Mental health crisis: Going beyond quick fixes

When the world suddenly went into lockdown and we were forced to shut schools overnight, we watched with horror as the entire learning system moved online and everyone was gung-ho that the world was finally recognising the power of EdTech. One year on, we are left picking up the pieces. A study by Oxfam India showed that 80% of parents in five states said digital schooling failed during the first wave and the recent ASER report showed that only one-third of the country’s schoolchildren were pursuing online education. I hope, at least in hindsight, we are able to see the online learning bubble for what it was. A quick fix.

Even as we scramble to make sense of the disruption that has unfolded around us, there has been an overwhelming need to move to the next band-aid and for now, that is the mental health and well-being of children. This is a real and huge problem and should be the most important issue that we must address. But in the absence of any meaningful empirical evidence on the true nature of the mental health crisis that children are facing, we are again resorting to quick fixes to a complex problem.

For example, sharing ‘activities’ with children and hoping it will help them cope with mental health challenges. Unfortunately, good mental health is not an outcome that we can expect from activities. It is not a pill that you pop. When we talk about physical health, we understand that it requires us to exercise each day, invest in a good diet, have healthy sleep patterns, avoid junk food and other things that contribute to our physical health.

Read | The pandemic has brought an ‘epidemic’ of mental distress: NIMHANS director

Unfortunately, when it comes to the mental health of children, there is a belief that engaging children in activities is enough. Instead of trying to address the anxieties and grief that children are dealing with, these activities are simply designed to engage them in their free time.

One of the established challenges of our current education system is the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to student learning. We are now, unfortunately, extending the same assembly-line model to the complex problem of developing the mental health of our children who are grappling with the effects of a global pandemic. Consider the example of a popular WhatsApp Bot that invites children to follow a bunch of steps to develop their confidence. The first question on that particular activity is for the child to list its strengths.

When I imagined myself as a 14-year-old, I was reminded of the many days when I felt good at absolutely nothing, despite having considerable privilege and not growing up in the middle of a pandemic. But when you enter ‘Nothing’ on the bot as an honest self-reflection of how you are feeling, the response you get is ‘That’s awesome. You are good at NOTHING!’. It does not stop there. The Bot continues to suggest a series of steps involving asking your friends and family whether they think you are good at nothing, and also gives you 50 points for being good at absolutely nothing.

Pain and suffering

Our children are dealing with enormous pain and suffering because we failed to provide even the basics of healthcare facilities or learning support while they grappled with the largest human tragedy in modern history. They are today the most invisible victims of the Covid catastrophe, and we cannot let that continue. The desire to fix children’s mental health challenges, only so that they can come back to school and start learning math and science again is problematic.

Instead of recognising that it was a broken school system that did next to nothing to prepare children for a challenge of this magnitude, we are eager for things to go back to ‘normal’. Mental health is now like an intermediary that can prepare children to come back to that same system of education that measures them on their ability to memorise outdated facts, while in their lived reality they are dealing with complex social and ecological challenges unforeseen in recent history.

The need of the hour is an overhaul of existing systems and structures to allow for a new approach to learning and teaching based on Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) practices, trauma informed schools/trauma responsive education that focuses on the overall wellbeing of our young people who are currently coping with more than they can handle.

A robust life skills curriculum and SEL curriculum grounded in young people’s reality can enable young people to build emotional resilience and self-regulate; cultivate free, critical and creative thinking, and nurture healthy relationships with people and the environment. Educating teachers about mental health and wellbeing and creating awareness within the teacher community on how trauma may show up in the classroom can go a long way in equipping them to help young people.

Teachers are often first responders and understanding how to respond appropriately to young people showing signs of trauma will help these children move forward and thrive, despite adversity. For this to happen, teachers will need to be trained in life skills and trauma responsive education. This will also mean that we will need to redefine learning spaces to go beyond the existing school structures, where community learning could be made possible through the participation of both parents and the community, because that is where healing can happen.

While all of these will need time to integrate, there is an urgent need for trauma responsive education to become a part of the educational ecosystem. One thing is sure, now is not the time to build-back-better. Let us build-back-different. Fundamentally different.

(The writer is CEO, Dream a Dream, an organisation working towards empowering young people from vulnerable backgrounds)