The reporter investigated the practice of mental health teachers in some primary and secondary schools
Don't let mental health teachers do "chores"
□ Zhao Li and Zhang Shoukun, reporters of this newspaper
Grumpy, screaming, biting... Not long ago, Xiao Lin, a 7-year-old boy from Hebei, led by his parents, rushed to Beijing to see a counselor. Xiao Lin's mother said that the child was a little hyperactive, did not listen to the teacher's instructions, and once was pulled into the toilet by the class teacher for education, he began to become particularly irritable, unable to control his emotions when encountering a little thing, and could not study.
After understanding the situation, psychological counselor Chen Jing made a set of psychological counseling programs for the whole family, including the children: within 3 months, parents brought their children to Beijing once a month for a week of psychological counseling together; Communicate online and carry out psychological adjustment every day. Today, Kobayashi's mood has calmed down and he has returned to school.
"If the school had a professional mental health teacher intervened in time, Xiao Lin's psychological defense would not have collapsed, and the irritable little flame might have been dissolved in the bud." Chen Jing lamented to the "Rule of Law Daily" reporter.
The reporter recently investigated and learned that at present, many primary and secondary schools have insufficient mental health teachers, mental health teachers are concurrently served by administrative staff or moral education teachers, lack of unified curriculum syllabus and teaching materials, and mental health courses are occupied, affecting the mental health education of minors.
The interviewed experts believe that compared with full-time teachers in other disciplines, primary and secondary school mental health teachers also face a series of problems such as unclear development positioning, insufficient status and treatment guarantees, and unsmooth career development channels, and suggest further promoting the construction of school mental health teachers, vigorously improving the professional level of mental health teachers, and enhancing the support and guarantee of professional development to promote the mental health of primary and secondary school students by matching strong professional mental health teachers.
The infrastructure is not yet complete
Teachers need to be matched
"First of all, comfort the girl who has been bullied and affirm her practice of seeking help in time. The class teacher of the violent student is then contacted to ask the parents to educate the child. ”
"In order to protect girls from being bullied in the future, and in order to better educate and guide the abuser, I planned a class meeting with the class teacher, and after obtaining the consent of the violent boy, organized everyone to perform a drama about bullying - let 10 students put a cross label on the abuser and say negative words at the same time. Finally, let the classmates tear off the labels on him one by one and praise his merits. ”
This is a psychological teaching carried out by a mental health teacher after learning that a female student at her school "is often bullied by ×× boys, made fun of in public, and wants to die". In March this year, the mental health teacher posted his "experience" online, which was unanimously recognized by the majority of netizens. Many netizens bluntly said: It is too important for schools to have mental health teachers.
Liu Junjian, a registered psychologist of the Chinese Psychological Society and a national second-level psychological counselor, is currently a full-time mental health teacher in a school in Beijing. She said that the work of mental health teachers mainly includes four aspects: regularly carrying out student psychological assessments, opening courses related to mental health education, organizing mental health activities, and carrying out individual psychological counseling and group psychological counseling.
Liu Junjian said that the prevention of psychological problems is very important, early detection can allow students to get timely and appropriate intervention, the effect is better, "early detection and early intervention of psychological problems, and the school's attention and investment in mental health are closely related, such as the number of mental health teachers in the school should meet a certain ratio of teachers and students, and the school provides enough psychological teaching hours."
According to reports, at present, the setting of psychology courses, class time arrangements, etc. in various schools is not uniform, and there are large differences: some schools set psychology courses as compulsory courses, and some set them as optional courses; Some schools have 2 lessons per week, some have 1 lesson per week, or once every two weeks, and some schools only have psychology classes in the first half of the semester.
Cai Hailong, associate professor of the Capital Institute of Education Policy and Law of Capital Normal University, told reporters that due to historical development, mental health teachers in some schools are currently served by administrators or moral education teachers, some of whom have not received special psychological education and training, and some are only rushed to work after short-term training, which is actually difficult to be qualified for mental health education.
Zhao Na (pseudonym), a full-time mental health teacher at a middle school in Henan Province, said that in practice, if it is found that students have depression, extreme anxiety, self-harm, etc., or encounter family changes, abuse, school bullying, etc., mental health teachers will promptly intervene to carry out psychological counseling, and take the initiative to report to school leaders, and seek help from more professional personnel when necessary.
