Letters to Professionals Unit

Takeaways

• To explore the messages that youth have for mental health professionals about what helps and what hinders their wellbeing.
• To consider the ways young people experience their mental health in relation to what they need from professionals and professional services.
• To recognize microaggressions committed against children and youth because of their mental health statuses.

Component

The Letters to Professionals were part of a youth research project on mental health crisis responses. The seventeen youth research team participants were asked to write letters to professionals addressing the following questions: 1) What is important to know about working to support young people’s wellbeing; and 2) What do you think are three important messages for professionals – mental health professionals, educators, police officers – to know about supporting and working with children and youth, and about supporting their mental health and well-being? Please note, these letters were written during the COVID-19 pandemic and thus represent a snapshot in time. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing measures, the feedback was obtained remotely using Zoom.

Evaluating the Artefacts

Letter Writing
Time: 75 minutes; flexible
Format: In-Class; online

As allies to youth, it is important to listen and understand what they are identifying as the needs to better address youth mental wellbeing. For this activity, we will put this in practice by completing the following:

1. Read all eleven letters. Be sure to highlight key terms, ideas, and suggested changes.
2. Write a letter to a professional, mental health organization, or politician as a youth mental health advocate.

After the letters have been written, create small groups of 3-4 people, and have learners share and discuss their letters. Learners should highlight how they understood youth as experts when writing their letters and explain what they decided to focus on.

Learning Lens

Settler culture has largely ignored youth’s mental wellbeing in the past, and even in the twenty-first century we still see a tendency to dismiss the experiences and feelings of children. Before the 18th century, children were seen as miniature adults, and it would not be until the 19th century that childhood as a distinctive life stage would begin to enter the popular lexicon in the Global North. Even then, children were seen as unable to experience madness. It was not until the 1880s that some psychiatrists would theorize specific mental disorders related to childhood. Eventually, a more focused effort to comprehend the psyche of the child would emerge in the 20th century when professionals became interested in child guidance and “child saving,” removing children from families and living situations deemed unsafe or unsuitable.

This rocky history of youth mental health affected the lives of children who entered Canadian psychiatric asylums in the 19th and 20th centuries. Regarded from an adult perspective, their emotions and behaviours were dismissed and they were expected to behave and regulate their emotions as an adult would. Most often, this dismissal led to medical professionals identifying the root issue as a reflection of intellectual capacity rather than emotional wellbeing.

Clearly, this attitude towards children’s wellbeing continues today. Youth in the letters express their frustrations with feeling powerless, misunderstood, and dismissed. There are several references to the ways that young people are dismissed for being “young” and that their experiences of distress are not taken seriously, or further pathologized. As a result, youth who experience psychiatry are often denied meaningful participation in decisions made about their wellbeing. Moreover, treatment decisions and diagnostic categorization dehumanize individuals by replacing personhood with a label.

These experiences reflect practices that maintain ableist and sanist normativity. When young people do not meet prescribed normative standards of development, they are often pathologized and denied their autonomy. This is further compounded by intersecting oppressions. In particular, race is written out of mental health theories and discourses—this is a powerful hegemony that upholds a racist system. This can also be argued for gender and class, as well as gender identity and sexual orientation. Youth identify in their letters how intersectional experiences, especially cultural differences, are completely misunderstood. In one instance a youth notes, an understanding of mental health as a taboo topic in immigrant families is woefully lacking in mental health education and support.

In these letters, youth identify several actions or changes that could better support children’s wellbeing. This is especially important as Mad Studies asks us to consider lived experiences as a form of expert knowledge. Children and youth are the experts on their own wellbeing. It is important that as experts they have a say over support systems, theories, and practices that are designed to support children and youth.