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Diane Nguyen

Professor Leonard

English Comp II

4/29/2022

What would happen if schools implemented a ‘mental health day’ for students and staff; while educating

everyone about mental health?

Imagine getting a chance to get a day off to yourself or have a break from whatever is

stressing you out. Everyone would love to have a day off to treat themselves from what is

distracting them from accomplishing their goals. When people think of mental health, people

often think of feeling shame or other negative feelings. However, that should not ever be the

case; mental is something that is vital in everyone’s life. The topic of mental health and the

importance should be brought up in schools is extremely important. Students and the staff would

feel less stressed about their school life and/or whatever is going on in their lives; students and

the staff would be more educated about mental health. All kinds of people suffer from all kinds

of health risks; specifically mental health issues have dramatically risen and affects many.

Mental health issues are extremely complex issue because there are so many different theories of

why and how people should learn about mental health. If mental health was something at

schools, kids would be more aware about mental health and wouldn’t struggle with expressing

their feelings. Kids spend most of their early childhood in school, so they should have the

knowledge and develop skills about mental health.

Schools need to include mental health resources, no matter the age or location of the

school. They play a massive role in child’s lives and their learning capabilities. Schools today are

extremely important to everyone’s curriculum; it is meant to prepare students’ vocational skills,

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social skills, well-being, emotional, and behavioral needs that will influence their learning.

Younger individuals tend to spends most of their time at schools; they spend most of their time at

school, which could lead to a negative impact on students and staff. Below is a chart to show the

concept of health literacy as an asset.

Mental Health is an important factor of any children’s health and life. Mental disorders

can be a significant change to any children’s life; mental disorders change how children learn,

behave, and/or handle their emotions. The most common disorder in children is ADHD

(attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). Multiple families were asked to take a test about their

children’s mental well being. Statistics show that one in six children, ages between 2-8 years old,
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evolve and/or have a mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder(s). There are multiple

resources to provide information about mental health issues. Children need to learn and be

comfortable with the idea of what mental health issues are and how it can effect their day to day

lives. Without the knowledge of it, they would have a harder time growing up and coping with

mental issues. Each age group suffer from one mental disorder than the other.Teens tend to

suffer from depression and anxiety more, while tweens and 3-5 year olds tend to suffer from

behavioral disorders. Below is a chart to show each age group and three major mental disorders.

There are many theories about the complex of psychological theories of explaining how

and the cause for people to learn. Albert Bandura, who is a psychologist, proposed the idea social

learning theory” which will conduct an examination and/or an inspection to prove this point.

Bandura thinks it has more than how an individual may behave. In Bandura’s theory, it is

believed that there wasn’t a direct answer to know how and why people learn. However, there

are reasons to know about social learning theory: people can learn from simply observing,
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staying mentally active is another important to learning and growing, and learning doesn’t have

to lead to behavior change. Bandura experimented using three basic models: a model, who will

demonstrate and/or act out a behavior. The symbolic model is a real and/or fictional character

specifying behaviors in any form of media, books, TV shows, movies, and any other thing kids

use to thrive on. Another model is a verbal model, which involves descriptions and explanations

of a behavior. Bandura noted that the environmental setting wasn’t the only influence to learning

and behavior. Bandura supposed intrinsic reinforcement, in other words is internal rewards: a

pleasure, feeling of achievement, and content. The key factors for success in learning about how

we mentally function. The key factors that Bandura came up with are attention, retention,

reproduction, and motivation. Each of those factors have its own way of contributing to how we

learn about mental health. There are real world applications that also effect the understanding of

mental health in our day to day lives. For example, social media is damaging to anybody. People

could become more aggressive and create a lot of distress from the comments on any social

media source. For those who are social media users understand how the comments, photos, posts,

etc can be extremely toxic to people mentally. Lastly, Bandura’s theory influenced psychologist

dramatically Nowadays, both teachers and parents should be able to understand why it is

important to be a model of any proper behaviors and teach kids about mental health and

periodically check up on their mental health.

The world recently experienced an abrupt change to their lives. Due to COVID-19, this

virus outbreak has caused a lot of issues for people all around the world. Not only by the fact that

COVID-19 was spreading quickly and killing many individuals, but it is affecting everyone’s

mental and physical health was also at risk. Everyone was forced to quarantine from their

friends, family, and/or other people. Everyone most likely felt awful because of the lack of social
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interaction. Which led to children and/or students having to do online school and schoolwork; for

some students, this was something new and another thing to stress out about. The stages of stress

and anxiety have been amplified in a short amount of time. “Commonly termed as social

distancing or social isolation, has led to a lack of daily routine and structure.” (Patel) In

conclusion, everyday that passes, people are struggling across the world. Proving that COVID-19

has become one of the many reasons children, teens, adults, and elderly have struggled with their

mental health and that has been an issue for the past couple years.

There was a study that was taken place in the Philippines and China in a school about

how impactful mental health and stress is to not only the teachers, staff members, but the

students. The scientists choose to do an experiment a cross cultural and observational study to

comparison between Filipino and Chinese people while the pandemic of 2019 to now. After the

researchers received the information, they continued to research about mental health in foreign

countries while COVID-19 is effecting many people. In those countries, stress and anxiety stages

rose exponentially along with other countries around the world during the pandemic. However,

Filipino responders had greater stages of depression, nervousness, and hardship than Chinese

responders in the mist of COVID-19. “For the Filipino, (they had) low confidence in doctors, un

satisfaction of health information, long hours spent on health information, worries about family

members contracting COVID-19, ostracized ion, unnecessary worries about COVID-19 were

associated with adverse mental health.” (Tee) Students have struggled with their mental health

before COVID-19, but cases in foreign countries have also risen. Particularly in the Philippines,

they have doubt about online school and/or stress about their assignments.

