Mental Health Awareness Month - Creating a Community of Support for Children and Families
Mental Health Awareness Month - Creating a Community of Support for Children and Families
By Lara Guzman-Hosta, Psychologist and Member of the Belmont Human Rights Commission
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the Belmont Human Rights Commission wants to focus on the wellbeing and mental health of our youth. To shed light on these issues, we had a conversation with Dr. Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, Ph.D., a licensed child clinical psychologist with over 33 years of experience working with children, adolescents, and families. She is a faculty member at the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology at the Boston Medical Center. For 24 years, “Dr. O” (as she is lovingly referred to by her students) has been the Psychologist for The Park School (a pre-kindergarten through grade eight independent school) in Brookline, Massachusetts. She considers mental health “the most important part of the curriculum.” It helps to teach children that “part of being a healthy person is being emotionally healthy.” She actively works with kids and families to ensure those conversations happen regularly and not just when something has gone wrong.
One of the hardest things stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic was the sense of isolation. The pandemic created a sense of uncertainty that impacts our sense of safety. As society moves toward living with “an invisible threat,” mixed messages and debates around public health measures have heightened stress and confusion for children.
Dr. O said it is important for parents to check in with kids regarding their feelings. It is normal for them to have strong feelings, such as anger, but “what is not okay is when people get hurt and feel out of control and it takes over your whole being.” Having a means to express feelings and sort out triggers can give children the language to understand their internal world. It is important to process and get to a state of calmness, to avoid feeling overwhelmed by emotions, and to resolve the issues that gave rise to those feelings. While avoiding feelings can provide instant gratification it is not a sustainable strategy for healthy coping.
Belmont schools are known for their academic excellence, and we asked Dr. O how children can be supported within a competitive academic environment. She believes there is a place for academic rigor but not at the expense of children’s health and social lives. Burning out so early in life is not a sustainable strategy for kids who are hoping to excel in competitive careers. It is important for children to know that they are not just their academics or the next school to which they might be admitted. “You are a valuable human being with something to offer regardless” of the outcome of your academic pursuits.
We asked for recommendations for supporting students who may have marginalized identities such as students who self-identify as Black and Brown and LGBTQ students. Dr. O discussed how there can be pressures to fit in and belong that can be especially hard on students of difference, especially when they are already experiencing stressful academic demands. The prejudices, the bullying, and all societal pressures placed on these kids are extra demands that they should not be shouldering, and, as such, they require systemic support to thrive and safer spaces for them to learn.
Regarding the crisis around finding mental health providers, she noted the current situation can be quite difficult. She frequently hears from families that are unable to find a therapist, particularly if they are seeking a BIPOC (e.g. Black Indigenous Person of Color) therapist. BIPOC mental health providers are underrepresented in the mental health field. There is also a shortage of providers who have specialized training in working with children.
An investment in preventative mental health interventions is essential. “Clearly the model we have is not sufficient, we need tiers and layers that structurally gets us thinking about mental health differently such that it becomes an everyday aspect of your life. How do you sustain and build a healthy life?” Our current model of mental health care is crisis-oriented rather than self-care-oriented. There is wisdom to building everyday mental health problem-solving into the regular school day and also into primary care settings. This allows for issues to be caught early and interventions could be targeted to avoid crises. It also helps erode the stigma mental health treatment carries in society.
What could be some strategies for parents, given all the added pressures on them? Dr. O opined parents may need to “unlearn” some of the maladaptive ways in which they were taught to deal with their emotional lives. For many, admitting there's a problem can trigger feelings of weakness and shame. The dialogue needs to shift from abnormality and marginality to “what it means to be a healthy person and mental health is a part of being a healthy person.”
We asked Dr. O about bullying and hate incidents in schools. She said there is “growth on both sides that could happen.” Children listen and observe. They are aware of when there is a sense of safety to process hard incidents and emotions. They also notice if there is implicit permission and a sense of safety for others to engage in abusive behavior. Trauma can occur not just to the victim but vicariously to other children who may have witnessed or heard about the incidents. For those reasons, a community's response is of the utmost importance. Dr. O is supportive of efforts to offer parents education on navigating technology and how it is used by children in such contexts. Parents can also play a role by speaking about their values, helping to correct misinformation, and by modeling how to have difficult conversations about race, socioeconomic status, gender diversity, and other marginalized identities. How do you raise a child with a comfortable and mindful sense of self and how they matter in the world? “That can’t happen without a dialogue and without discussions and without answers to questions in a very complex world.”
We finally asked Dr. O about remaining hope and resilience. She reflected on the benefits of flexibility in problem solving approaches and how it can help kids cope in an uncertain world. The job of parents is to provide a sense of security and predictability within an unpredictable world and to remind children to focus on what they can control and cope with what they cannot. A greater goal is to teach kids how to be “change makers and contribute to the solution. It can start with acts of kindness, to take care of the world, and it makes us feel like we are in a community.” Parents can model for kids how to deal with conflict in a healthy way. “Learning to co-exist with our differences means we all get to live and co-exist together.”
The Belmont Human Rights Commission is dedicated to fighting discrimination in all forms and increasing visibility and awareness of issues regarding diversity and discrimination in our community. If you have experienced discrimination in Belmont, please contact us at belmont.hrc@gmail.com or call 617-993-2795.