Design Opportunity
Suicidal ideation doesn’t happen overnight; people attempt suicide after much contemplation and pain. What we need to reduce suicide rate is to create social atmosphere where one recognizes symptoms of mental disorders and can seek out for help without fear and concern. In order to do that, it is crucial to educate citizens to have better understanding of the importance of mental health.
According to the recent research, more than 95% of the teachers and 84.1% of the students expressed the need for mental health education enhancing protective factors in school. Specifically, both teachers and students demanded the education about stress management, how to resolve conflicts in interpersonal relationships, management of mental disorders for students.
Current Korean education curriculum doesn’t talk enough about mental health. The mental health education was given a low priority among health education units in schools. Today’s Korean mental health education (which is lecture based) mainly focuses on suicide and/ or reducing risk factors of them and is done only one to two times in a semester. However, learning about suicide does not really prevent suicide attempts and incidents of self harm.
I thought there is definitely room for improvement to make the education more effective and came up with the conclusion that more effective mental health education should be done in order to normalize mental health care and de-stigmitize the mental disorder.
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