"However, the number of professional mental health teachers in China is currently insufficient, especially in more remote rural schools, and the shortage of mental health teachers is even more prominent." Zhao Na said that many school mental health teachers are concurrently served by ideological and political teachers in schools, and the professional technology of mental health education is weak, and they often can only carry out some simple psychological teaching work, and it is difficult to really understand the psychological state of students.
A number of interviewed mental health teachers believe that in the environment of test anxiety, family conflicts, peer pressure and other environments, some adolescents may have psychological problems, if you want children to grow up healthily, you should not seek solutions to deal with and solve problems when they arise, but should be guided by professional knowledge and special education in daily life.
For many mental health teachers, they fully feel the necessity and urgency of campus mental health education, but at the same time, many of them also feel helpless - sometimes, school mental health education seems to be a "luxury" education, and the school does not give more resources and time to mental health education.
A number of mental health teachers from Tianjin, Shandong, Anhui and other places said that some schools have incomplete mental health education infrastructure, and psychological counseling rooms do not even have professional counseling tools and equipment, which cannot well meet the work needs of mental health teachers.
"At present, the funding of the psychological counseling room is limited, which cannot well guarantee the development of counseling services, nor can it meet the due income of mental health teachers. The small space of the counseling room affects the effectiveness of counseling and does not attract students. A school director said.
It is more common for people not to be dedicated
Affects the effectiveness of psychological counseling
Zhao Na told reporters that compared with the incomplete infrastructure, mental health teachers in some schools are still facing a more embarrassing situation - the work is not valued, all kinds of chores have to be done, and the development is hindered, which will eventually affect the mental health education of minors.
A mental health teacher at a primary school in Tianjin told reporters that there is only one mental health teacher in her school, and since she started her career, she has hardly provided one-on-one psychological counseling for students, because she is responsible for mental health classes, psychological knowledge lectures and work meetings of relevant departments from the first to sixth grades, and there is a lot of overall work to be done.
Xin Qing, from Shanghai, who has also worked as a mental health teacher in public schools, empathizes: "Some schools set up mental health teacher posts only for the reason that schools must be equipped, but mental health work is not really valued by schools."
"The scope of job responsibilities is not clear, and the special person is not dedicated." Liu Junjian pointed out that sometimes mental health teachers need to undertake many other jobs outside the scope of mental health education, such as administrative work, student management work, etc., which will weaken the investment of mental health teachers in their professional work to a certain extent, and may also cause the problem of dual roles in psychological counseling, affecting the effect of psychological counseling.
Zhao Na said: "Some schools have irregular and unscientific assessments, mental health teachers are originally less allocated, the work tasks are still very miscellaneous, and some schools still have insufficient and uneven mental health courses that meet the requirements, resulting in some mental health teachers can only do other work to make up the workload, otherwise they will face the risk of insufficient class hours and incompetent assessment." ”
"Mental health teacher titles are difficult to obtain, leading to burnout. Schools prefer the main subject teacher and class teacher when evaluating job titles, and do not allow mental health teachers to serve as class teachers. Zhao Na said that this is very unfair to mental health teachers.
Li Yu (pseudonym), a mental health teacher at a high school in Henan, told reporters that in recent years, she has basically received the school's minimum wage, just because of the small number of classes and low class fees. "I've always seen myself as my biggest psychological support for students, but now I have more negative emotions than students."
Last year's year-end evaluation made Li Le (pseudonym), who had just become a full-time mental health teacher in a primary school in Jiangsu Province the year before, have the urge to escape, because the school divided him into an administrative teaching and auxiliary system for assessment. "At this stage, mental health teachers do not have a clear title evaluation system, although there is a call for separate title evaluation, but there are no specific requirements for class time, scientific research, consulting and other aspects of work, I don't know where my future goes."
In the investigation, the reporter also found that due to the lack of a sound and effective mental health education evaluation mechanism and a unified curriculum syllabus and teaching materials, some schools confuse ideological and political education with mental health education courses, and mental health courses are also occupied from time to time.
Even so, in interviews, many parents and even teachers of other subjects in the school used words such as "freedom", "leisure" and "relaxed" to describe mental health teachers, such stereotypes make many mental health teachers "bitter and unable to speak".
Ideology and concepts need to be changed
Assessment methods still need to be improved
In recent years, the mental health problems of minors have attracted more and more social attention. In order to further implement the prevention and treatment of adolescent depression, the Ministry of Education has previously clearly incorporated depression screening into student health examinations, and established student mental health files to assess students' mental health status, and pay special attention to students with abnormal assessment results.
