Teach the Teacher: Mental Health

Another school shooting flashes across headlines.  In ways, the stories seem to repeat themselves. A mentally ill student or young adult attacks a school. Sometimes, it isn't a school. It's a movie theater or a political rally.  Then, the finger-pointing begins. Who is to blame? Where did we go wrong as a society? It's the school. No, it's the police officers who failed to follow up on complaints. No, it's the gun lobby that allows guns in America. No, it's the manufacturers of guns. No, it's bullying. No, it's society. The thing is, there is no single answer to this complex issue. There is no one person or one thing to blame.  There is one thing that is true. There is something wrong in American society that is causing these issues to occur.  In order to solve the problem as a whole, each problem must be addressed independently. One of those problems is understanding, funding, and appropriately treating mental health issues.

In America, it's no secret that mental health issues have long been ignored. History shows early mental health hospitals with poor conditions and maltreatment of patients.  With the deinstitutionalization of mental health patients, mental health patients who were not considered a "threat to themselves or others" received outpatient treatments. States and the federal government cut back on mental health budgets, particularly funding for hospitals or state-based facilities. Considerable stigma is still attached to mental health.  Individuals lack an understanding of mental health issues or how to identify and treat those issues.

To begin, a person with a mental health issue may begin showing signs in early adolescence.  These signs may be ignored as behavioral issues, troubles at home, teen angst. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five adolescents lives with a mental health problem. However, few receive mental health treatment. Why? Parents, teachers, families, and communities do not want to see mental health as a problem. If someone is told they are mentally ill, then the individual telling them is a "bad person", "mean", "picking on them." The truth is, not identifying a mental health issue can lead to "bad" consequences.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Adolescents in America spend a majority of their time in schools. They spend almost eight hours a day, at a minimum, around teachers, staff, and administrators.  The number may be greater for students involved in extra-curricular activities, such as band, athletics, theater, choir. Some teachers and staff can spend around 12 hours a day with students. However, if they identify a student with mental health illness, the question arises if they have tools and resources to recognize and address the mental health issues.

Teachers do currently receive considerable training on a variety of topics from classroom management, to recognizing abuse, to psychology, to behavioral problems, to mental health issues. Nonetheless, teachers' days are stretched thin, some with 30 students in the classroom, teaching several courses a day. For teachers who also have outside activities they sponsor, their work load gets pretty heavy. Yet, they are also asked to identify, talk to, and address mental health issues in schools. However, their training is limited. As a result, increased funding for better mental health training for teachers needs to occur. Teachers should have a pathway to alert mental health professionals regarding students who repeatedly get in fights in schools; demonstrate difficulty with recognizing reality; act violent toward other students, threaten violence to school officials, community members or even parents; or are obsessed with guns or other deadly weapons.  Teachers should be trained on how to recognize patterns of behavior associated with mental health issues and be able to refer the student to appropriate resources.

There are people who may say that it isn't the teachers' problem, that they already have enough to do in the classroom, how can they possibly be expected to do one more thing. This is true. However, training teachers regarding mental health issues will make their classrooms and their schools safer places and help get students the treatment they desperately need. Sometimes, families do not want to admit that an adolescent has a problem, and the problem goes unchecked and untreated for years until the problem gets worse and worse. Teachers then must have an avenue, or a place, within the school to send students for adequate mental health evaluation and possible treatment. Greater funding to schools and school districts is needed to provide adequate staff and training for these areas as well.

Will teaching teachers and providing additional mental health funding to schools solve the school shooting problem? Maybe not. However, it will provide early intervention strategies for adolescents suffering from untreated mental health issues, and it may at least save someone's life.

Sources
Luo, Michael. “The Sad Reality of Trying to Keep Guns Away from Mentally Ill People.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 15 Feb. 2018, www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sad-reality-of-trying-to-keep-guns-away-from-mentally-ill-people.
“Federal Budget for Mental Health & Addictions.” National Council, www.thenationalcouncil.org/topics/federal-budget/.
www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170523.060239/full/.
Fazel, Mina, et al. “Mental Health Intervention in Schools 1.” The Lancet. Psychiatry, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Oct. 2014, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477835/.
“Mental Health: Strengthening Our Response.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs220/en/.
“NAMI.” NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness, www.nami.org/Learn-More/Public-Policy/Mental-Health-in-Schools.