The major determinants of student success in school are physical and mental health. The latter accounts for a greater percentage of children’s well-being in their day-to-day school activities. Although it’s difficult to notice it by looking at an individual, it can cause major detrimental effects to a student’s personal life and general well-being.
For schools to successfully solve issues revolving around this menace, it’s important to raise mental health awareness. In fact, schools are one definite place that needs to have the highest level of mental health awareness.
Schools and child development experts alike understand that most of today’s students don’t suffer from major mental disorders. Rather, most of them suffer from low levels of mental health. According to a survey on youths by the Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, in every ten students, four children aged between 15 and 29 suffer from anxiety, and another quarter report that they have a serious mental disorder.
While the number of children who are suffering from serious mental disorders is declining, those who suffer from lesser categories are finding it difficult to lead a normal and healthy life. The main reasons for this can be attributed to lack of attention to mental health and the misconception of what exactly is mental health.
The number of students with stress, anxiety and depression, or otherwise having any psychiatric disease, is extremely high. Such students face issues from which they can’t easily recover. The CBSE board like Premia Academy mandates availability of a counsellor to the students for this very reason. In such a situation, mental health should be kept in mind even for the younger generation, and especially for the school children.
It is important to keep track of this issue, since these students are susceptible to various psychological disorders later in life. Many of these kids have very few close friends, or even any friends at all, and do not find their classmates or their teachers caring or knowledgeable enough to be concerned about their mental health. They also tend to focus too much on how their classmates view them and how their grades are doing. At the Premia Academy Attapur, we believe in developing the mental grit of the child as much as academic rigour with various programmes. It is important for parents to look for a school that supports mental health awareness and development. The approach to handling a child’s mental health, ability to deal with real life situations and self regulation methods is of utmost importance.
These are some of the major factors that impact children’s mental health in school. If we can increase awareness around this problem, we can expect to see more and more children in school with the right amount of knowledge to be the best that they can be.
