teaching good emotional and mental health to all

Teaching Good Emotional and Mental Health to All

Nancy S Buck, PhDwww.peacefulparenting.comDevelopmental Psychologist [email protected] Faculty for WGI 401-662-5788

Who am I?

Dr. William Glasser

The trouble with using external control in schools is that it is illegal for teachers to bring guns to school . I fear that one of these days a student will bring a gun into school and take revenge for the external control that was exerted on him during all his school years.

A few years later the first school shooting occurred in Columbine, CO

School Violence

December 14, 2012Changed Everything

Sandy Hook Elementary School -- Newtown, CT27 people were shot and killed, including 20 children

HEALTHPhysical

Physical health is all that is addressed in the dictionary under “health”

Dictionary: 1a: being sound in body, mind and spirit b: freedom from physical disease or pain

Physical Health is understood by most to indicate vigor, strength, fitness and endurance. Physical health is taught in schools. Most people in the USA over the age of 6-years old know what to do to get into and improve physical health. Health and fitness clubs abound.

Physical Health

Mental Health

Dictionary: No words or definition can be found under this title

Wikipedia: Mental Health describes a level of psychological well-being, or an absence of a mental disorder

For most people, mental health means the lack of mental illness

Mental Health Dr William Glasser

You are mentally healthy if you enjoy being with most of the people you know, especially with the important people in your life such as family and friends. Generally, you are happy and are more than willing to help an unhappy family member, friend, or colleague to feel better. You lead a mostly tension-free life, laugh a lot, and rarely suffer from the aches and pains that so many people accept as an unavoidable part of living. You enjoy life and have no trouble accepting that other people are different from you. The last thing that comes to your mind is to criticize or try to change anyone. You are creative in what you attempt and may enjoy more of your potential than you ever thought possible. Finally, even in difficult situations when you are unhappy – no one can be happy all the time – you’ll know why you are unhappy and attempt to do something about it. You may even be physically handicapped as was Christopher Reeve, and still fit the criteria above.

Mental Health

The ability to meet your needs for:

SafetyLove & BelongingPowerFunFreedom responsibly and respectfully.

Safety & Security

Love & Belonging

Power (Within)

Freedom

Dental Health – Public Health Issue

Good Mental & EmotionalHEALTH

is a Public Health Issue We need Mental HEALTH

professionals to teach everyone:1. What is good mental and emotional

health?2. How do you get it?3. How do you improve it?4. How do you maintain it?

Schools: Special and Important

Professional Educators

Teachers are professional educators, excellent at helping all students learn as long as students are ready to learn.

Are we expecting too much to ask teachers to become professional gunmen or professional mental health professionals?

Mental Health Professionals

In every school across USA there are the designated troubled students. People in the school, including the children, know who these children are.

Our present system asks the counselors, psychologists, social workers to help these students.

Who helps all of the other people in school with their mental health?


is a Public Health Issue

What if we started teaching good mental and emotional health to all students, adults and parents in our schools?

What if the students who are now designated as needing extra help are also supported by their classmates who understand good mental and emotional health and help their fellow students who are struggling to meet their needs responsibly and respectfully?



Anti-bullying programs, behavior managements systems such as detention, and other externally controlling system would no longer be necessary.

Please note this does not mean abandoning rules, boundaries or expectations for all in the community.


Is a Public Health Issue

Good Mental & Emotional HEALTH


Where will YOU begin?

Sign Up and Join the Action [email protected]

Subject line: count me in

Share your plan and subsequent results or

Share your name, email address to be added to the action list for good mental & emotional health as a pubic health issue

mailto:[email protected]

Bibliography

Glasser, William, Treating Mental Health as a Public Health Problem; A New Leadership Role for the Helping Professions. Booklet published by William Glasser Inc.

Thanks also to Kenneth Larsen, DDS, certified in choice theory/reality therapy and faculty of WGI-US for public health implementation ideas.

BibliographyPeter Breggin (1991) Toxic Psychiatry, St. Martin’s Press. New York

Peter Breggin and David Cohen (1999) Your Drug May Be Your Problem, Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA

Richard Gasden (2001) Punishing the Patient, Scribe Publications, Melbourne, Australia

Joseph Glenmullen (2001) Prozac Backlash, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY

Lucy Johnstone (1989) Users and Abusers of Psychiatry, Routledge Publishers, London, UK

Terry Lynch (2004) Beyond Prozac, Bath Press, Bath, UK

Robert Whitaker, (2002) Mad In America, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA

teaching good emotional and mental health to all

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