Daniel Becker, a lecturer at the university of Münster, joined us to talk about mental health in ELT, a topic which has been largely neglected in research in our profession so far. He started off by talking about the current romanticisation of mental illness – a trend on social media in which mental illness is a character trait and provides emotional capital. However, he highlights that for all the posts which romanticise it, there are as many posts fiercely criticising these posts. He feels we can learn a lot about the place mental health has in current discourse – it’s more destigmatised now and teenagers will much more readily discuss their mental health in public. Unfortunately, research from WHO in 2021 identified that around 14% of teenagers suffer from some form of mental disorder, such as anxiety and depression. There was also a significant increase in teenage suicides over the past decade.
Improving Mental Health Education (or mental health literacy) is one step that experts are taking in order to raise public awareness around prevention, early intervention and treatment and say that schools need to fulfil an educational mission to support teenagers and their vulnerability to life stress.
EFL and Mental Health Education: some potentials
Daniel suggests there are four levels at which we can find potential to include MHE:
Linguistic level – the fact that interactions take place in a foreign language may help us to feel more comfortable discussing more difficult topics in an L2. We have a fundamentally different relationship to our L1 and have a much more emotional connection to it. The EFL classroom also tends to be a safe space for learners to speak.
Textual level – learning doesn’t happen in a cultural vacuum and we can introduce a variety of different texts, including young adult fiction which deal specifically with mental health. Daniel highlights texts such as 13 Reasons Why as a slice of teenage life which enables our learners to build empathy. Literature has the power to bring complex topics to the stage and provides access to them.
Cultural level – language teaching also involves the teaching of cultural competence and it’s important to recognise that in different cultural contexts, the topic of mental health may be addressed differently. Daniel talked about how our view of the world is a social construct and that how we approach mental health very much depends on our cultural background.
Discursive level – all the skills that we learn enable us to participate in discourse, both understanding and creating it. Daniel highlighted that this discursive level is quite an abstract concept but as an overall goal of the EFL classroom we should be discourse-able.
Current barriers to Mental Health Education in EFL
Daniel continued with an overview of three potential barriers:
Teacher level – if teachers feel uncomfortable with the topic, it’s likely that it won’t make it into the classroom. Teachers in a 2015 Canadian study identified that they felt ill-equipped to deal with mental health issues. This lack of knowledge and methodologies means that teachers are more likely to leave it out of the classroom rather than include it, feeling a lack of mental health literacy themselves. With the topic still be fairly stygmatised, many teachers might feel a risk of offending their students or evoking emotional conflict in students. You may not know who in the classroom has been affected by issues and it can be dangerous to trigger students, or the teacher themself – student and teacher wellbeing are important.
Material level – even if teachers want to include the topic in their classes, there may not be appropriate materials to do so. Most textbooks from established publishers don’t include mental health in any capacity. Some textbooks do make (explicit) reference to mental health. For example, Daniel shared an image from a book called Lighthouse 2 (2013) in which a character is dealing with her parents’ divorce and showing symptoms on the spectrum of depression, and a text from Camden Market 6 around bullying and feelings of anxiety stemming from it. An issue that he highlighted is that we don’t have experience of tasks which can accompany difficult topics to deal with them effectively.
Curricular level – mental health as a topic is there, yet not there, in German curricula guidelines. For example, they should be taught language of ‘expressing feelings, including happiness, sadness and mourning’; however, there is also the idea of the language teacher following principles of a global market framework and how the focus shifted from input to output in terms of meeting certain competency levels. Daniel asked whether the concept of an ideal intercultural communicator leaves any room to deal with particular topics.
Moving forward: solutions (?) and future directions
Daniel is optimistic that mental health will continue to grow in importance in EFL as there is already research being down in non-ELT contexts. He shared a blog which deal with tough topics and provide tasks and structure for potential lessons. He also mentioned research carried out by Hannah L. Weisman in which experts were invited to come to a school for a week-long programme to share their experience and expertise with a group of students. The students learnt about stigma and taboos and created posters to raise awareness. Although there are fewer EFL materials, there are other materials which could be adapted, such as Psych 2 Go which has short videos to improve mental health literacy. Daniel also shared the news that a group of adolescent students contacted one of their politicians highlighting the importance of the topic after witnessing friends and classmates dealing with mental health issues.
To finish, Daniel suggested that the EFL classroom is quite liminal – there is potential, but there are also a number of barriers. We can follow in the footsteps of Hannah L. Weisman and cooperate with mental health experts, or take courses to increase our own understanding of mental health.
Please feel free to share any links in the comments!
This is a course which I know a few Hub members have taken: https://betherecertificate.org/
Oh, and Michelle shared a link to Peter J Fullagar’s site as he writes materials on mental health: https://www.peterjfullagar.co.uk/