Your favorite Instagram influencers can post about self-care all day long, showing off glamorous photos of bubble baths and retreats. Leaders across the country can pay lip service to the need to address mental health issues.Companies can send emails to their employees in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month.
But real changes in mental health look very different.
It is estimated that one in four American adults suffers from a mental health problem. The COVID-19 crisis may have further exacerbated this number, leading to what mental health experts are colloquially calling a second pandemic. Burnout, alcoholism, depression, anxiety, grief and other issues have affected millions of Americans over the past two years. On top of that, mental health issues among children have been on the rise, exacerbating an already bleak situation. That prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups to declare a national youth mental health emergency.
Top mental health experts know how to solve this problem. But achieving that goal is much more difficult amid political divisions, a lack of funding, a shortage of health care workers and other obstacles.
Here are some of the practical changes mental health experts say we need to make now, within ourselves, our families and across the country:
Coping strategies from a younger age
When did you first learn to breathe deeply in a stressful situation? Probably not early enough.
Children as young as 3 years old can learn how to compartmentalize problems and reduce anxiety through their own projects, and more educational systems like this need to exist.
We need to find ways to cope with daily stress at a young age. Often encountering them as a teenager is very difficult because young people have poor coping mechanisms developed.
Parents should stop trying to “save the world” for young children and instead help them handle situations on their own, with parental guidance. Another important change involves parents assessing how they themselves handle stress because children are watching and learning from them.
Mandated social-emotional learning
The current structure of schools is inconsistent with the way we live today. The system was built for an agricultural society, not for a broad mix of neurodifferentiated individuals, including those with mental health issues like ADHD.
Implement social-emotional learning (SEL) in all schools, which will meet children’s social, emotional, behavioral and mental health needs, allowing young people to thrive in a learning environment. SEL will include increased access to and education on mental health resources and strategies, from coping mechanisms like deep breathing to increased training for school staff in dealing with social and emotional issues. According to a survey by Education Week, approximately three-quarters of schools across the country currently teach SEL.
Paid mental wellness days and better work flexibility
Students and adults alike need mental health days that are not related to sick days.
(Companies should) really separate that out in HR policies and almost praise individuals and reinforce their ability to take the time to recalibrate. Employees should not use illness or other excuses to cover this up.
This is not a day you take off because you have a cold, nor is it a day you take off because you feel extra tired. This is the day when you really need to help an individual. It’s also ideal to note that offering resources or advice that might help with one’s mental health.
Other mental health-based suggestions include moving to a four-day work week, and work flexibility: “Let people work when they want to work.”
A media makeover
It’s great to see celebrities like Selena Gomez and Ashley Judd speaking out about mental health. It is hoped that other forms of representation – such as realistic advertising depicting real-life experiences with mental health conditions – will also become more commonplace. People should see themselves in all types of media, and point out that, for example, some mental health ads should have a picture of a mom running around with her baby, rather than staring sadly out the window.
Unrealistic beauty standards come into play here, too. Other media-related questions revolve around unrealistic images: Can we stop airbrushing models? I understand, they won’t stop, but all of this affects mental health.
Consumers can support companies that pledge to stop airbrushing models, or they can evaluate their own social media feeds to promote greater access to real bodies. Following influencers who look like you can help you rewire your brain to understand your body as it is (normal) and reduce the pressure to conform to unhealthy things.
Paid maternity leave and better day care options
The pandemic has exposed the lose-lose dilemma that parents, especially mothers, face every day. Part of the solution to easing parental mental health distress is at least a year of maternity leave and increasing daycare options. It is recommended that they be placed in or near the business where their parents work.
Parents need this bond and it is important for their children to feel connected. When the daycare center is close to a person’s workplace, they can go during recess to say hello, visit with the child, check for a runny nose… and have lunch together. This would eliminate the problem of parents being forced to return to work before they are ready or placing their children in a day care setting too early.
Other day care reform ideas include placing them in senior centers to bring emotional benefits to the youngest and oldest Americans, as well as federally funded health care to ease the financial burden.
Tackling systemic inequalities in housing, health care, food access and more
While people with mental health problems may try their best to prevent and improve their conditions, systemic inequalities can make this difficult or even impossible. Reduced access to housing, health care, food, and more severely inhibits people’s ability to address or improve their mental health.
This certainly includes access to care, such as therapy. There is a need for government-funded mental health facilities run by universities and research centres. Providing accessible and reputable sources of help can help people get the care they really need.
In addition, insurance needs to be reformed. Many insurance policies create significant barriers for patients and providers, and there is hope that regulatory changes will reduce patient claim denials.
Clichés about taking care of yourself and prioritizing yourself only go so far. We need real change and opportunities to transform people’s mental health now.