Health literacy

Children’s mental health matters

When we try to talk about our feelings, we can feel lost and intimidated by opening ourselves up, right? But if we manage to acquire the know-how on communicating with and understanding others, as well as ourselves, it can help us to limit this fear.

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What is mental health illiteracy?

When I was a child, my parents used to enlighten me about mental disorders and ill-being. They thought it was crucial for my development and growth. Also, they wanted to gift me with the ability to use mental health information for making health-promoting decisions. This is why I have been coping with the knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders from an early age. We will call this ability mental health literacy. Contrarily, mental health illiteracy means that people didn’t acquire any understanding or clarification of mental disorders. And this then further increases the disregard, neglect, and maltreatment of it. But if we want to take this matter seriously, we need to understand it first.

What should we know about children’s mental health illiteracy?

Mental health illiteracy can affect us all. Why would it then be urgent to specifically look at children’s mental health illiteracy? This is because early childhood is the most crucial phase in a person’s development. The basis for successful adulthood lies in a healthy state of mind from early years on. Since children are very influential human beings, it is urgent to make sure they develop their cognitive and emotional skills successfully. As such, children are an easy target group for research about mental health illiteracy. This is why it becomes very important to approach the issue where it all begins: in early childhood. Especially nowadays, children’s mental well-being has to become one of our main priorities!

Being mental health illiterate during a pandemic

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As Covid-19 has impacted our everyday lives, children’s increase in mental health illiteracy is no exception to the pandemic’s catastrophic repercussions. How can a child learn about mental disorders and use this knowledge for making health-promoting decisions if it is being left behind? Let me explain the urgency of the issue here. In times of a pandemic, children suffer from isolation, loneliness, and family tensions, just to name a few. Can online classes really replace a classroom’s liveliness? No. Here, mental health illiteracy comes into the picture. Research has shown that following the pandemic, nine million adolescents between 10 and 19 in Europe suffer from mental health disorders. In this sense, children’s mental health illiteracy can be limited, if we start to pay more attention to enlightening them and de-stigmatize the topic. Because educating children about mental health disorders can empower them to use health information correctly and strive for a better future.

A complex and challenging issue

If you think about mental health illiterate children, do you think that this lack of literacy can be framed? I don’t think we will find a clear-cut answer for it. As I researched the topic of children’s mental health illiteracy, I mostly stumbled upon unclear definitions of this term. I realized that there is no real academic consensus on how we define children’s mental health illiteracy, nor how we can understand it. This makes the topic even more complex and urgent. When can we say that a child has sufficient skills to make health-promoting decisions? How can the future of a healthy youth be effectively treated if we don’t even have a clear foundation?

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What can be done?

I believe that schools are a great solution to build a health literacy foundation. The educational environment should be turned towards raising more awareness about mental health illiteracy among children. Can you imagine how much safer and invested children would feel when going to school? Schools would represent a healthy working environment that normalizes enlightening children about mental disorders. I believe a de-stigmatization of the topic is just the right solution to make children grow into their best future possible. But in general, we can all contribute to it just by doing small things. Enforcing communication between us, openly talking about issues, and ensuring that youth does not consider mental health as a taboo topic. Because learning how to cope with emotions early in life already lays a foundation for a person’s future mental well-being.

What has been done?

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Since mental health illiteracy is a branch-off of health illiteracy, it takes a back seat quite easily. Therefore, it is important to emphasize a more widespread implementation of policies in this domain on a European scale. For example, schools in Norway or Sweden create a safe space for youths by including mental health courses into the curriculum. This method seems to be very effective, as it would not only increase children’s beliefs but also their successful way of coping with health information. Also, some attempts have been made to raise awareness on the topic, such as the Mental Health Europe Week or the Health Literacy Europe campaign. We need to recognize the efficacity of these awareness-seeking events. But it is also safe to say that there still is a great lack of enlightenment of and focus on children’s mental health (il)literacy, which we need to further emphasize in the foreseeable future.