Remove suffering of students; Support mental health education More needs to be done to help children grow up mentally strong and to reduce mental illness rates. According to the University of Missouri, 15 million, or one in five children in the United States suffer from symptoms of mental illnesses significant enough to be diagnosed (Koller). Additionally, a growing number of children in the United States live with levels of mental health that negatively impairs daily functioning (Koller). The official definition of mental illness is “a medical condition that is marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, or emotions which impair normal psychological functioning and cause marked distress or disability and that are…show more content… As the mental health state escalates, there is an increasing demand for educators to support and deal with any arising problems. This creates a responsibility to not only focus on academic achievement, but the individual needs of all students in the typical classroom setting. Identifying students with possible mental illnesses remains a difficult task because signs and symptoms of mental illness differentiate between students and are expressed in various ways.
Evaluating Jane Pauly’s mental health circumstances, we learn a lot about how difficult identifying mental illness can actually be. Pauly was known for having “the best mental health” in NBC's news crew (“Mending Minds”). Pauly states that “the common perception was that I had my priorities in order and my head screwed on straight. I was not the smartest, toughest, hardest working nor most beautiful woman in network television, but I owned normal,” (“Mending Minds”). Pauly’s case developed as she aged, and signs of mental illness emerged. They were recognized as depression but remained undiagnosed for a long period of time. Mood swings, manic spells, swelling in her throat and illogical talk had been just a few symptoms she dealt with (“Mending Minds”). As a lot of these signs were internal or could be misinterpreted, identification became much more difficult and change became a necessity for…show more content… Responding to Utah’s school board vote for health classes to be an elective among school districts, Steve Eliason, a state representative, expresses his concern of surging youth suicide rates (Wood). The Utah department of Health shows, on average, around 557 Utahns die from suicide each year, and more than 4,500 attempt suicide (Wood). They found that suicide deaths has more than doubled from 2011 to 2015 for ages 10 to 17 (Wood). Utah alone has a suicide rate 250% above that of the national suicide rate (Centers). Eliason has been active on the issue and says, “More needs to be done to equip students with positive tools for emotional and mental health,” (Wood). Showing up to a meeting held by the Utah board of Education, he comments, “ I plead with you to put those things into our curriculum because our children are dying...apparently what we’re doing is not sufficient to save our children’s lives,”
