Please note that the opinions shared in this editorial do not necessarily reflect the views of the Nashua Teachers' Union.

I go through phases where I read a lot, and then other times, I don't read at all. I'm back in one of those reading phases. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I attend the suicide awareness training in January with many of the elementary staff. In the webinar, they mentioned a book: Anxiety and Depression in the Classroom: A Teachers' Guide to Fostering Self-Regulation in Young Students. As an elementary-certified teacher, I am always looking for things that would apply to my students for when I return to teaching. I wish I had read this book years ago. Mental health concerns aren't new, they have concerned many of us for years now. I found actual strategies to use with students and the author provided suggested scripts on how to address concerns with parents. 

There is a stigma in this country around mental health. Mental health and seeing a counselor or therapist can be seen as something the person should be embarrassed to admit.  To that I say, why? I have never understood why this is seen as different than seeking help for other things. If your car isn't running correctly, you seek help to diagnose the issue and have it fixed. If you have trouble filing your taxes, you seek help for an accountant to check your numbers and help you file. So I'm not quite sure why there is a problem with people who are having a problem with how they're feeling should be ashamed or afraid to admit that they are seeking help to feel better or address the issue. 

We should be celebrating people who recognize they need help. We celebrate children who self-advocate for help with their academics, why not when it's about their mental health?   Part of the book I read was about breaking the stigma. As I read, and this won't be a surprise to you, the author pointed out that addressing mental health issues will help improve academics. Declining mental health has been a concern during the pandemic for a lot of people. However, it has been a concern for many of us in the education field well before the pandemic started. We are trying to address concerns and will continue to do that. However, in order to do that, we need additional support. We have great school counselors, social workers, and school psychologists who work beside us, but we don't have enough of them. If our community wants our schools to include these types of services in our schools, I think we're happy to do it. We are already doing it, but we need the proper staffing to do it completely. We often have to more with less. That's not going to work when it comes to the mental health of our students. Maybe if we continue to talk publicly about the concerns associate mental health, we'll continue to make improvements to the services we can provide and end this unnecessary stigma.