“Mental Health Days” Are Having a Moment. But Are They Actually Healthy?
Mental health days are having a moment. TikTok is awash with videos of parents taking their kids to Dunkin’ or Starbucks instead of school and receiving heaps of praise. “The best mom I’ve seen on this app,” gushed one commenter.
Allowing your child to take a mental health day is popular. A recent survey of over 1,000 American parents found that 56 percent have let their tween or teen skip school to take a mental-health day. 75 percent of those surveyed felt the practice was beneficial to their child’s mental health.
Mental health is indeed a very real issue for young people in particular. The U.S. Surgeon General and the American Academy of Pediatrics agree that the United States is in a youth mental-health “national emergency.” A dozen states from California to Kentucky have passed legislation allowing or even mandating that schools consider mental-health days as excused absences. But Anya Kamenetz, a journalist who covers education and parenting, as well as a mom, highlights the “dark side” of indiscriminately-administered mental health days.
In an article for The Cut titled “Maybe Your Teen Doesn’t Need a Mental Health Day: Letting kids stay home from school can be really bad for them, actually,” she acknowledges “the occasional day off is probably fine,” but questions the glorification of the practice. After speaking to therapists, parents, teachers, and school administrators, Kamenetz raises a number of points for parents to consider. She offers arguments both for and against mental health days, excerpted here:
For
“The experts I interviewed all agreed that mental health is health. If students need a day for rest and recovery because they’re grieving or exhausted by stress, that reasoning is just as legitimate as staying home because of a fever or sore throat.”
Neutral
“There haven’t been comprehensive studies on the efficacy of school mental-health days to address anxiety or depression.”
Against
“Chronic school absenteeism has almost doubled in 40 states since the pandemic, with test scores in math and reading plummeting, too. (Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10 percent of the days in a school year, or 18 out of 180 school days. It correlates with both lower grades and lower graduation rates.)”
“If kids say they are tired but are actually resisting school for an unspoken reason — perhaps because they’re afraid of a big test or have social anxiety — the evidence-based treatment is not avoidance but the opposite: controlled exposure to what they fear.”
“’When you avoid things you’re anxious about, it rewards the avoidance,’ says Sarah Rose Cavanagh, a psychologist and professor at Simmons University, who has written a book, Mind Over Monsters, arguing schools and campuses need to offer ‘compassionate challenge’ to anxious students, not an invitation to stay home.”
“As a parent, giving in to a kid’s anxious plea to stay home ‘signals to your child that I also think you can’t handle this. You’re reinforcing that school is scary,”’ says Laura Phillips, a senior neuropsychologist and senior director of the learning and development center at the Child Mind Institute in midtown Manhattan. ‘Instead, you want to validate their anxiety and also send the message: I believe you can get through it and we’re going to figure out how to do it together.’”
The verdict? Best practices to consider
Parents need to understand what is driving their child’s desire to take a break from school. That way parents can work with their children to brainstorm and implement actual solutions instead of simply avoiding problems.
Why? “If the problem is bullying, staying away can make kids even more socially isolated. If they’re struggling with schoolwork, missing class can drive them even further behind. If they’re depressed, a day spent lying in bed or scrolling through social media is likely to make them feel even worse.”
“Phillips says the best policy is to place strict limits on mental-health days, lest they snowball. ‘It’s a mental-health day, not a mental-health week,’ she says.”
Read the full article here.
Kamenetz, Anya. “Maybe Your Teen Doesn’t Need a Mental Health Day: Letting kids stay home from school can be really bad for them, actually.” TheCut.com, 17 Jan 2024, https://www.thecut.com/article/the-dangerous-glorification-of-mental-health-days.html.
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