Emotional Education

La Voz de Galicia – June 4, 2021 →

Cristina PatoThis week, I was listening to a radio interview of Azucena Díez, the president of the Society of Child Psychiatry of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP), where she was speaking about the increase of mental health problems during pediatric visits, especially «anxiety, depression, or eating disorders.» Other news related to the AEP talked about the fact that since September of last year «the admission of minors suffering from mental disorders quadrupled» and that there was «a 50% increase in psychiatric emergencies in adolescents.»

And I wonder about what it is that we can do to be able to help our future, the adolescents who are doing what they can to emotionally survive in a life for which none of us were prepared. I also wonder about how we can help each other in this regard because this year has been difficult for everyone: the young and the old.

A short while ago, I wrote about the idea that we don’t always have the necessary tools to face our mental health nor that of those around us. And today, at the end of such a strange school year, I think about how complex in-person teaching had to be for the teachers who daily saw and felt their students deal with sensations and emotions that they were not always able to express and that not everyone understands. Perhaps this is the moment to begin to accept the importance of emotional (and social) education because it is not only necessary in the field of education, but also beyond it; and perhaps with it we may be capable of better understanding what is happening to us in order to learn to manage those emotions that sometimes don’t let us be.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.