Get Mental Health Education on the School Curriculum – Petition

~ Ethel and Mavis ~ Leave a comment

KEY STATISTICS:

  • One in ten children aged between 5 and 16 years has been diagnosed with/shows signs of a mental health problem, and many continue to have these problems into adulthood. (1)
  • Over half of all mental ill health starts before the age of 14 years, and 75% of this has developed by the age of 18. (2)
  • NHS England estimates that poor mental health costs the NHS and society £105 billion a year in England alone. (3)

The statistics are shocking, yet whilst there is a whole subject in the curriculum around our physical health in the form of PE, our young people are left without any knowledge on even the most common of mental illnesses.

Not only does this leave them unprepared and vulnerable when it comes to looking out for their own mental health, but also sets a standard that Mental Health is not discussed. This plants a seed of stigma that many carry for their whole lives.

Upon further research, there generally seems very little in the way of guidelines. For example, when Romeo and Juliet is studied as part of the curriculum when the two title characters kill themselves, this is considered the end of the story. The very serious topic of suicide is frequently not even mentioned as a part of these studies, and yet according to the BBC, suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 49.

It’s time to make a change. Even if a law was passed so every child receives one class about Mental Heath during their time at school, this would be more than the vast majority currently get. We are keen to hear back from those in power on a more extensive plan to better the lives of our nation’s young people.

CAMPAIGNING FOR:

  • Mental Health education becoming mandatory for all schools in the UK.
  • Every child having the ability to access a qualified counsellor through their school. This is something that many workplaces already offer.
  • Every school offering Mental Health training for its staff.

Please join our petition to help bring us one step closer to making these requests a reality, thus helping safeguard the health of generations to come.

Thank you for reading, Bobby Temps

Host of ‘Mental – The Podcast to Destigmatise Mental Health’.

Learn more about this petition and it’s creator at mentalpodcast.co.uk/petition

Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/p/get-mental-health-education-on-the-school-curriculum-mentalpetition

Press Release: http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/5617b6_b841f1a7a8fc477a96bd3137cd32c771.pdf

1. Source: Green h, McGinnity A, Meltzer h et al. (2005) Mental Health of Children and Young People in Great Britain, 2004. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
2. Source: Murphy M and Fonagy P (2012). Mental health problems in children and young people. In: Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer 2012. London: Department of Health.
3. Source: NSPCC. How safe  are our  children? 2016

Nazanin Moradi – Transformation

~ Ethel and Mavis ~ Leave a comment

1Equally+suffer.JPG

Equally suffer, mixed media, 81×54 cm

2Your+void+is+everywhere

Your void is everywhere, mixed media, 100×76 cm

You+search+for+loneliness.JPG

Your search for loneliness, mixed media, 100×50 cm

In+the+absence+of+intimacy

In the absence of intimacy, mixed media, 121×91 cm

 

‘oscillating into the void’

My body of work is an attempt to describe the illusion of stability; I grew up in a time of political repression, confined by the post-collision of modernism and Islamic nationalism – conditions that cast people into new unknown situations; from construction to dislocation, and from disillusionment to courage and endurance; and in adaptation to the unknown potential of the future. Emotional feelings of love and abandonment were torn and shaped by these shifting forces, propelling me forwards toward an unstable state.

I use my body as a tool to explore the built unstable environment. My practice meditates on the physical and psychological impacts of space upon the self. Working across costume making, performance, printmaking, and painting I examine in particular aspects of the area that are usually part of my memories, lifestyle, and urban life. My work is an attempt to uncover the dialogue of my existence to predict a fantastic, fantasy future. It rises a fresh view against structural infused. Among them is the need re-emerged mysteriously, for imagining the unimaginable things. This movement is an examination from the self to something higher or even opposite, and back to a renewed understanding of self-expectations.

I once died, or maybe I was not dead, just my brain was unconscious for a while, but my contribution is about my own mental health and a family member. For a first time when I committed suicide in a road traffic accident, I was struggling with depression symptom and bipolar disorder. The accident happened in one of the dark and under construction roads in the Middle East. My car crashed the signs on the road, and after turning a few times, the car departed into the middle of the field which was meant to be a square. I finished my life. I saw my body from a top of my body, and I was out of my body, I do not know what I was, but my body throughout from the car during the incident and was on the ground, but I was higher. When I got rescued, I saw the movement of people trying to help me running around, but everything was like a silent film, I could not hear anything, and eventually, I ended up having two operations one lung and spine. I was in the coma for a while. I believe the only things I fight for was a power of the Home; I wanted to go back home all the time even though I was unconscious in a hospital bed. After few days my mother found out and came to the hospital. I noticed her, I felt her, I saw her, but she just saw the piece of meat on the bed. The day after she came back again I was alive. I was eating breakfast without any help while no one could imagine it the day before. Ten days after I left the hospital and sent a text message to everyone that I love them and how sorry I was that I wanted to go forever. The year I committed to that action I suppose to come to London to study, but because of my health problem I was not able to sit on a plane therefore, my brother came instead of me. Finally, after two years I came to London, but after a year my brother finished his university and decided to go back to Iran, and it was a time when my family went through a dramatic change and disorientation. My father left home and got remarried, my mother took my sister and ran to Europe, and my brother and I left alone in two different places. He went through the same suicidal car crash as I did but with a difference that he did not fight for survival. He did not have mother and sister to hold his hands and ask him to come back to us. He did not have a felling of Power of Home to rescue him, and he died alone in a dark countryside road.

After a year I had a dream of someone in my family giving birth, and the baby is my little brother. I contacted my father to ask if her wife is pregnant and he said how do you know because we found out about it recently. It was a time when my depression got worse, and I went through manic time which lasted for years. I started seeing and hearing things. I wasn’t able to distinguish what is real, what is unreal and what is a dream. For example, once my brother came to me and told me a story:

“I went to the fatherhood; I felt a moment of sadness though as I watched our step-sister playing at the seaside, so many memories of our childhood came to me. I lost so much of my life to my body. I feel death has stolen my life. Where did my boyhood go? Where had all those years gone? As I passed by the Persian Golf beach, I promised myself that from that moment I would live every day as if it was my last day, despite there being no more days left. I watched our step-sister building a sand castle in the sand, taking so much care and pride in her work. She said to her mother that the walls of a castle would withstand the power of the sea when the tide came in. Her mother smiled at her, as she knew that the waves would destroy the castle. The child was so innocent, and not understanding the power of nature. The tide eventually came in, and our sister watched with tears as the walls of the castle slowly fell. After a while, she started to build a new one in the hope that next time it would not fall. As I watched her, I saw my childhood; I had tried to create my castle, thinking that all of my plans would stay intact when the death monster took over me. Death is so like the sea; its moods can change from calm one moment to monster waves the next.