The widespread toll on children’s mental health is one of the most potentially damaging impacts the pandemic has had, actress Goldie Hawn told Axios in an interview.
- “We are dealing with a worldwide epidemic of mental illness,” Hawn said.
Driving the news: Nearly 20 years after founding MindUP for Life, an organization that has provided tools to help schools teach millions of children about brain health, Hawn announced this week that the organization has expanded to a digital platform.
- Called MindUP for Life Digital, Hawn said the pandemic has increased the need to scale the evidence-based program developed by neuroscientists and mental health professionals to teach children how to better deal with difficult emotions.
- Hawn said he has also been meeting with lawmakers to put money toward addressing the “public health emergency” of mental health needs in schools.
What she is saying: “It’s been thrown in our face now because of the pandemic. Now at least we can see it, now we can talk about it. But is it too late? We need prevention and we needed it before the pandemic,” Hawn said. . “And this is where we’re not doing it. Our classrooms should be filled with how you teach a child to be a healthy, happy human being.”
Here are some excerpts from what Hawn told Axios this week.
- On his involvement in children’s mental health treatment: “I don’t pretend to know all the answers… My philosophy is that I’m going to put one damn foot in front of the other and learn as much as I can so I can put as many things as possible.” smart people in the seat so we can change what we’re doing for kids.
- On the importance of children understanding their brain: “I always wanted it to be something with young children so that their brains would develop properly, so that they would understand the brain and how it works, how to calm down, how to self-regulate, how to recognize their emotions and also I know that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t behave very well when you’re upset or angry or insecure. All the things that happen to kids… the point is these kids know all of that now. And they’re seven years old.”
- On why mental health should be taught in schools: “Our children are going to inherit the world. Why aren’t we grooming them so that they have a much better ability to see a problem from 100,000 feet up rather than get bogged down in a problem?”
- In the larger image: “I see people who are scared, I see angry people on the road. I’ve never seen so many people speeding up and moving with so much anger. I mean, there’s so much uncertainty and fear that it’s creating polarity.” , is creating aggression. And I get it: everyone is angry. They’re shutting things down again. But you know what? We only live once and there’s a point where we have to look at this and say ‘We’re going to get through this together.
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