Mental health education

Really effective mental health education is never about "teaching you how not to get sick" or giving you chicken soup in a uniform manner, but about helping different individuals establish their own "psychological flexibility coordinate system", which not only accepts the rationality of negative emotions, but also masters the operable methods of active adjustment, and ultimately achieves peaceful coexistence with one's own emotions.

Last year, I was working as a psychological service provider at a district-affiliated middle school in a second-tier city in the south. I met a boy in the second grade who hid in the sports equipment room and cried for two classes. When the class teacher came over, the first thing he said was, "Please enlighten him. Don't be so glass-hearted. Isn't it just because the teacher said in public that he was careless in doing the questions?" Don't say it, I've heard similar words too many times - in many people's simple understanding, mental health education is equivalent to "frustration education". The core goal is to make people invulnerable and laugh off any criticism they hear. But after I sat with that boy for twenty minutes, I realized that what he cared about was not the word "careless" at all. It was the tone in which the teacher spoke about him that day, which was exactly the same as the tone in which his father had scolded him for "not caring about anything" since he was a child. The grievances he had accumulated for several years were suddenly revealed.

What’s interesting is that for such a seemingly minor matter, the three consultants we were stationed at at the time had completely different ideas in handling it: a colleague with a psychoanalytic orientation said that we should first help him get rid of his subconscious grievances, and don’t force him to “get better immediately”; a colleague from the cognitive behavioral school said that Then you can talk to him and help him separate the cognitive biases of "the teacher said I was careless on this question" and "I just can't do anything well." There are even teachers with a background in ideological and political education who feel that they really need to teach him how to face criticism correctly, otherwise he will not be able to bear it when he enters society in the future. No one was right or wrong. In the end, we didn’t talk about any big principles. We just flattened the crumpled test paper with him and helped him correct the wrong questions. He ran back to the classroom after class. He got third in the math grade in the final exam. He even went to the consulting room and stuffed me with an orange wrapped in gold foil.

Before I gave an employee EAP lecture to an Internet company, I originally prepared a PPT full of "Ten Ways to Relieve Workplace Anxiety." However, as soon as the opening ceremony began, a product manager wearing black-rimmed glasses raised his hand: "Teacher, I don't want to learn how to relieve anxiety. I just want to know if I can not force myself to be positive when I am anxious. I just want to stay at home and watch TV dramas for a day. Is it okay?" I suddenly reacted when the whole audience burst into laughter. Come here, many people in mental health education previously assumed that "negative emotions are errors that need to be corrected." They opened their mouths by saying "you have to be optimistic," "you have to exercise more," and "you have to learn to adjust your mentality." To be honest, people who can do this will not get stuck in their emotions. These correct nonsense have no effect at all except making people who are already guilty feel like "I can't even adjust my emotions well." The 2023 National Mental Health Development Report of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences mentioned that the satisfaction rate for mental health service needs of the 14-35 year old group is less than 30%. More than 60% of the respondents said that "the mental health content they have been exposed to before is empty talk and useless." This is the kind of preaching that is divorced from real feelings.

Nowadays, the industry is actually very quarrelsome. One group believes that mental health education must be standardized. It must be included in textbooks, have a unified syllabus, and even be included in assessments, otherwise its popularity will not increase at all. The other group feels that as long as it is standardized, it will change its flavor. It is originally about paying attention to individual differences. Memorizing knowledge points and taking exams has become a new burden. I have seen the news before. A middle school offered a mental health class and the final exam was "The Three Core Symptoms of Depression." One student got perfect marks and ended up being depressed for half a month. None of the teachers and classmates around him noticed it. He could recite all the definitions of the symptoms, but he didn't know that having insomnia and not wanting to talk for two consecutive weeks were symptoms of depression. He didn't even dare to ask for help, fearing that others would say, "Have you not learned this before? Why are you still depressed?"

I have been doing related work for 6 years, and the biggest pitfall I have encountered is always thinking about giving visitors a "perfect solution." There was a young girl who had just graduated because her deposit was cheated by a rogue landlord because she was renting an apartment. She cried every day for a week and was distracted at work. I listed the steps for her to protect her rights in a clear and logical manner, but she didn't do any of them. The next week I met her squatting downstairs in the company eating cold grilled noodles in the cool breeze. I sat over and ate a bowl with her, and listened to her scolding the landlord for half an hour about how wicked the landlord was. When she swallowed the last mouthful, she wiped her mouth and said, "Okay, I will call 12315 tomorrow to complain about him." Later, I actually got the money back. It was then that I realized that mental health education is never about standing on the shore and reading out the essentials of swimming to others. It is about accompanying people to jump into shallow water and telling them that choking is normal. You don’t have to be an Olympic champion. It’s enough if you can step on the water by yourself and not panic.

Now every time I give a lecture, I always ask, "Is there anyone who doesn't want to hear the truth today? If so, we can talk about it for 10 minutes first." After all, mental health is never about letting you live a "perfect person" without any negative emotions. It is about letting you know that even if the sky falls, you can find a place to hide for 5 minutes, and then stand up after crying, and no one will say you are wrong.