Covid-19 accelerated a growth trend in student stress and anxiety that has led the United States to the current youth mental health pandemic. In 2020, a Yale study across all demographic groups revealed that 75% of high school students felt “tired, stressed, and bored” toward school. If students are spending most of their waking hours in this state, the rises in youth mental illness, criminal behavior, and overall lack of preparation for post-high school success should surprise no one.

Passion makes us feel more valued, connected and inspired, cultivating feelings of joy and emotional intelligence. Youth who complete high school with a strong sense of identity and passion are more likely to succeed in post-high school activities, whether they include post secondary education, immediate job placement, or launching a new business.

This shift toward youth passion, joy and positive feelings requires just 4 simple steps:

1) Guidance to help the student identify and hone their natural passion

2) Create the clear vision and strategy

3) Incorporate school work and activities into that vision and strategy

4) Walk a supported, detailed, and unwavering path to post-high school success

The Paradigm Shift

In the old paradigm, going to college was the dominant measure of high school success. Secondary schools boasted the percentage of students that were accepted to college, how much scholarship money was offered, and college prestige, based on national rankings. What schools didn’t discuss was their students’ passion and fulfillment with their high school experience and their mental wellness. Nor did high schools track the students’ well-being and success rates while in college. Rather, students were taught that happiness and passion will await them once they graduate college, get a good job and work until eligible for retirement.

The new paradigm shows that this ancient model is broken and explains why it drives the high level of disdain towards high school, which has led to our current youth mental health pandemic. Today’s youth are no longer sold on the idea of waiting until retirement to experience the joy, happiness, and passion that life has to offer. They want to experience it now. Many fear that the jobs they are preparing to fill will be replaced by AI or other societal landscape shifts. Even if they still exist, the idea of working at a job they don’t like until they eligible for retirement, as their parents did, is unappealing. They’ve watched their parents waste their lives working jobs they hate, then retiring with little vitality, joy, passion, or money to show for their efforts. Today’s youth want joy today and a system that deprives them of this joy is dictating the inner conflict that reveals itself as mental illness. Without rocking the establishment, PIE offers hope!

Background

According to CDC data, the United States is now in a mental health crisis. This trend existed prior to The COVID-19 pandemic, but has now worsened due to its significant, widespread, and long-lasting impact on mental health — especially among young people. In 2023, there were 49,316 United States suicides and it is the second leading cause fo death among those 10 - 34. When children want to take their own life during the years when they should be most exuberant, it means we are doing something fundamentally wrong as a society.

In the 1860, over 50% of Americans over 45 years old barely had any teeth left because they were never told to brush daily. Today, we are taught at a young age to brush twice per day, so many of us have original teeth into their 80s and 90s. Similarly, few of us are ever taught a daily maintenance practice for our mental health, yet we wonder how we’ve arrived at a mental health crisis.

At PBW, there are two steps to the daily maintenance practice:

1) Engage the student on a passion-based track to post secondary education, work or entrepreneusrship.

2) Ensure that EACH day includes at least a 30-minute immersion in music and sports

Our emotionally intelligent approach to mental health and well-being consulting that promotes this daily maintenance to increase youth mental wellness. Our mission is to empower parents to help their children increase their focus and find their passion for life by developing these valuable daily mental health skills.   We motivate parents to team with their children to pursue the realization of their potential whether the best fit is college or a direct career path after high school graduation.  It is through this pursuit that youth develop mental stability, joy, and self-worth by impacting those around them and generations that follow. We ensure that students’ unique experiences, ambitious goals, and authentic passions are the drivers in their day-to-day lives.

Research indicates that about 16% of our lives are spent at our jobs and this is what our schools devote nearly all of their focus.  Our mental wellness is most challenged through the remaining 84% of the time spent engaging in personal life experiences.  As students, we are rarely taught to manage personal emotions, relationships with others, and trauma, including:

• grief/heartbreak

• parenting/childhood

• sickness/emotional pain

• addiction

• life/death

• healthy views of politics, economics, spirituality

While our schools devote nearly all of their focus on the job preparation, HLN incubates student’s passions and take their interests to the next level, while learning to self-manage the personal life experiences that can derail even our most academically talented students.  This diminishes the quality of life of the student and their potential family and workplace impact.

HLN students aren’t just encouraged to do well in class.  They are guided on the importance of personal development, mental health and well-being.

Current Wellness system

• Must take a holistic and inclusive approach to mental wellness.

• There is a fine line between mental wellness and mental illness and society shifts back and forth regularly. When angry, we claim to be mad at someone, but we are just temporarily mad. Then, we come back to normal. When we don’t come back or stay too long, we are considered and treated as mentally ill.

• We spend little time working on the science of not getting mad in the first place. If mastered, we need concern ourselves less with getting stuck there and needing treatment.

• When we look at that things that cause us to become angry, we see that this is a managable phenomenon

• We justify anger as a normal and healthy emotion only because everyone does it and attempting to manage or eliminate it is unpopular

Awareness and Suicide Prevention campaigns do not address the root challenge of disease. However, this is not a cause to abandon standard treatment. In fact, they should be increased and we should express gratitude that the advancement of science has given humanity means to better manage and abort acute, life-threatening illness and emergency situations.

Alternative Trauma Management (ATM) is based upon viewing the unique character of each individual and seeking to improve their route to healthy functioning.  This approach emphasizes the understanding of past and current trauma (intergenerational, early childhood and recent/current) in all its manifestations: physical, mental and emotional.  A specific plan is devised to improve the weak linkages in an individual through a thorough analysis of their physiology, psychology and genealogy.  The core philosophy of alternative trauma management focuses on the self-healing aspects of the body.  HLN strives to assist this process with the use of research and training that support the whole person.

The goal of our practice is to help you rectify problems before trauma results in severe depression, anxiety, PTSD, or other mental health challenges occur.  Correcting and preventing dysfunction changes the path of degeneration during the life of the individual.  We attempt to prevent the degenerative spiral that is passed from generation to generation. This is a process that does not occur overnight and will demand dedication and long-term commitment.  HLN is here to assist you – not only for your future but the future of those yet to come.