Stoelton 1

Sara Stoelton

PS 1010

Beth Fowler

19 March 2018

Mental Health Policy

Mental health has been a taboo topic throughout our history. It has been stigmatized and

scandalized and is an issue that affects many people’s lives. Throughout our history, society has

always persecuted those who have a mental illness, even going so far as to call them “witches”.

The main causes of this way of thinking are people’s fear of the unknown and a fear of being

different. These fears have been shown throughout history with many different subjects

including mental health. This subject is important because many people face the issues that

result from mental illness. Not only do the illnesses cause them significant trouble, but people

stigmatize them because they are different. “Mental health professionals' attitudes towards

people with mental illness: Do they differ from attitudes held by people with mental illness?”, a

study done by Lars Hansson, Henrika Jormfeldt, Petra Svedberg, and Bengt Svensson focuses on

the attitudes of mental health professionals toward their patients with mental health issues. The

study states, “Negative attitudes were prevalent among staff. Most negative attitudes concerned

whether an employer would accept an application for work, willingness to date a person who had

been hospitalized, and hiring a patient to take care of children. Staff treating patients with a

psychosis or working in inpatient settings had the most negative attitude,” (Hansson, Jormfeldt,

Svedberg, Syensson). The study goes on to state that mental health care staff hold negative

attitudes and beliefs toward people with mental illness. These negative attitudes show that

people who work with mentally ill patients, especially those who work closely with them, hold a
 Stoelton 2

stigma against the mentally ill. My group’s main concern is this stigma against mental illness

and mental health in general. Our goal is to help erase the stigma associated with mental illness

and to help bring awareness of the importance of good mental health through education.

Children deal with these mental health issues on a level unrecognized by the adults in their lives.

In the Michigan Department of Education’s focus group of three elementary schools, children

reported that teachers tended to respond better to mental retardation than to less obvious illness

including depression and similar illnesses (Michigan Department of Education). Thus, children

lack specialised resources in order for them to deal with their mental health issues that may arise.

This issue is one that can be addressed using the local, state and federal government levels. Our

ideal solution would be requiring teachers to obtain educational materials on mental health

pertaining to students. These teachers would then take this information and teach their children

about it within their classrooms. We believe this would be best performed in primary school in

order for children to be exposed to this material at an early age. We also believe that this

information would be more thoroughly absorbed and that the children would be more

comfortable with a familiar adult teaching them, like their primary teacher rather than an out-of-

school and unfamiliar psychiatric doctor.

The policy that I am addressing is the Coordinated School Health Programs to Support

Academic Achievement and Healthy Schools. This act was adopted by the Michigan State

Board of Education (SBE) in 2003. The policy is multifaceted, consisting of eight components

like “1. Health Education provides critical health information to students. 2. Physical Education

instructs students on how to be physically active for life. 3. Health Services provide essential

health care, enabling students to stay healthy, prevent injuries, and improve academic

achievement,” (Michigan State Board of Education Appendix A). The specific part of the policy
 Stoelton 3

pertaining to mental health education is number 5, stating “School Counselors, Psychologists,

and Social Workers attend to students’ mental health needs,” (Michigan State Board of

Education Appendix A). This policy requires out-of-school officials to tend to children’s mental

health needs. The policy does not explicitly state the need for mental health education in school

but it includes the importance of health education and the need for age appropriate curriculum.

This policy is in the government sphere and was enacted by the state government.

One of the structural barriers is the state government itself. The state government is the

middle ground between local government and federal government. The local government is very

easy to work with and it does not take much time to spread its influence, but this influence is not

very widespread. The federal government, however, is very widespread in its influence.

Unfortunately, its turnover time is very slow and it is not easy to work with. The state

government, while faster than the federal government, still is not as fast as the local government.

The influence of the State government is smaller than the federal government as well, even

though it is bigger than the local government. Since this policy was implemented by the

Michigan State Board of Education, it is influenced and implemented by the state government.

This means that while the time the policy takes to be implemented might not be very long, the

influence of the policy is only state wide. Another limiting factor is the amount of resources the

state government can give. These resources include things like money and time. Since the

government is implementing the need for school counselors, psychologists and social workers in

schools they need to be able to provide those people and be able to pay them. Since these

employees will be spending a significant amount of their time educating children on mental

health, they need to be paid for their services. Without enough money to pay the new employees

of the school, they will eventually leave for better work. Additionally, there is a barrier within
 Stoelton 4

the policy itself. The other components of the policy are a barrier for the number 5 component

focusing on mental health in schools. This is because the other components are getting more

attention and being more widely implemented than the mental health in schools component.

