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One observation I made when I was a teacher was that the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became. My theory is

by cjs_ac 16d ago

One observation I made when I was a teacher was that the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became. My theory is that teenagers are experimenting with different identities, so when you give them a seminar on anxiety and depression, some of them try those on for size. Moral of the story: trying to pre-emptively solve a problem can cause the problem or cause a different problem.

grebc 16d ago
Children are easily led on, and if we’re being honest most adults are too.
Arodex 16d ago
It is a well established fact now that suicide is contagious. Just the mention of it is enough to cause a spike in suicide attempts. Then how do you tell people that they can be helped about it without triggering the very thing?
- SoftTalker 16d ago
  I would say you mention it when the subject has already come up. Probably do not however devote an entire class period or a special school assembly to it.
- citadel_melon 16d ago
  Reminds me of the task “don’t think of a pink elephant.” The first thing you do is think of a pink elephant. The solution is to land on what you want your audience to do in the affirmative. For the pink elephant you can say, “Don’t think of a pink elephant: put your mental energy into imagining Mikey mouse riding a surf board.” Similarly, here we can say something like “If you’re feeling suicidal, do x.” I’m not sure what x should be. Maybe call a hotline. I would have to think more about it, but the point is that landing on an affirmative action in this manner will offset the “pink elephant” effect.
antonymoose 16d ago
I once heard a lecture from an attorney, one of his tenets was as to completely avoid topics you don’t want opposing council to clue in on and attack. Don’t they to preempt it, just ignore it entirely unless you’re forced to confront it. The analogy was “don’t tell your kid not to stick crayons in their nose” - otherwise, well, they most certainly will latch on to the topic and do so.
Markoff 16d ago
yeah basically like warning kids to not like frozen railing, which they would not even think about until the warning it's like asking on suicide hotline whether you have some weapon or object in room which could hurt you, great ideas to give to suicidal people...
quasse 15d ago
> the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became An equally plausible explanation is that when the school had zero resources to help kids with depression or other mental health problems they choose to keep their mouths shut and suffer it in silence. Once the school started paying attention to the issue, it started surfacing people with pre-existing problems who had not previously had anyone to talk to about it.

by cjs_ac 16d ago

grebc 16d ago

Children are easily led on, and if we’re being honest most adults are too.

Arodex 16d ago

It is a well established fact now that suicide is contagious. Just the mention of it is enough to cause a spike in suicide attempts. Then how do you tell people that they can be helped about it without triggering the very thing?

SoftTalker 16d ago
I would say you mention it when the subject has already come up. Probably do not however devote an entire class period or a special school assembly to it.
citadel_melon 16d ago
Reminds me of the task “don’t think of a pink elephant.” The first thing you do is think of a pink elephant. The solution is to land on what you want your audience to do in the affirmative. For the pink elephant you can say, “Don’t think of a pink elephant: put your mental energy into imagining Mikey mouse riding a surf board.” Similarly, here we can say something like “If you’re feeling suicidal, do x.” I’m not sure what x should be. Maybe call a hotline. I would have to think more about it, but the point is that landing on an affirmative action in this manner will offset the “pink elephant” effect.

antonymoose 16d ago

I once heard a lecture from an attorney, one of his tenets was as to completely avoid topics you don’t want opposing council to clue in on and attack. Don’t they to preempt it, just ignore it entirely unless you’re forced to confront it. The analogy was “don’t tell your kid not to stick crayons in their nose” - otherwise, well, they most certainly will latch on to the topic and do so.

Markoff 16d ago

yeah basically like warning kids to not like frozen railing, which they would not even think about until the warning it's like asking on suicide hotline whether you have some weapon or object in room which could hurt you, great ideas to give to suicidal people...

quasse 15d ago

> the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became An equally plausible explanation is that when the school had zero resources to help kids with depression or other mental health problems they choose to keep their mouths shut and suffer it in silence. Once the school started paying attention to the issue, it started surfacing people with pre-existing problems who had not previously had anyone to talk to about it.