The 'gap' in school mental health
Pressure from grades, exams and many other relationships has affected many students' mental health. Meanwhile, for many different reasons, this issue has not really received timely attention and support...
Increasing number of students suffering from mental health problems
The Facebook group "Nghe An Parents" has more than 130,000 members and is a forum where many parents participate and share. Recently, the story of a parent whose 9th grade child was recently diagnosed with depression has made many people think.
This parent said that because of the worries about making a living, the couple did not have much time to pay attention to their child. Every day, the child still talked to his parents, and sometimes the parents reminded him not to use the phone too much. Recently, the child's mother accidentally entered the room and saw the child using a knife to cut his wrist. After that, the family discovered that there were a lot of sleeping pills in the child's room. Too worried, the family took the child to the doctor and discovered that he was depressed due to academic pressure.
When sharing her child's story, this parent also hopes to serve as a warning to many other families, especially those with school-age children, because a lack of care, negligence, and lack of attention can lead to many unfortunate consequences.
School age with psychological changes can lead to many difficult-to-control behaviors. At Nghe An Mental Hospital, according to statistics, from 2020 to September 2024, the rate of students admitted for inpatient treatment due to mental health disorders increased quite rapidly with 965 students. Of which, 310 students fell into the category of behavioral and emotional disorders.
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Due to poor understanding of mental health issues, social stigma, and limited mental health services and resources, most of these students do not receive treatment or support. Early identification of students at risk of mental health problems is crucial to avoid consequences.
Doctor Tran Thi Tuyet - Deputy Director of Nghe An Psychiatric Hospital.
Through many years of working in this field, Dr. Tran Anh Tuyet also pointed out 5 manifestations of students at risk of mental health damage through behavior (irritability, social avoidance), through restlessness, depression, and perception with reduced short-term memory. In addition, people with the disease have health damage such as headaches, neck and shoulder pain or loss of control in some issues.
Lack of resources to care
Schoolis considered an important environment for students to study, practice and grow. However, this environment with many different relationships also makes them face many complex and diverse problems, affecting their thoughts, emotions, thinking, actions and learning and comprehensive development.
Regarding school violence alone, in the last two school years, the province has had 9 cases of school violence involving 23 students. However, this is only a small number because there are many cases of school violence occurring in schools in various forms but not reported.
Regarding the issue of school-age psychology, Dr. Tran Hang Ly - Department of Educational Psychology - Vinh University also conducted a survey on the psychosocial characteristics of high school students at Dang Thai Mai Secondary School, Hung Binh Secondary School (Vinh City), Nghi My Secondary School (Nghi Loc) and Muong Xen Secondary School, Ky Son Secondary School for Ethnic Minorities (Ky Son) showing that abnormal psychological behavior (also known as aggressive behavior in sociological terms) can occur in both males and females.
Aggression is a way to express frustration and loss of control in many forms such as behavioral aggression and attitude aggression. Children with high levels of aggressive behavior are those who have difficulty in communication and problem solving skills. These children often do not have close friends in class, do not have friends to share and confide in.
In addition, students can be aggressive due to the level of stress students have in class, the relationship between students and their parents, the behavior of parents when students make mistakes, the influence of games, students' misconceptions about violence; problem solving skills.
From the above difficulties, it is very necessary to pay attention to the mental health of school-age students. However, the current problem is that the implementation of school psychology work still lacks the necessary resources such as lack of facilities and equipment to build counseling rooms, lack of institutions responsible for and management systems for school psychology work in schools. In addition, there is a lack of coordination between forces, agencies, departments and branches in school psychology activities; Community awareness of this activity is still low or inaccurate...
Since the beginning of 2024, the Department of Education and Training has coordinated with the Institute of Training and Human Resource Development to pilot the model of Social Work and Psychological Counseling in general education institutions at 9 schools in Dien Chau and Que Phong districts and Vinh city.
Thereby aiming to build a safe, healthy and friendly educational environment, students actively prevent school violence, drowning accidents, social evils entering schools, support disadvantaged students...
Regarding this issue, Nghe An province has just organized a workshop on School Mental Health Care in Nghe An: From Policy to Practice.
From there, solutions, propaganda programs, and psychological counseling programs have been proposed to help adolescents improve their learning and emotional abilities in the family and society. At the same time, building safe and inclusive schools, improving school mental health for middle and high school students in the new context.
