Module 1
Where Does Mental Health Come From?Outcomes
After completing this module, participants will be able to...Key Concepts
- Build and support nurturing relationships to promote healthy social and emotional development;
- Develop strategies to promote resiliency within Head Start children, families, and communities; and
- Define mental health as a positive attribute rather than as the absence of mental illness.
Mental health is a positive state, not just the absence of mental illness. Head Start fosters mental health by promoting the healthy social and emotional development of every child, family, and staff person.
Building respectful, responsive, supportive relationships with children, families, staff, and co-workers is a critical skill in promoting mental health.
Some common characteristics of mentally healthy people include:
curiosity, optimism, self-confidence, ability to exercise developmentally appropriate self-control, ability to cope with frustration and solve problems, and the ability to form meaningful relationships with others. Some common characteristics of mentally healthy families include: adults are in charge, children feel they belong, it is safe to express feelings and needs, change is expected, and sources of help and support are used when necessary. Head Start works to instill and confirm these qualities.Resilience is the ability to succeed despite adversity and challenges. Head Start supports qualities in children, families, and communities that encourage resiliency and healthy social and emotional development in every child.
Definition: Resiliency- The ability to recover readily or "bounce back" from adversity and stressful events.
A. Where Does Mental Health Come From?
Each child comes into the world wanting to connect with others, to grow, and to explore. Social development (our feelings about and expectations of relationships with others) and emotional development (our feelings about and expectations of ourselves) take place in the context of relationships from the very start. Newborn infants enter the world ready to be responsive and active partners with the most important people in their lives: family and other primary caregivers. As infants grow and come to know and trust the small day-to-day interactions that make up those relationships, they learn that they can affect the world and are worthy of love. The child's feelings of security, confidence, and trust blossom.
These early relationships are the foundation of continued mental health and will have a profound affect on how children come to view themselves and what they expect of other people and the world. A child who has had the positive relationships and experiences that allow emotional and social development to flourish will come to Head Start and subsequent new experiences ready to learn and grow.
B.What Does Mental Health Look Like?
There are individual, family, and cultural variations in how someone who is mentally healthy feels and behaves. While there is no one definition of mental health, and while many roads can lead there, mentally healthy young children display the following characteristics':
Families, like the individuals within them, display characteristics of healthy social and emotional functioning. The mental health and development of a family is more than the sum of the mental health of the individuals within it. Mentally healthy families display a great deal of diversity, but tend to share the following characteristics:
- capacity for warm, trusting relationships with other children and adults
- positive self-esteem: a feeling that they can be effective and make things happen in the world
- developmentally appropriate control of impulses and behavior; a progressively developing ability to handle assertiveness, curiosity, and anger according to the norms of society, the peer group, and the particular setting (e.g., Head Start, playground, home)
- progressively increasing ability to express needs, feelings, and ideas with words
- beginnings of empathy and compassion for others; deals (in a developmentally appropriate way) with loss and limitations
- acquiring the skills to concentrate, focus, and plan as a basis for learning
The nature of the relationships a child has may be the single most important factor in her emerging sense of self. Also important, however, are the unique qualities that the child brings to the relationship, for example, physical characteristics, temperament, and individual life experiences that shape expectations. As much as we would like to, we cannot guarantee that a child will have only positive experiences. All children and families will face stressful circumstances and events. Fortunately, we can support the development of families, schools, and communities that encourage resiliency in our children to increase the likelihood that they will rebound from stressful experiences.
- Adults are in charge-adult family members are leaders and models; they make and gently, but firmly, enforce family rules. When parents are a couple, they value and protect their relationship in the face of the demands of life and parenting.
- Children feel valued and as though they belong-children have opportunities to participate and contribute to family life and are encouraged to spend time with and share meaningful talk with important adults.
- Communication is clear and negotiation is fair-family members are encouraged to express how they feel and say what they need.
- Change is expected.
- Outside help is used when necessary.
C. What Is Resiliency and How Does Head Start Build It?
Resilience is the ability to recover readily or "bounce back" from adversity and stressful events. Researchers have found that resilient children and their families share certain qualities which seem to help protect them from the damaging effects of negative life circumstances and events. A resiliency approach to supporting children and families focuses on developing and confirming those protective factors.
Historically, a great deal of research about vulnerable children and families has come from a "risk" approach. Researchers begin by identifying a group of people who share a "problem"- for example, substance abuse or juvenile delinquency-and ask... "What early experiences does this group of people have in common?" These researchers then consider those common experiences to be "risk factors" that increase the likelihood of a problem occurring. Identified risk factors can be used to help target limited resources and direct support where it is most needed. The limitation of this approach is the focus on what goes wrong, instead of what goes right.
A more positive, strength-based perspective is the resiliency approach. Resiliency researchers have looked at very young children who share certain vulnerabilities, for example, low birth weight or very low-income families, and studied these children over a period of time. They have discovered (and we know) that not all children who share the same risk factors end up developing problems later in life.
Resiliency researchers ask: "Of this vulnerable group, what do the children who succeed have in common? What are the characteristics or protective factors that have helped these children succeed in spite of their vulnerability and/or negative life events?"
The answers to these questions point to "protective factors" or qualities that resilient children share. These factors can be at the level of the individual child, at the level of the family, and at the level of the school and larger community. Every child, no matter how resilient, can develop problems. The more risk factors and negative life events a child has to deal with, the greater the threat to that child's well-being.
The resiliency approach is a hopeful and empowering one because it sets forth a road map for promoting positive results. If we, as parents and Head Start staff, expect to prevent all our children's negative life circumstances and experiences, we will often feel as though we have failed. We can not always control these things. If we focus on how we can build and support protective factors for the individual child, for families, and for our schools and communities, we are focusing on giving children tools to successfully cope with difficulties.
"As long as the balance between stressful life events and protective factors is favorable, successful adaptation is possible. However, when stressful life events outweigh the protective factors, even the most resilient child can develop problems. Intervention may thus be conceived as an attempt to shift the balance from vulnerability to resilience, either by decreasing exposure to risk factors and stressful life events, or by increasing the number of available protective factors (e.g., competencies and sources of support in the lives of vulnerable children). "
Throughout this guide, we will explore how Head Start can reduce risk and encourage resiliency by supporting protective factors in individual children, in families, and in the institutions that make up the larger community.
Questions for Discussion/Reflection
- Reflect on those children and families who are your program's Head Start success stories.
- Are there characteristics that these children and families have in common?
- What strengths and experiences did these children and families bring to Head Start?
- Review the characteristics of mental health in young children listed on page 6.
- What do Head Start staff members do every day that contributes to the development and support of these characteristics?
- What would you do to promote these characteristics in an infant care room? A toddler room? A preschool room for three-to-five year olds?
- Review the characteristics of mental health in families listed on page 7.
- What do Head Start staff members do that contributes to the development and support of these family characteristics?
Handout A Activity 1-1 Handout B-1 Activity 1-2 Handout B-2 Activity 1-3 Handout B-3 Next Step Module 2 Index
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