This
colourful and action-oriented slogan is the launching pad for
the prevention campaign run by the Montréal branch of the
Canadian Mental Health Association aimed at teens in Montréal-area
high schools. This campaign focuses on mental health as opposed
to the disease. Its message is designed to encourage youth to
act before serious problems arise, to break their solitude by
talking about what 's bothering them and to seek help. Any successful
intervention in this area must target risk factors as well as
the problems. Also emphasized is the importance of developing
personal and social skills such as problem solving and stress
and emotional management.
What
is mental health?
In terms used
by today's youth, it is simply a matter of feeling good about
yourself, having a good time and being happy. Defined more elaborately
by the Québec committee for mental health1,
mental health is presented as being "the psychological balance
of a person at a given time. It can be assessed based on the following
elements: the level of subjective well-being, the exercise of
mental abilities in one 's daily life and the quality of relationships
with the environment. It is influenced by multiple, interdependent
factors such as economic, social, cultural, environmental and
political conditions. Mental health is the result of mutual adaptation
between a person and his environment. All conditions that hinder
this adaptation, for example poverty and discrimination, constitute
an obstacle to mental health. Conversely, all conditions which
facilitate adaptation, support mental health for example - a healthy
environment, equitable distribution of collective wealth and access
to quality education." (Translation)
Health Canada2
defines mental health as the "capacity of the individual,
the group and the environment to interact with one another in
ways that promote subjective well-being, the optimal development
and use of mental abilities (cognitive, affective and relational),
the achievement of individual and collective goals consistent
with justice and the attainment and preservation of conditions
of fundamental equality."
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Adolescents
and mental health
The beginning
of adolescence is, almost by definition, a period of transition
marked by important changes in all aspects of a child 's functioning.
The end of adolescence is more a moment of consolidation where
youth adopt a new, more coherent identity and clearer objectives
and commitments. Norma Haan (1981) proposes a practical way of
approaching this difference, founded on Piaget 's assimilation
and accommodation concepts. According to Haan, the onset of adolescence
is a period dominated by assimilation, whereas the end of adolescence
would be more a period of accommodation.
An adolescent
of 12 to 13 years of age assimilates a multitude of new physical,
social and intellectual experiences. Before these new experiences
can be completely integrated, the adolescent finds himself more
or less in a period of perpetual imbalance. Older models are no
longer operable and newer ones are not yet established. It is
during this period that the peer group takes on great importance.
Around the age of 16,17 or 18, adolescents have begun to make
the necessary accommodations, they gather the various threads
to establish a new identity, new models of social relationships,
new goals and new roles.
School
and mental health
A school can
intervene more coherently and effectively regarding the global
health of its students if it understands its role in prevention
and steers clear of confused messages. Such a school is better
equipped to coordinate action within its own milieu, is more open
to the community and so creates an environment conducive to students'
growth.
In the same
spirit, the school ensures that students receive the necessary
support and personal aid needed to maintain a healthy and balanced
frame of mind. To provide such support, those working in the school
are knowledgeable about mental health issues affecting youth and
understand their role in this respect.
As regards
educational activities, a school committed to the mental health
of its students organizes educational activities that promote
the development of both personal and social abilities such as
the resolution of conflicts and problems, self-esteem and self-affirmation,
and stress and emotional management.
Finally, the
school is also concerned with the students' feelings of academic
competence and organizes its educational methods and evaluations
accordingly.
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Being
an adolescent today
Adolescence:
a troubled period? A definite yes. Between the ages of 12 and
18, all youth make waves in their surroundings, because they are
on a stormed tossed sea within themselves. This is a period marked
by puberty, the body's tremendous growth surge, and by the application
of formal thought which judges, criticizes, and calls the outside
world into question.
This is also
the period of contradictions. You need your parents, but you shut
them out. You want someone to listen to you, but refuse to confide.
You want to be free, but you still need the emotional security
the family offers. Adolescents often wear their emotions on their
sleeves: they are just as quick to laugh as to cry. This is a
stage of life where imbalance, transition, experimentation, and
challenging keep company with self- assertiveness, contrariness,
and sometimes even marginalization.
Our constantly
changing world is not always a help. Yesterday 's guideposts have
disappeared without necessarily having been replaced. Choices
and possibilities have multiplied. Youth evolve in a playing field,
which often overwhelms them.
