How many of you can remember being called out of classes during your school years to go to part of the school to receive your vaccinations from the public health nurse?
When it comes to serious childhood illnesses, we appear to have learned that prevention is the best route to take and that early intervention is a critical element of any prevention plan. It has proven to be a successful strategy as the incidences of the diseases we vaccinate for have fallen to near zero in Canada and the overall health outcomes of our children have risen significantly.
With this being the case, I wonder why it is taking so much more time for the same strategy to be applied when it comes to the area of mental health and addictions.
In my years working with adults who are living with these issues, I have learned that — with a few rare exceptions — most people began to experience mental health symptoms in their teenage years. In addition, those who go down the road of addiction usually begin experimenting during their teenage years and many of these find themselves fully entrenched in the addiction cycle long before they reach adulthood.
Consequently, a large number of them get evicted from school due to their behaviour, drop out of school or fail to meet the requirements that will set them up for success in their future. This means that they not only need to overcome their personal issues but also need to play catch-up in their education, providing an additional barrier to rebuilding their lives when and if they are ready for change.
It doesn’t have to be this way and if we applied the same strategies to this issue as we do to physical diseases, we could create better outcomes.
One of the most critical elements of any successful recovery program is structure, and for teenagers, this structure usually takes place in school. It therefore makes sense that mental health and addictions services should be integrated into schools for those teenagers who have been identified as needing this intervention. Such programs, usually referred to as recovery high schools, exist in many areas of the United States, and there is one in Canada located in Wyebridge, Ont.
One of the most critical elements of any successful recovery program is structure, and for teenagers, this structure usually takes place in school.
The Quest Collegiate and Recovery Centres program has been in existence for four years but sadly is in the process of shutting down due to a lack of funding from government and private sources.
This is very unfortunate, as the need for such programs appears to be increasing rather than decreasing, and our present high schools lack the flexibility to adapt to the needs of these students. Recovery schools are able to offer basic curriculum as well as programs and counselling to address the specific health needs of the students. Many offer addictions programming as well as mindfulness groups and other interventions which teach valuable skills in coping with emotional problems. Such schools are also able to offer support to the families of students who can have a resource to speak about their child’s drug use or mental illness and work in concert with the program to provide the best possible environment for success both at home and in the school.
While early intervention in this area is a lot more complicated than a simple vaccination, the health outcomes that result if we fail to implement preventive measures are equally lethal.
Youth who live with mental health and addictions issues are much more likely to attempt and succeed at suicide. With dangerous drugs such as fentanyl present on our streets, those caught up in addiction face a much higher risk of overdose and death. We need to do more in our education system, not less, if we are to make an impact in this area and we can’t afford to let monetary cost be a barrier to providing mental health care to our children. Once we put a monetary cost on the life of a child, we have lost our moral centre, and we all lose then.
Brian Hodder is an LGBTQ2 activist and works in the field of mental health and addictions. He can be reached at [email protected].