Mental health teachers are an important part of promoting students' mental health, but many students in interviews said they had never consulted with a mental health teacher. A number of mental health teachers interviewed also pointed out that the psychological counseling rooms in some schools are not open.
The reason is that Zhao Na believes that in addition to the need to change people's ideas and concepts, the methods and methods of psychological assessment in schools also need to be improved. How to carry out mental health assessment for students in an appropriate way, how to effectively use the assessment results after the assessment, how to provide adequate counseling and diagnosis and treatment services for students, etc., are topics that need to be constantly explored for mental health teachers.
Wu Zizhi, a consulting expert at the Fujian Women's Federation Family Care Service Center, believes that the mental health of minors is getting more and more attention from all parties, but how to do the work meticulously is crucial, not only to detect problems in time, intervene early, but also to reduce the harm to minors in monitoring.
Liu Junjian said that the psychological assessment of minors may involve some ethical issues, and to ensure that the assessment does not harm the child, it is necessary to obtain the consent of the guardian, inform the guardian why the psychological assessment is done, what the psychological assessment includes, explain the process of psychological assessment, and the scope of use and management of the assessment results.
"Parents may be concerned that their children's privacy is not effectively protected, or that the results of the assessment will affect their children's opportunities to be evaluated and developed in school, and schools should give informed consent to understand parents' concerns and needs through communication, and respond to concerns." Liu Junjian said.
"We try to use machine learning to deeply mine the overall data of the national mental health database, hoping to make a more dimensional mental health monitoring tool." Chen Zhiyan, a professor at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and head of the National Mental Health Assessment and Development Center, said that some scale questions are indeed too long and the language is more complicated, such as the depression measurement tool for children and adolescents.
Liu Junjian believes that in the face of children of different ages, assessment tools cannot be "one-size-fits-all", for example, the current mental health assessment goals of different school age groups are also different, and reasonable assessment tools should be determined according to the assessment goals. If the preliminary assessment tools are scientific and the steps are standardized, it is necessary to ensure that the assessment itself will not bring harm to the students and the accuracy of the assessment results.
"Students are in the developmental stage, and psychological diagnoses often need to be based on continuous assessment, and they should not be easily labeled. The school's mental health teacher only makes a preliminary assessment and finds that the student may have a mental disorder, and should advise the guardian to take the student to a compliant medical institution for treatment. Liu Junjian said.
Equipped with strong professional teachers
Support for career development
In order to promote students' mental health work, the Ministry of Education and other 2023 departments recently jointly issued the "Special Action Plan for Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving Student Mental Health Work in the New Era (2025-1)", which requires mental health teachers. Each primary and secondary school shall have at least one full-time (part-time) mental health education teacher, and full-time mental health education teachers with a professional background in psychology are encouraged. It is estimated that by 2025, the proportion of schools equipped with full-time (part-time) mental health education teachers will reach 95%, and the proportion of family education guidance service sites that carry out mental health education will reach 60%.
Cai Hailong said that compared with full-time teachers in other disciplines, mental health teachers face a series of problems such as unclear development positioning, insufficient status and treatment guarantees, and unsmooth career development channels. In order to further promote the construction of the team of school mental health teachers, it is necessary to improve from three aspects: complete and professional mental health teachers; Vigorously improve the professionalism of mental health teachers; Strengthen support and safeguards for the professional development of mental health teachers.
"Education authorities and schools urgently need to work together to improve the development status of mental health teachers and provide the necessary support and guarantee for their professional development." Cai Hailong suggested that national and local education administrative departments should issue relevant policies in a timely manner, and give appropriate preference in the evaluation of professional titles, salaries and benefits, and evaluation and awards; Schools should make specific institutional arrangements in workload calculation and performance-based pay distribution; Localities with the capacity should also support and encourage the establishment of mental health education studios to achieve an overall improvement in the level of regional mental health education.
Liu Junjian suggested that in the Teachers Law, Education Law, Protection of Minors Law and other relevant laws and regulations, the content of the development of school mental health teachers should be included in it, and it is clear that mental health teachers should be scientifically allocated according to the school's teacher-student ratio, and the work of mental health teachers should be reasonably defined and distributed, and the support, training, supervision and other work for the development of mental health teachers should be clarified, so as to promote the benign development of mental health teachers, and ultimately better protect the mental health of minors.
(Rule of Law Daily)