http://www.bcmhsus.ca/about/news-stories/stories/jessies-legacy-bc-partners

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/managing-your-health/mental-health-substance-use/child-teen-mental-health