By BETHANY DOANE
SWAMPSCOTT — Students’ psychological wellness will continue to be a top priority in the Swampscott Public School system.
To that end, a workshop on anxiety, “7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle,” in the Swampscott High School auditorium, with at least 80 parents and teachers in attendance, was hosted jointly Wednesday night by Swampscott’s Mental Health Task Force and the Glover School Parent Teacher Organization of Marblehead, and funded by the Swampscott Special Education Department.
Swampscott Public School’s Strategic Plan for 2016-2018 stated that the school system’s No. 1 precedence is to “create a learning environment that provides psychological safety through personnel, resources and support structure to help students experience emotional balance and personal academic success.”
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Psychotherapist and author, Lynn Lyons, LICSW discussed concrete strategies that parents and educators can use with children and teens to handle current anxiety and also to prevent the development of anxiety and depression later in life.
Now in her 27th year as a practicing psychotherapist, Lyons began her specialized work in adult anxiety disorders and then branched out to children and families. “I began working in the area of anxiety out of interest. It’s very treatable, and I like to fix things. And there aren’t a lot of people dealing with children and families together for anxiety,” Lyons said.
Anxiety is the No. 1 diagnosed mental illness in the United States. Additionally, 17- to 24-year-olds are the fastest growing group of depressed Americans. Untreated anxiety disorders in childhood results in depression in teenagers and adults.
Rather than attributing the disorder to the child alone, Lyons and her colleagues have found that there is a correlation between children with anxiety disorders and parents with anxiety disorders.
“Children living with a parent or parents who have an anxiety disorder are 60-75 percent more likely to develop an anxiety disorder themselves,” Lyons said. “Children raised by anxious parents see the world as more dangerous, and parents with young children in this day and age are part of the ‘worry generation.’ They’re very focused on equipping kids with resumes, and not focused on equipping kids to manage the failures of life, along with the successes.”
Lyons believes it is important for teachers and parents to reframe their mindset on how to best equip children to grow into emotionally healthy individuals. “We need to focus on how to get kids the tools they need to manage stress so that they have a cognitive flexibility to problem solve when things don’t go as planned,” Lyons said.
The Swampscott School District is willing to do its share in helping students learn to manage life’s emotional stressors. Two new programs geared toward coping with mental health disorders have also been implemented into the Swampscott School System.
The Swampscott Integrated for Transition (SWIFT) program is designed for students going back to school after absences due to medical illness, such as a mental health disorder. The Harbor Program is a special education program specifically for students with emotional disabilities.
Lyons says the schools’ efforts must be joined by the families. “Life is not a straight path, and the most important tool a person can have is the ability to adapt to the good and the bad, the expected and the unexpected, and that starts in the home as demonstrated by parents,” she said.