According to the World Health Organization, one person commits suicide every 40 seconds in the world, and in Colombia, one every 3 hours. A scientific study indicates that the majority of people with suicidal behavior give signs, they hint in some way at their intentions, but unfortunately we do not know how to read these signs or if we understand them we do not know what to do.
And suicide has been a taboo topic about which little is talked about, about which we know little; But, what tools do we have as parents to accompany our children? What tools do teachers have to properly identify and manage their students? Or even more so, what tools do we have to manage ourselves and be the model that children and adolescents need?
We must face this phenomenon without further delay. Enough of continuing to turn our backs on a problem that belongs to everyone and that has been mistakenly believed to be only the responsibility of health professionals. Because in mental health, specifically in suicide prevention, we talk about 3 components:
-Promotion and prevention: everything we can do before a mental health disorder or condition occurs. Everything that promotes healthy habits and styles, the tools that help the person have well-being and meaning in life. Here emotional education plays a very important role.
– Attention: when a mental health condition already exists, it clearly must be done by a health professional.
– Postvention: monitoring and follow-up, as a joint work of the health professional, with the family and the educational institution.
On the one hand, it is essential that all students have good mental health. Unmanaged stress, poor impulse regulation or the inability to regulate emotions can interfere with attention and memory, contributing to behaviors that harm learning, coexistence and conflict resolution.
From the health factor we clearly find two shortcomings. The first has to do with the lack of mental health literacy in educational institutions; This is the information that helps teachers and staff of the institution to identify a condition early and can have a clear care route to make an effective referral to the health professional. The second are the barriers of accessibility, opportunity and professional continuity that serve the student.
Another aspect to take into account is the stigmatization associated with mental disorders. And here we have a cultural problem such as removing from society those who have a mental health problem due to the inability to offer them alternatives.
Through systematic research processes over the years, it has been validated that emotional education improves predisposition to learning, coexistence, reduction of risk behaviors, and classroom climate, among other benefits.
Emotional education ends up being more important than a title, because society has been dedicated for many years to making young people obsessed with being professionals, with having economic success, and human training is left aside to first of all be happy.
The development of emotional competencies aims at emotional well-being, and the way we relate from three perspectives: with ourselves, which implies self-knowledge, self-regulation, self-management; with others, which involves assertive communication, healthy conflict resolution; and in the face of challenges, which means how we react to adversity.
Emotional education as a key to educational reform adopts a life cycle approach, so it must be part of the academic curriculum throughout all educational stages, from childhood education to adulthood, and extends to ongoing training throughout life.
This is an issue that implies not only a policy, a decision or an economic allocation, but also a cultural transformation in education. Those who are within educational institutions are human beings: educators, pedagogues, and they have learned from pedagogical models that are generally based on content and processing, but not from being, from emotions. To achieve a real transformation, it is not enough to give emotional education classes to the student; There must be a solid structure, so it must also be extended to parents or caregivers.
Because, although mental health is an individual issue, there comes a time when it requires the intervention of the public, of the State, particularly in relation to protected subjects such as minors. Anything that affects the health of a minor is a public health problem, and that is why the State must have public policies to protect minors regarding mental health.
For this reason, it is appropriate to highlight the work of entities such as the PRISA Group, which has been holding the Future of Education in Colombia forums; like the last one, held on September 19 and 20 in Barranquilla, when all participants agreed on the urgency of the students’ mental health, understood as a collective task.
Educational institutions at this time are not prepared to address these priorities from preschool health and others in progress. This has been a marginal issue of the educational process and must become a central, vital element of any reform of the educational sector.