Guest post by Seven Minutes In Candyland author Brian Wasson
Aside from being an author, Brian Wasson is a husband, father of two boys, and a high school English teacher, who’s learned much more from his students than they ever could’ve hoped to learn from him. Among his proudest classroom accomplishments is winning more than $5,000 through varied grants to put diverse young-adult books into his classroom.
His debut novel, Seven Minutes In Candyland, is slated to hit the shelves in the Fall of 2023. If you love candy, you’ll probably love the book. If you don’t, you’ll probably like it anyway.
During my freshman year of college, I lived in a high-rise dormitory with balconied walkways. In the fifth-floor suite next to mine lived a gregarious sophomore who I’ll call Stan for the sake of anonymity.
We never really talked about it, but Stan was an alcoholic. He studied hard and took to the bottle even harder, often spending late nights wandering the breezeway yammering about the troubles of the day.
Another thing I’ll remember about Stan is that he always gave great advice. Insightful, practical, thought-provoking advice. Stan truly embodied his status as a “sophomore,” a word that translates from the ancient Greek language as “soph” (wise) and “moros” (fool). He was a “wise fool.”
So is Kalvin, the protagonist in my debut, Seven Minutes in Candyland, who offers sage counsel to his high school peers in a tortuous effort to win over his longtime crush and save his parents’ marriage. You see, Kalvin gives great advice. He just struggles taking it.
Like Kalvin, there are plenty of wise fools in high school. I teach dozens every year. It’s both admirable and inspiring, the way they seek to support each other through the various crises of adolescence. But again, no matter the grade, they are all simply “sophomores.”
Our students need help. They need professional help—people who are trained, evaluated, and paid based on their ability to lend empathetic ears, consistent support, and research-based counseling to kids who were struggling even before the COVID pandemic unsettled their lives. In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association joined together to declare a national state of emergency in children’s mental health. Among other things, this declaration called for an increase in funding for mental health care as well as suicide prevention programs in school.[i].
According to the advocacy group Mental Health America, 15 percent of teens reported having at least one major depressive episode in 2021. Of those, only 27 percent received treatment[ii]. But depression isn’t the only concern. Add to that emotional, behavioral, and eating disorders, as well as and a grabbag of other issues that affect student well-being—up to and including suicide—and you start to see a bleak picture of today’s learning environment.
Unfortunately, these issues tend to fall on overworked and underappreciated school counselors, social workers and behavioral specialists. They are the academic version of Atlas, holding the world on their shoulders, lest that burden slip solely into the grasp of well-meaning but woefully unprepared students. We have this dogged and determined band of mental health workers, and they are wonderful. But honestly, we need an army.
I could reel off more insights and statistics, like the fact that children’s well-being is tightly correlated with academic achievement, or that promoting school mental health reduces violence and juvenile crime, or even that early intervention leads to better outcomes well beyond graduation[iii].
But I shouldn’t need to tell you that. All I should have to tell you is that these kids are deluged, like Kalvin. Overwhelmed by the sheer depth of their own problems and those of their peers, but trying mightily to fix them nonetheless.
At the end of his story, a thoroughly chastened and contrite Kalvin gets help. Thankfully, so did Stan.
I couple these two happily-ever-afters with an urgent admonition. We can prevent many of today’s kids from experiencing those same lows, but we must act while they’re young. They need the help of trained adults, who, in turn, need our help in the form of more funding, reinforcements, and overall gratitude. COVID may be waning in our minds, but we can’t be so smug that we fail to recognize the mental health epidemic growing right before our eyes. To dismiss this would make us wise fools, as well.
Citations
[i]“AAP-AACAP-CHA Declaration of a National Emergency in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.” American Academy of Pediatrics, 19 Oct. 2021.
[ii]Reinert, M, Fritze, D. & Nguyen, T. (October 2021). “The State of Mental Health in America 2022” Mental Health America, Alexandria VA.
[iii]Mental Health in Schools: A manual. Cairo: WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean; 2021.
