Mental health education content

The content of scientific mental health education that is currently generally recognized covers four core modules: self-cognition exploration, emotion regulation skills, social adaptation support, and crisis intervention science popularization. There is no unified standardized template. It must be designed to match the development stages and actual needs of different people in life scenarios. It is essentially a psychological support tool for "teaching people how to fish" rather than a discipline manual for "correcting emotions."

You must have seen the kind of abnormal mental health class: the auditorium is full of students, the teacher on the stage is reading a PPT and repeatedly emphasizes "Everyone should stay positive and optimistic", while the children below are secretly scrolling through their mobile phones, going in and out of their left ears. When I was a resident psychology teacher in a middle school a few years ago, I met a sophomore girl who was anxious about taking a test and hiding in the corridor crying. A classmate actually approached her and said, "Didn't you take a psychology class?" Why can't you think about it?" - You see, the psychology class that regards "happiness" as the only standard answer has become a new shackles.

Practitioners of different genres also have completely different emphasis on content. No one is right or wrong, they just cater to different groups of people. Educators with a psychoanalytic orientation will spend more energy on the self-awareness module, such as taking adult students to sort out their childhood experiences and dig out the roots of their own behaviors of "always unable to help but please others" and "subconsciously escaping when quarreling". This course is suitable for people who already have a certain ability of self-awareness and want to solve deep-seated confusions. ； Teachers with a cognitive behavioral orientation prefer to give implementable tools, such as the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method when you are anxious, and how to refute the unreasonable belief that "I can't do anything well." Feedback is best from groups such as students and people in high-pressure workplaces who need to quickly get started and deal with current problems. ； Practitioners with a humanistic orientation seldom "lecture", but more often create a safe space for expression. For example, when I taught third graders in elementary schools, I used a stack of emotion cards to ask everyone to post their moods of the day on the "mood tree" at the back of the classroom. Someone posted a black "sad", and no one said "you are wrong." Everyone would just come over and ask, "Oh, you are unhappy today, why are you unhappy?" ”, first let everyone know that "all emotions are reasonable", which is more useful than teaching a hundred adjustment skills.

In fact, the controversy over content boundaries in the industry has never stopped. Last year, I participated in the local education bureau’s curriculum standard discussion, and the two groups of people turned red in the face. Psychiatrists with clinical background insist that popular science about common mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety should be included in the curriculum standards for upper-grade primary schools. They say that the detection rate of depression in children under 14 years old is now close to 20%. Early popular science can help children detect it early and prevent them from thinking that mental illness is a "shameful neurosis."” ； A front-line primary school teacher disagreed, saying that a school had piloted a depression science video before, and half the class of children ran to the teacher and said, "I think I have depression." In fact, it was because they did not do well in the test that day and had a minor conflict with a friend, which only increased unnecessary anxiety. The common compromise plan now is to only teach "emotions are not good or bad" in the younger age groups, and then gradually introduce disease science popularization after junior high school, and must be accompanied by professional psychological counselors to follow up. It must not be done just by showing a video.

Many people think that mental health education is only for young people, but it is not. Last month, I gave a lecture to retired elderly people in the community. At the end of the lecture, Aunt Zhang took me and chatted for almost half an hour. She said that she had suddenly become free after retirement and was so flustered that she could not sit still. She always felt that she had become a burden to her children and did not dare to tell them. She also thought that she had some strange disease. In her sixties, no one had ever told her that "it is normal to feel a sense of loss after retirement." You see, our past content has too easily ignored this group. The elderly do not need any "time management" or "stress response" at all. What they need is how to rediscover their self-worth after retirement, how to deal with the loneliness of an empty nest, and how to live with the negative emotions caused by chronic diseases. These are parts that have rarely been included in the content system before.

There is also the corporate EAP course that everyone complains about the most. When I was doing content review for an Internet company, I saw that their previous courseware actually included "How to adjust your mentality to deal with overtime." This is not called mental health education, this is disguised PUA. The industry has been arguing about this for a long time: Does mental health education serve the management or the individuals themselves? The current mainstream consensus is definitely the latter, but it will inevitably go astray when implemented. Content that is truly suitable for working people should teach you how to identify PUA in the workplace, how to reasonably refuse excessive work, and how to draw a clear boundary between work and life, rather than teaching people "how to stay happy in 996."

All in all, the content of good mental health education is actually very simple. It never tells you "what you should be like" from a high place, nor does it require you to never have negative emotions. It is more like a psychological escape guide that you carry with you: it does not mean that you will never encounter danger, but that you know how to rub yourself when you fall and hurt. When you encounter a hurdle that you cannot overcome, you know who you can reach out to help you.