Concerns of Mental Health and The Clarion Call to Education

The recent report of the international study on Mental Health in about eighty-four countries has placed India on 60 in its list. It also has observed that the Mental Health Index of the young adults in the age group of 18 to 34 shows a low figure of 33 percent which indicates a low level of mental health, It calls for an urgent and positive action to this issue so that the most vital and vibrant section of the Indian populace are able to live with better health. It is said “Without mental health there is no health.” The seriousness of the issue calls for an integrated multi-dimensional and multi-pronged action to improve our national index to a better positioning sooner than later. It calls for a bifocal approach with enforcement on one side and education on the other.

Though curative actions can both be clinical and non-clinical, the preventive action is more necessary. The role of education in this direction cannot be underplayed. As such our policies and programs of education have not adequately addressed to this issue in the last few decades, as their focus remained on a growth profile which was singularly entrepreneurial and improving the standards of life rather than the quality of life. Recently some educational boards have directed its affiliated schools to ensure more counsellors in the schools at the rate of one counsellor for every 500 students, it appears more as an administrative action. The current situation is a clarion call and calls for a far-sighted action than mere firefighting.

Over and above these actions of the administrative agencies, the educational institutions need to engage in a more positive and purposeful action realizing their social and moral obligation to create a generation of learners who would be enjoying better mental health.

It is important to understand that the mental health of a nation is directly linked to the following:

   a. Productivity 
   b. Economic health
   c. Social and cultural wellbeing 
   d. Growth profile and GNP 
   e. International profile and relationship

The role of stress as a significant and powerful inhibitor to holistic growth profile of a learner and consequently to one’s resultant mental health cannot be marginalized. Though attempts are being made to revisit curricula and examination patterns to decrease the stress, it is felt that one important concern is the learning environment itself. Most institutions are focused on terminal activities leading to results in total disregard of the processes of engagement in the learning institutions. Divisive models classifying learners into categories depending on learning leading to an invisible classism in total appreciation of white-collar jobs is indeed an existing malady. Classification of institutions of learning into hierarchies and as ivory towers has done more damage than necessary. Heavy polarisation of glory to a few subjects have created an unhealthy competition to occupancy rather than aptitudes. The resultant stress is built from the pre-primary stage till they breathe out the aroma of the celebrity institutions. 

The industrial model has focused on mass production and capitalizing its supply to a social system whether such products are wanted or not. Artificial creation of market needs has resulted in unemployment and over-subscribing to learning domains without taking cognizance of the faculties where essentially exists. This compulsive need for learning ignored the competence and learnability of the learners both qualitatively and in harmony with the economic geography of where they come from. Absence of scope for learnability created artificial subscriptions to productive domains with inferior quality. The entire atmosphere subscribed to mental health issues of various dimensions. 

The scale and speed at which learning content, learning methods, learning resources and learning outcomes have been changing has put both the institutions and individuals in uncertainties and in preparing a futuristic roadmap where they neither know the goal nor the pathway. Responding to immediate changes without appropriacy just to highlight their perception of growth has resulted in preparing a host of competitive institutions where they do things because others are doing. Unprepared faculty, inadequate resources, and fragile curricula have led to mediocre quality learning deliveries and certification. Haunted by speed of change learners and institutions have suffocated. This built an inherent negativity into the systems and compromises with mediocre quality of learning and learners. The education-industry gap widening the emergent uncertainty resulted in avoidable mental health issues. 

The current scenario indicates that a high population of adults in the learning institutions are not adequately prepared with life skills so that they can face their life with courage, conviction, and compassion. Though sermons are passed in a few educational platforms the absence of empowered real time life skills has resulted in their coping competencies in later life resulting in mental health issues. This needs to be addressed by a solid foundation on life skills which would help them in every field of work in later life. “Education is not just about producing workers—it’s about cultivating resilient, balanced human beings. Without embedding mental health into learning, we compromise both individual futures and national progress.”

It is essential to develop the younger generation with a growth mindset rather than a sustainability mindset. Growth mindset calls for an attitudinal repositioning with the competence to take calculated risks for creativity, innovation, and further research. Growth must be seen as internal exercise to bring increasing harmony between the inner self and its call, with the external self and the realities. Growth comes along with a wilful directed and self-motivated directional orientation and change. It is engaging and transformational. Educational platforms should endorse, support, and facilitate growth which is unique for each individual and celebration of growth which would act as a catalyst to fertilise further growth. To add, celebration of growth of every individual, however miniscule it be, is vital to develop a healthy and happy mind. 

In a world which is increasingly becoming consumerist, where there is insatiable desire for possessions, material and emotional, concepts of mindfulness would relieve their stress for assimilation, acquisition, possession, and provocation. Self-awareness is not necessarily a contradiction to any meaningful relationship with the dynamic universe. It is possibly positioning oneself adequately so that the Self is not swept away in the turbulence of distractions. It is an exercise in feeling the Present, being at the Present and experiencing the quality of one’s Being. It is a dynamic engagement with one’s own existence. It is experiencing an undivided divinity that prevails in the Self. It is indeed a realization that triggers the power of giving thus establishing the supremacy of the unlimited wealth one can draw from the universe from time to time. This learning would indeed help in producing positive human beings who would be compassionate, confident, contributively caring. With mindfulness, one becomes a leader of his own and develops the competencies of self-leadership.

It is important for all school heads to focus and engage with a strategic action in this regard.