An article from the New York Times on November 3, 2016, found that young adolescents are as likely to die from suicide as from traffic accidents. The study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that young adolescents are suffering from a range of health problems associated with the country’s rapidly changing culture. Combined with a changing culture, is an uptick in mental health issues among young children.
Half of all mental illness occur before the age of 14 and 75% occur by age 24. Mental health disorders are among the most common challenges facing children today. Of the 74.5 million children in the U.S., about 17.1 million have or had a mental health disorder more than the number of children with cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)- traumatic experiences in childhood also elevate a child’s risk of a variety of mental and physical health conditions. As the number of ACE’s increase so does the risk for various diseases, such as obesity, anxiety, depression, heart diseases, addictions and negative health outcomes. ACEs increase the likelihood that these preadolescents’ intellectual development will be stunted in the classroom which in turn leads to significant problems keeping up with the demands of school.
It is estimated that 26% of children in the United States will witness or experience a traumatic event before they turn four, and 4 of every 10 children in America say they experienced a physical assault during the past year, with 1 in 10 receiving an assault-related injury. Research has also found that more than 60% of youth age 17 and younger have been exposed to crime, violence, and abuse either directly or indirectly.
Studies show that approximately 20% of all students in a typical classroom are diagnosable with a mental, emotional or behavioral health issue; it is quite conceivable that a teacher might be dealing with 4 or 5 different disorders over the course of a school day. Most common disorders in the classroom are; Bi-Polar Disorder, Anger Disorders, Asperger’s, Anxiety, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
In addition, students now have other socio-emotional pressures like cyber-bullying that did not exist when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I handle so many social emotional issues that I will not attempt to list them here. In the past, most of my focus as a school counselor was on building young children’s academic skills in an effort to ensure they were prepared for school and college. However, in recent years a growing body of research has demonstrated the strong link between young children’s social-emotional competence and their cognitive development, language skills, mental health and school success. Having a trusted adult to mentor kids and connect with them has been found by researchers to be extremely important for students’ social-emotional health and their success in school. My book, The Secret Formula is a result of that thinking.