May has been designated as Mental Health Awareness Month. The theme this year is “Getting Back to Basics” which seeks to promote learning more about mental health conditions and what can be done to improve our mental health. This coincides with several recent articles that center on the growing mental health crisis among children.
One excellent article is The Mental Health Crisis Among Children and Teens: How Parents can Help from Harvard Health Publishing/Harvard Medical School which was published in March. The article begins with this call to action: “We are in the midst of a pediatric mental health crisis — and parents need to take action.” One of the main results of the pandemic is the “alarming amount of anxiety and depression in our children and teens.”
What can parents do? The article suggests the following:
Understand that your children’s mental health is just as important as their physical health.
Have regular times to communicate with your children in a nonjudgmental way.
Make sure that your children have time to relax and do things that they enjoy.
Encourage more sleep and physical exercise.
Monitor their social media so they develop safe and healthy habits.
Keep in touch regularly with other adults in their lives, such as their teachers, coaches, and parents of their friends, to ensure that your children are getting the support they need.
Try not to judge them so much by having “expectations without judgment”.
Ensure that your own mental health is taken care of as well.
The article provides many resources that you will find very helpful. Please invest the time and effort in doing what you can to improve your children’s mental health.
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