Archive for August, 2014

Youth Mental Health Todays Challenge

4 WEEKS AGO
by Mike McKay
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of
working with a group of parents of young
people with mental health issues.

They are

part of an organization called F.O.R.C.E.

and

I was honoured to speak at their spring

conference and share the self-regulation

framework and its potential application to
their children and the challenges they
face.

The session went well; people were

engaged with the self-reg story, saw the

links to their lived experiences,
appreciated the neuroscience research behind
self-regulation and its application at the
individual, family, classroom, and community
levels.

It was clear that the conditions

that promote or inhibit good mental health

are equally evident at home, school and in
the community and that a tie-in to the selfregulation framework is helpful.
Since that event, I have thought a great
deal about what I learned from those parents
and the stories they shared: the challenges,
the necessary courage and the unwavering
love and commitment they have for their
children. Subsequent discussions with
resource people from F.O.R.C.E. have
deepened my awareness of the journey these
kids and their parents are engaged in,
sometimes with and sometimes without the
system alignment, support and understanding
they need.

Think about a highly anxious and

dysregulated child whose parents have

worked hard to establish the best possible
conditions at home.

They have been tireless

in their efforts to create a place where the

child feels safe and nurtured, where she

feels confident and competent to take risks,

move out of a comfort zone and then activate
strategies to return* to a set point of
calmness and focus.

*Remember that self-

regulation is the capacity to expend energy

in dealing with stressors and then
replenish/restore energy to be ready for the
next of lifes daily challenges.

For that

child, think about what happens when that

she ventures out to the neighbourhood school
and its community.

When things go well, it

is often because of the school staffs

professional capacity, founded in a culture
of kindness and understanding, and a nonjudgmental commitment that supports the
young persons journey.

We dont blame the

dysregulated and overstressed/overwhelmed

child; we get curious as to the conditions
that led to such a state and we work with
the child and family to alter some of the
variables.

Together, we are learning

detectives.

Thanks to teamwork and a

positive home-school connection, we develop

strategies to support self-regulation and,
as necessary particularly for younger and
more dependent children, to encourage coregulation.

Thats a good news story about

highly committed supportive systems.

On the other hand, there can be a troubling
version of the same story,

one where the

system rolls on, overwhelming the child with

inflexible approaches, using louder and
harder exhortations and increasingly
anxiety-inducing reward and punishment. That
approach is from a different era and we now
know that overwhelming a child who is
already anxious and off-balance doesnt make
things better.

Which approach works?

Ask

the parent, the child and the teacher

theres no doubt that building
understanding, compassion and greater
sophistication in strategies (in a postbehaviourist world), changes that

youngsters life chances dramatically.

The query When will what we know change
what we do? is not the same as When will
what is known change what is done.

The

former exhorts us to engage, to learn and to

apply that learning.

It requires new

curiosity over old certainty.

The latter

gives us a free pass; we can wait for

someone else to take charge and create an
answer.
There are no free passes and there is no
time to wait for someone else to solve this
issue. Every day, we see and hear about
examples of youth mental health crises and
we know the range of stressors visiting
themselves upon kids is exponentially
greater than what was experienced in past
generations.

Kids with extreme anxiety,

depression, social disconnection and other

vulnerabilities are here now, in numbers

greater than ever before.

As our systems

are asked to adapt to the emerging realities

of the people they serve especially the
most vulnerable the voices I heard at the
F.O.R.C.E. session said Thank you to those
who are on this journey with them, and
Please Hurry to all of us as we turn our
attention to their childrens needs.

There

is great work being done by experts in this

field, and their discoveries have to become
our promising practices.

It is a powerful

calling, with no time like the present.