The policy was passed and it did have success, just not success in dealing with mental

health. The policy was too focused on its other components and did not give enough thought to

its mental health aspects. As the policy states, “Fully implemented CSHP can help students

succeed academically while improving their short- and long-term health status. Both research

and intuition tells us that when students are fit, healthy, and ready to learn, they achieve more

success in all areas of their lives,” (Michigan State Board of Education Appendix A). The policy

is more focused on the physical health of the children within school. There are several

components, including the first three as listed above, that focus solely on physical health and it’s

importance. The first three components of the policy include health education, physical

education and health services (Michigan State Board of Education Appendix A). Although two

of these components (health education and services) can include mental health education within

their umbrella, they are not solely focused on this issue. In Chapter 5: Public Problems and

Policy Alternatives, Kraft and Furlong state, “Schneider and Ingram argue that, for public

policies to stand a chance of working, they must be thoroughly grounded in an understanding of

the attitudes and motivations of the policy actors who will decide how the policies are

implemented and whether they have the desired effects,” (Kraft and Furlong 137). The policy

actors on this policy obviously did not agree with the component pertaining to mental health.

This caused them to focus more on other aspects of the policy rather than the mental health

aspect. This part of the policy would have been very hard to implement as well. It requires

outside psychologists and social workers to come to schools and be employed by the state
 Stoelton 5

government. A much easier way to achieve a similar outcome would be to have teachers, who

already interact with the children daily, be the ones teaching these children about mental health

awareness.

This failure to work can teach us a few things. First of all, when implementing a policy

make sure all the components of the policy are properly emphasized rather than focusing solely

on some of the components. If this is not a realistic goal, then making separate policies that

focus mainly on one component would be the better choice. Ron Wilson from the Michigan

Education Association believes that policies similar to the Coordinated School Health Programs

to Support Academic Achievement and Healthy Schools can work within schools. In his article

titled “Stop Teen Suicide” he writes, “Powerful new – free – programs are available for high

schools to help both students and staff recognize the early warning signs of mental illness and

know what to do if they or someone they know needs help. Both student and staff programs are

delivered by a trained two-person team that includes a young adult living in recovery with a

mental health condition,” (Wilson). This type of program does include an outside source coming

to spread mental health awareness to both the students and staff. This policy is more focused on

programs run by the school. The focus on these programs is only on mental health awareness.

Another solution would include changing the policy slightly so that it would be easier and more

realistic to implement. Instead of bringing in outsiders to teach children about mental health,

they should have the teachers the children are familiar with teach them. The article is called

“Toward the Integration of Education and Mental Health in Schools” and it was written by Marc

S. Atkins, Kimberly E. Hoagwood, Krista Kutash, and Edward Seidman. The article states that it

is important to use people the students are familiar with while integrating mental health into

school routines. The authors believe that the students would be more receiving and cooperative
 Stoelton 6

toward adults that they know. They use teachers as an example for a familiar adult, because

teachers control the setting of learning for students, the classroom. They go on to show

examples of this type of support system working in experimental classrooms and school-based

trials (Atkins, Hoagwood, Kutash, Seidman). This article proposes a potential policy that the

authors believe, based on experiments, could be helpful in educating students about mental

health. This potential policy is similar to the policy my group had originally proposed.
 Stoelton 7

Works Cited

Atkins, Marc S. et al. “Toward the Integration of Education and Mental Health in Schools.”

Administration and policy in mental health 37.1-2 (2010): 40–47. PMC. Web. 12 Feb.

2018.

Hansson, Lars, et al. "Mental Health Professionals' Attitudes Towards People with Mental

Illness: Do they Differ from Attitudes Held by People with Mental Illness?" The

International journal of social psychiatry 59.1 (2013): 48. ProQuest. Web. 29 Jan. 2018.

Kraft, , and Furlong. Public Problems and Policy Alternatives. pp. 120-36,

file:///C:/Users/saras/Downloads/honors-ps1010-reading_kraft-and-furlong_public-

policy-2010%20(1).pdf. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018.

Michigan State Board of Education, . "Coordinated School Health Programs ~ Background &

Research." , Appendix A, 2003,

https://www.michigan.gov/documents/CSHP_Background_Policy_77376_7.pdf.

Accessed 12 Feb. 2018.

Michigan Department of Education. “Mental Health in Schools Community

Partnership.”Michigan Department of Education, Michigan.gov,

www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/YouthFocus_281348_7.pdf. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018.

Michigan State Board of Education, . "Policy on Integrating Mental Health in Schools." ,

Attachment A, 9 Feb. 2010,

https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/MH_policy_339729_7.pdf.

Accessed 12 Feb. 2018.

Wilson, Ron. "Stop Teen Suicide." Michigan Education Association, https://www.mea.org/stop-

teen-suicide/. Accessed 26 Mar. 2018.