Parents, Teachers, and Mental Health

Anyone who teaches others, including parents, can benefit from reading this book. Teachers play a pivotal role in the education of children and adults. There are basic principles of living that could be taught in the classroom that would not take much time from teachers; in fact, I expect that because these concepts will reduce conflict, doing so may well give teachers more time to teach. This book is not about what teachers should teach but about how the way they teach can make major differences in their students’ lives.

In my practice of psychiatry—child, adolescent, and adult—I find daily that I must teach children and parents things they should have been learning from about age five. Because they are not getting this information, they make mistakes that they likely would not otherwise have made in addressing the problems of life.

It has always been my point of view that a lot people’s problems are related to not knowing how to get outcomes different from, or better than, the ones they are experiencing. I look first at what is missing in their approach to the problems they are having rather than seeing the problem as a psychiatric diagnosis. Unfortunately, to have insurance pay for visits, a doctor must frame the patient’s issue in a way the insurer will accept. In my experience, when given a few ideas or concepts related to the problems they are having, people will go forth and solve them.

This book is about the things teachers can do in the process of teaching to help individuals not create psychiatric problems for themselves. After all, if we do not create a problem, we do not have to solve the problem, which translates into a conservation of energy on all fronts.