Nancy Barile is a teacher and with a M.A.Ed with over 20 years of experience. Barile

said, “education professionals have recognized the impact that a student’s mental health has on
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learning and achievement, and they realize that there’s a great deal that can be done to help

students with mental health issues.” (Barile) Barile just wants people, including students and

teachers, about how mental health can effect their lives in the a variety of ways. She later

mentions that she saw signs in one of her students, who dramatically changed in a shirt span of

time. She noticed that this student choose to not do their homework, they didn’t try their

classwork, arrive to school disheveled, distant, and withdrawn. Barile mentioned that she knew

something was wrong and this student needed help. Luckily, that school provided welfare

workers on staff to communicate with this student. Which shows that some teachers are well

aware of these problems and want to help their students. Barile mentions that mental health

education is mandatory and should be taught in all schools. Everyone should be able to be

familiar and recognize the importance it is for everyone to learn about mental health: no matter

their age.

According to Salerno, there has been an increase in the awareness of mental health for

students. The more people are familiar with mental health and how impactful it will be on any

generation. Another contributing factor to mental health being a big issue is stress. In the

Cambridge Dictionary, it says that stress causes more than just physical pain. Not what one may

think when they say that they are “stressed,” like headaches, minor pains, trouble sleeping, and

the list could go on and on.

There is a website called “I Love Public Schools,” there is a docuseries called “The Mind

Inside.” This docuseries consists of three episodes and is about exploring mental health issues in

Nebraska’s public schools. The first episode of this series establishes what life is usually like in a

public school and how mental health is so impactful in any classroom with anyone. The first

episode takes place at Millard north middle school, where there are supposedly a lot of mental
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health problems. The staff describes that the whole host of problems for the students is from past

trauma to frustrations, anxiety and depression, and many other reasons. The students’ daily life

struggles are the most important to truly show why mental health needs to be taken seriously.

There are three featured students, who aren’t the most mentally stable. The viewers get to see

how frustrated these students are, including their troublesome outbursts, getting neglected, and

toxic households. Mental health problems that can influence their life at school, not only for the

students, but also for their classmates and teachers. Eric Depue is a school social worker and acts

as the guide for the viewers to be able to comprehend each of the featured student’s mental

health story. In the docuseries, the narrator mentions that there is a lack of comprehensive

services in schools, but there are schools trying to find support for these students. The narrator

also mentions that schools should teach students mental health and normalize speaking about it

to the people who are trustworthy and dependable.

To potentially decrease the amount of mental health issues in schools, there should be

ways to cope that will be provided by the school. One of the ways to decrease mental health

issues is the teachers. They are the best at assisting and aiding students to their fullest potentials.

They are the best at “managing students, developing resources, create challenges, and many

other skills for students.” (Bagnell) There should be three categories in terms of organizational

centralization of development: decentralized, centralized, and highly centralized.

There are a plentiful of understandable reasons to why mental health shouldn’t be

implemented into schools at a young age. People can’t expect teachers to be the only help for

students. They aren’t trained enough to be a therapist, so they cannot help their students too

much. Their job is to just teach and the observe the students’ behaviors. In addition, the schools

can provide a “feel-good” class environment. Which will then lead to the child develop
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resilience, empathy, and problem solving skills. Doctors are in charge of students’ mental well

being. They are more educated and trained to be prepared to assist people with mental issues.

They provide more to information and resources to help people with mental health issues.

Schools should find some sort of way to implement a “mental health day” for students

and staff; either way, mental health should be taught in schools. Even though some families may

disagree and say that kids should not learn about mental health at such a young age. Mental

health effects everything in these children’s lives. Another thought to keep in mind is that

children mostly spend their time in schools, so why not teach them about mental health? Having

a healthy and well-kept mental health is extremely important, people/children are more likely to

be more successful. Even though negative mental disorders are not avoidable, people/children

would be more educated about their issue. There are many possible treatments to an unhealthy

disorders and additionally, they could have people to talk to about their problems
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Works Cited

Bagnell, Alexa, and Darcy Santor. “Frontiers | Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Physical

and Mental Health in Lower and Upper Middle-Income Asian Countries: A Comparison

Between the Philippines and China | Psychiatry.” Frontiers, Cambridge University Press, 5

May 2015, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.568929/full.

Barile, Nancy. “The Importance of Mental Health Awareness in Schools.” Hey Teach!, WGU,

2015, https://www.wgu.edu/heyteach/article/importance-mental-health-awareness-

schools1810.html.

CDC. “Data and Statistics on Children’s Mental Health | CDC.” Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, CDC, 24 Feb. 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html.

Jimenez, Edward C. “ERIC - EJ1287736 - Impact of Mental Health and Stress Level of Teachers

to Learning Resource Development, Shanlax International Journal of Education, 2021-

Mar.” ERIC - Education Resources Information Center, ERIC, Mar. 2021,

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1287736.

Nellson, Sally. “The Mind Inside: Episode One | Nebraska Loves Public Schools.” Nebraska

Loves Public Schools, I Love Public Schools, 2019, https://iloveps.org/films/the-mind-

inside-episode-one.
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Patel, Khushboo. “Mental Health Implications of COVID-19 on Children with Disabilities -

PMC.” PubMed Central (PMC), National Library of Medicine, Dec. 2020,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7330593.

Tee, Michael. “Frontiers | Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Physical and Mental Health in

Lower and Upper Middle-Income Asian Countries: A Comparison Between the Philippines

and China | Psychiatry.” Frontiers, frontiers, 9 Feb. 2021,

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.568929/full.