Mental health of students, to a great extent results from the day-to-day functioning of mentally healthy teachers. These teachers know that the problem mental health of school-going children is rooted in their needs and their satisfaction.
Conditions in the school, which satisfy their fundamental emotional and social needs, have to be provided. These needs are for security, for manipulation, for expanding cultural and social contacts, for a sense of recognition and achievement, for acceptance and approval.
It is to be noted that these needs should be satisfied at first by their parents at home. Children, who are rejected, over-protected or over-indulged or those who are treated indifferently by their parents who are severe and perfectionist are note emotionally equipped to withstand the frustrations which the school life may entail for them.
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The child goes to the school from the protective environment of the home. There is exposure to new people, new authority figures, to new ideas, to new experience of being are of the group. Let the child not have the failing that he is being sent to the school just as a punishment for his being naughty in the home.
If teachers are encouraging and they understand his needs, if their discipline is not sympathetic and too rigid or harsh, if they allow children to behave as children rather than as young adults, if the school provides a member of interesting group activities instead of negative rules, adaptations which the child has to make will be facilitated and no complications will arise.
It is necessary that the child develops a feeling of belongingness to the school. This will be possible if the atmosphere in the school, as in the home, is that of love and understanding, free from favouritism and invidious comparisons. Other principles and practices that will conduce to mental health of students during the early school period which ranges from 6 to 12 years are as follows:
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(a) Helping the child to gain control of his developing body through constant physical care, attention, and opportunities to exercise his muscles through games and play activities.
(b) Respect for individual differences among students, by providing instruction according to their abilities and interests.
(c) Provision of such activities as dramatics, art and painting, handicraft and games for emotional expansion and self-expression.
(d) Provision of group activities in the school to satisfy their desire for group-making towards the later period of this period (6 to 12 years), by organising scout-groups, guides, squads of clubs and other clubs.
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(e) Attempts should be made by teachers to see that children do not develop feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. Hence let not the child’s attention be fixed on his limitations, his failure and handicaps alone. Provision of tasks which give them a sense of adequacy and success, is an important principle that ought to be practised in this stage.
The period between 6 to 12 years is followed by adolescence (13 to 19 years). It is a period of transition from childhood to maturity – a “between age”. An adolescent is no longer a child and yet not a man. Being in a period of transition, he has problems peculiar to transition having lost an estabilised and accustomed status. He has not yet acquired the new status towards which the factors impelling developmental changes are driving him. He may suffer from the transitional difficulties of insecurity, disorientation and anxiety.
The mental health of the adolescent requires an understanding and satisfaction of the special needs of this period.
These are (i) the need for status, (ii) the need for independence, (iii) the need for a satisfying philosophy of life, (iv) the need for a proper orientation to the opposite sex and (v) the need for guidance in selecting a vocation and in preparing himself for a vocation.
These special needs will be satisfied if the following suggestions are considered and carried out:-
(i) The adolescent should be helped to accept his body with all the changes and instabilities.
(ii) Provision of suitable games and exercises in schools.
(iii) Sex education, to be given in a scientific and objective manner, emphasising the values of healthy sex life.
(iv) Emotional emancipation from parents and teachers by allowing them to differ from adults and by encouraging them to think to decide for themselves to take responsibilities.
(v) Increasing their sense of adequacy by providing tasks which they can perform successfully.
(vi) Provision of proper vocational guidance and counselling facilities in the school set-up.
(vii) Providing them with a healthy philosophy of life through lectures, discussions, suitable readings and contacts with men of ideas.
(viii) Helping the adolescent develop healthy peer age, relationships and friendships through suitable opportunities and an attitude of respect for their friends, gangs, groups, as well as for their opinions and judgments of these relationships.