Transition Times: A Transition Year module is promoting the value of mental health without adding to the stigma of mental illness. It is an empowering experience, writes Louise Holden.
We are constantly told to take responsibility for our physical well-being through exercise, diet and responsible behaviour. Mental health, on the other hand, remains a mystery to many of us, something we regard as beyond our control. We don't respond to mental ill-health the same way as we do to physical illness - when we hear that someone is suffering from a mental illness we don't send them flowers or wish them a speedy recovery. More often we distance ourselves from mental illness because we don't understand it. When we are suffering from mental ill-health ourselves, we often don't deal with it because we feel ashamed.
Mental Health Ireland is working to change our attitudes to the whole area of mental illness, and the organisation is starting with Transition Year students. The Mental Health Matters resource pack has been designed for teachers and students who want to explore the mind in the classroom. Over eight weeks, students examine a range of issues from their own mental well-being to public attitudes to people experiencing mental illness. The module begins by asking students a series of questions.
These include the following: is good mental health a matter of luck? Is mental illness rare? Are physical and mental health connected? Is mental ill-health the same as mental illness? Are drugs the only treatment for mental illness?
The module, which comes with a video and a whole range of class exercises, information sheets and discussion topics gets students thinking about the issues surrounding mental health. Of course, many students will already have some knowledge of the area through personal or family experience.
Students are encouraged to consider the health of their minds. We routinely behave in ways designed to protect and enhance our bodies - we take exercise, we avoid bad food, we take notice of physical pain - and look for causes and solutions. If are bodies are tired, we rest. We are not as careful with our minds. Mental "pain" such as sadness, anger, guilt, stress and anxiety is often ignored. We quickly admit to a stomach-ache but try to hide a bout of sadness. Often the best way to deal with mental pain is to talk to someone about it but many of us tend to do the opposite and let it get worse.
The Mental Health Matters programme deals with two main issues: mental ill-health and mental illness. Everyone suffers from mental ill-health at times of stress. A large percentage of people will suffer from mental illness such as depression, eating disorders, addiction or schizophrenia. Mental ill-health is to mental illness as feeling run down is to having the flu. The second is more serious and demands more attention, but should be, and can be, treated. The first needs to be addressed before it gets worse.
The programme removes some of the myths surrounding mental illness; for example, that people who are mentally ill are violent, hard to deal with, best avoided. It looks at the damage that negative attitudes to mental illness cause. Where people will not accept mental illness as a normal part of life, those who suffer are less likely to admit their pain and things get worse.
Students are encouraged to look at some of the factors that can damage their mental well-being - bullying, loneliness, family strife, or pressure to have sex, be popular, look cool, do well in school, please parents - and to examine ways of facing the bad feelings these can create and overcome them.
But it's not all gloom, as the programme also emphasises the attributes associated with mental well-being and helps students focus on the positive results of "minding your mind". No one is immune from sadness, stress, anger or anxiety, but people who learn to recognise and deal with mental ill-health find it easier to control their lives, realise their ambitions, make friends, express feelings, trust others and enjoy life.
By the end of the programme students will have created a diary mapping their own mental health issues and examining solutions. They are invited to hold mental health seminars at their schools, bringing a panel of experts into classrooms to present information and answer questions. Students may also organise a visit to a social housing project for people recovering from mental illness, to discuss with them their experience and to destigmatise a common human experience.
The programme shows how physical and mental health are linked, and how poor health in one area feeds in to the other. It also explains that society is not divided into the mentally well and the mentally unwell, as everyone experiences mental ill-health at some point in their life. There are exercises that look at the discomfort we feel in the company of people we know to have an illness such as depression, anorexia or schizophrenia. We allow ourselves to define the person by the illness in a way that we would never do if they had asthma, eczema or cancer.
Even reading through the Mental Health Matters programme is an empowering experience. It is practical and easy to understand without being patronising. It emphasises the value of mental health without adding to the stigma of mental illness.
The message of the programme is that mental ill-health and illness are normal, nothing to be ashamed of, and that the benefits of positive thinking and minding our minds are beyond measure.
The philosopher Goethe is quoted at the end: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
