The course focused on depression, anxiety, eating disorders, psychosis, and conduct disorders. There were some great videos incorporated into the course, and while I enjoyed all of them (some of them were videos that I had already watched previously on my own), I really enjoyed one that I ended up with by accident. It was one of those "since you watched this video, here's another one for you to check out," videos that starts playing automatically when the first one ends. It's called Everything you Thought you Knew about Addiction is Wrong by Johann Hari, and if you have a few minutes to spare, I would definitely check it out. It gave me a lot to think about in terms of the environment we are creating for all of our students who make mistakes.
I think the simple fact is that we are teachers, we're not medical professionals. The best that we can hope to do is provide a connected, caring, safe environment for our students so they are okay with making mistakes and okay with being themselves. We need to speak up when we believe something is wrong, and we need to advocate for our kids who are struggling in any capacity. And we need to keep advocating until we are blue in the face.
The psychosis section of this course really impacted me because it reminded me of a student I had many years ago. I had the opportunity to have this young man for two years as part of a 3rd / 4th grade looping class and then for a 3rd year as part of a 4th / 5th grade multi-age program. This boy was what I liked to call a squirrel. Always darting from here to there, always finding something different to think about or do, and he kept me on my toes. I had the opportunity to see him grow the first two years, and while he needed constant reminders the potential for success was always there. During those first two years, he father suffered from, and eventually passed away from, a difficult and debilitating liver disease. After losing his father I worried about it, but as is the norm, I sent him off for summer vacation and hoped for the best.
When this young man came back, he was a different boy. He repeatedly shared stories about the bigger, bad kids in the neighborhood and the really bad stuff that they did. Unfortunately, I never was able to get the details about what that "really bad stuff" was, but I passed his comments on to our guidance counselor in the hopes that she might be able to find out something that I couldn't. It was around this same time that he started acting out and stealing things. When I became more vocal with my concerns, I was told that he had always been that way, I was just too nice and hadn't been strict enough. And clearly he had always been stealing stuff, but I had just never caught him doing it when he was in my room all the time. I knew this young man had changed, and I knew he needed help. But the louder I squawked the less people listened. And so began a long line of disciplinary problems and consequences issued.
This young man went on to have significantly more serious behavior problems in middle school. I don't believe he ever ended up graduating. And a few years ago I got the sad news that he had committed suicide while incarcerated in our local prison.
When we talk about mental health issues and getting students the support that they need, he is my failure. I don't know what else I could have done, but what happened to this young man will haunt me forever. As we try to educate ourselves about the mental health issues that are affecting our kids today, I can only hope that we will figure out the answer to helping our kids before it's too late.
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