There is increasing talk of the marginal use of psychostimulants in academic settings. I find it insulting to see health and education professionals say they are “shocked” by the situation. The general population has never cried for help so loudly in terms of mental health. Children, teenagers and students are the scapegoats for this upward slope towards completely unrealistic levels of performance.
Students, including myself, have to constantly do violence to themselves to have a chance of accessing the desired profession and they have very few tools. We must fight to study and help our community, between the cost of living which increases, the health resources which are constantly depleted and the mental health disorders which have become commonplace. Who, exactly, still believes that shortcomings are explained by a lack of discipline, a problem of concentration or personality traits?
We always talk about money
Health and education resources are scarce and do not meet demand. It’s no longer great news, everyone knows it, everyone feels it. Quebec is in a situation where health and education professionals leave in burn-out and those who take care of absentees are simply on the way to exhaustion in turn…
Yes, part of the problem is the scarcity of resources, but in my opinion, the biggest part of the problem is how we train and use those resources. If we are 300 students motivated to enter the baccalaureate and only 12 to access graduate studies, what do we do with the 288 students highly trained in intervention and mental health? Above all, what exact objective are we pursuing by granting as much value and virtue to certain professions and less to others? This completely outdated hierarchy bothers me.
It is this teaching structure that is not renewed that forces very competent people, dedicated people, to limit themselves in the exploration of their skills because they do not have the tools and the resources to perform. It is the scales, demands and balance we place on mental health and well-being that need to be reviewed. It is no longer a question of politics: this question is one of subsistence, it is a question of society.
Am I really the only one who finds it completely inadequate to see psychology students sacrificing their sleep, their mental health, their physical health, the very people who will advise their patients to respect themselves, to adopt a less stressful living environment, etc. This is what happens when access to higher education becomes increasingly elitist, forcing us to focus on our grades and not on our learning.
All this while leaving us so little room to stop and take the time to be at peace, to be serene, to have a beneficial distance from our process, our choices, our interests. What kind of professionals will we be if what we are taught resides only between the pages of the DSM and we completely lose the ability to connect with our own resilience and limitations?
I will end by saying that I believe it takes being disconnected to think that in the absence of resource equity in our society, it will one day be possible to fully enjoy the pearls among us who have not had the means of accessing a so-called “socially” acceptable education.
Whether it’s panic attacks, exhaustion, dangerous behaviors, eating disorders, taking substances… By now, we’ve all made ourselves sick… Why? For a paper that proves our knowledge even if, without it, it still exists.