Formerly,
the family was the model to analyze, to rebel against, but finally
to replicate; the family of today is either splintered, run by
a single parent or blended. The broken home is certainly not a
marginal phenomenon. However, separation and divorce are still
traumatizing experiences for youth, especially when either one
of the parents chooses a new partner without first analyzing why
the first relationship broke up. The adolescent who comes to see
just how "imperfect "his parents are will be all the
less inclined to identify with them.
Then there
is the matter of sexuality. Nothing much is any longer taboo in
our days. Everything is expressed, reported, shown and explained.
Youth know more than ever about sexuality. The "free and
open "society in which they now evolve persuades them that
if they put off having sex they will be considered weird. Result:
they are more than ever, furtively, being made prisoners of their
fears and anxieties.
There was
a time where adolescence was a brief training period for self-reliance.
The pas- sage from childhood to adulthood was then rather linear.
You studied (sometimes little, sometimes not at all), you worked,
you took economic control of your life. Then, often, you married
in order to found a family. Things no longer happen that way today.
Because of advanced studies, adolescence, besides having an earlier
onset, is prolonged in time. Young people live much longer with
their parents. They are thus financially dependent on their parents
longer and this in no way helps them develop their autonomy.
Given healthy
guidelines during this necessary period of experimentation, adolescence
can still be an exciting and formative stage in life. In their
search for identity, youth can be brought to relate to themselves
as a coherent whole maintaining harmonious relations with the
environment.
However, left
themselves with the illusion that they have total control over
everything that happens to them or else repressed in their need
for self-assertion and autonomy, youth risk experiencing adolescence
as a trip through the desert. There is even the risk of their
getting lost in that desert.
Psychological
distress, a traumatic event or even some of
modern life's curve balls (for example, a heartbreak, the divorce
of one 's parents): all these may disturb a young person's mental
health without giving any grounds to speak of a mental illness
with psychiatric diagnosis. Hence, it is important to recognize
the subtle signs of distress, so as to respond proactively and
refer the troubled youth to a competent professional.
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Impact
of 40 years of change on adolescence
Adolescence
is a stage of life which, until quite recently, was accorded relatively
little attention. Prior to 1960, one was either a child or an
adult, and the passage from one status to the other was relatively
untroubled. Since then, Québec society has become more
complex and, in parallel, so has adolescence. Though the winds
of change which swept over Québec during the Quite Revolution
may have calmed down, they are still blowing. Today's adolescents
are inevitably feeling their effects. They are thus, in some sort,
assuming the impacts of Québec 's social changes. In sum,
these young people mirror the society which brought them into
the world.
As part of
a research project on suicide among youth, Francine Gratton3 makes
a modest attempt to dissect that revolution in six points linking
it with the current reality of adolescents. The table presents
an overview of her comments.
| Since
1960... |
Consequences
for adolescents |
| 1.
Traditional values have been called into question. The clergy
has lost its hold. The educational system has been called
into question and the family has been undergoing a constant
metamorphosis. |
The general
spirit of collective controversy tends to predispose youth
to act in the same way on an individual level. |
| 2.
The desire for autonomy and control over one's own destiny
has become an ever greater urgency in Québec. Québec
society has been studying, investigating, demanding, finding,
and applying its own solutions in political, economic and
social spheres. |
Youth
are following suit. They want to decide their own future.
They need to feel they are masters of their own existence.
|
| 3.
The Québec people have granted themselves the right
to think, speak out, criticize, make demands and create. The
air waves teem with open lines, traditional codes are transgressed
in literature and the other arts. |
Youth
are now demanding this freedom of thought and expression for
themselves,
in their personal and social life. |
| 4.
Québec has opened up to the world and other cultures.
New political parties have emerged; social, religious and
spiritual groups have multiplied, points of view have branched
off in every possible direction. Québec has become
multiethnic. |
Youth
are exposed to a whole panoply of possibilities concerning
their beliefs, their values, their way of life. It is hard
for them to find their fitting in a social context with so
many facets. |
| 5.
Québec has been on an intensive quest for its identity.
This quest has been marked by positive feelings of pride and
belonging but also by anxiety about the future. This has bred
struggles and tensions. |
Youth
are also on a quest for identity. Their challenge is to construct
an identity in a climate where former models seem outmoded
and new models are being perpetually constructed.
|
| 6.
Liberated from traditional values and beliefs, Quebecois have
been left on their own to manage their lives. Personal development,
liberty, immediate pleasure and experimentation have become
the new values of the day. |
Youth
are following suit. They are self-centred and preoccupied
by their own future. They want to change their own lives,
but no longer life in general. |
When
should we sound the alarm?
Most youth
get through adolescence without too much damage and manage to
build an adult life in keeping with their aspirations. However,
for a thousand and one reasons, a number of young people have
a much harder time living out their adolescence. Some even feel
quite literally sucked down by the under- tow. These youth take
many paths on their way down: school drop-out, drugs, depression,
eating disorders, suicide.
Youth finally
have many ways of letting us know things are not going well. But
they must first be heard. Certain signals can be the tip-off allowing
adults to detect their teenager 's SOS and take appropriate action.
As a rule,
when an adolescent no longer wants to see his friends (the same
ones he once couldn't breathe without), when he loses interest
in things that were once a passion and finds everybody "stupid
"starting with himself, it 's safe to say that this adolescent
deserves our concern.
Physical health can also be an important indicator. Too much or
not enough sleep, constant fatigue or an eating disorder are telling
signs of distress. Sudden hyperactivity, exaggerated or forced
euphoria can also camouflage an under- lying state of anxiety.
Such symptoms should not necessarily be diagnosed as a mental
illness, but rather seen as concrete indications of distress.
However, if
any of these symptoms should modify the adolescent 's behaviour,
mood, emotions, thought patterns and perception to the point where
he has trouble with day-to-day activities, it may be justified
to think of them as early signs of some more serious mental illness.
The concerned
adult should watch for the intensity, accumulation and duration
of the distress signals. We should keep in mind that adolescence
angst is a broad category but can 't explain everything. Real
and serious symptoms of mental illness are too often and too easily
tossed into this category. Knowing how to recognize such symptoms
and consult professionals who can diagnose and treat them competently
is sometimes the best route to follow.
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Remember
Listed below
are the traumas that can affect the normal development of youth
and disturb their mental health.
- Absence
of intergenerational communication.
- Absence
of significant others.
- Precocious
autonomy or pseudo-autonomy.
- Frequent
moves.
- Experience
of abuse or violence.
- Experience
of prolonged separations (death, divorce, etc.).
- Many foster
or institutional placements.
- Family
problems.
- Mental
health problems in a parent or a member of the immediate family.
| General
Symptoms of Mental Illness4 |
|
Categories of symptoms
|
Examples. |
| Asocial
behaviour |
Apathy,
withdrawal, drop out from cultural and leisure activities.
|
| Change
in behaviour |
Hyperactivity
or inactivity, substance abuse, unusual touchiness, recklessness,
abnormal posture, drop in personal hygiene and attention to
appearance, change in sleeping and eating habits, inability
to wash and feed oneself. |
| Depression |
Serious
change in appetite or weight,
pessimism, suicidal w words or thoughts, lack of interest
in activities, extreme fatigue.
|
| Emotional
disorders |
Indifference,
inappropriate laughter,
continuous crying or inability to cry,
unusual hostility, inability to express joy, exaggerated fear
and distrust.
|
| Thought
disorders |
Trouble
with concentration and memory,
confused thinking, confused speech patterns, absurd remarks,
trouble dealing with minor problems, impaired reasoning.
|
| Cognitive
and perceptual problems |
Spatio-temporal
disorientation, short-term memory problems, inability to wash
and feed oneself, inability to resolve everyday problems.
|
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1
Recommendations for the development and enrichment of mental health
policies, 1994, p.8-9.
2 Mental Health for Canadians Striking a Balance, Ottawa, Supply
and Services Canada, 1988, 23 p.
3.Gratton,Francine,Le climat social du Québec,propice à
des suicides d ’«être »chez les jeunes?,P.R.I.S.M.E.,Fall
1995,vol.5,no 4,p.510.
4. Mental Illness: A Regional Handbook for Families, AMI-Québec
and Project ARC, 1997.
Introduction
| Secondary
I & II
| Secondary
III, IV & V
| Bibliography
| Links
| Home
|
Français
A publication of
The Canadian Mental Health Association, Montréal branch
847, rue Cherrier, bureau 201
Montréal (Québec)
H2L 1H6
Telephone: (514) 521-4993
Fax: (514) 521-3270
E-mail:acsmmtl@cam.org
