O.I.L.S. and Mental Wellness Care

My focus in 2024 as a professional in this field is to move forward in preventing mental health issues and promoting wellness. I have an innovative two-pronged approach to promoting mental wellness thru a school-based plan (OILS – Operation I Like School) that focuses on how children feel about school (wanting to go to school) and by promoting mental wellness in health care by encouraging every child/young person under 25 to have an established mental health provider with two check-ins per year.

We need to flip our mission to promoting mental wellness. Our current model of addressing the mental health crisis is equivalent to trying to stop a boulder from rolling down a large hill once it is halfway down. We really need to be stopping the boulder long before it reaches the crest of the hill. This is where prevention comes in and is critical to moving forward.

In schools, which is where the kids are for 35 plus of their waking hours, we can promote contentment and mental wellness. Children and teens largely do not endorse that they like school or even want to attend. We can change that with the mission to increase flexibility, freedom, and choice at school. We can make children feel heard by gathering the data at schools for: How much do children/teens like school? How much do they want to go to school? What could schools be doing differently that would make them happier about attending?

In healthcare we need to flip the model to a Mental Wellness Model like a Dental Wellness model that includes two visits per year (ages 0-25). This would go far to prevent problems and help establish care so if something in mental health did come up there would not be a waiting list of a year to address an issue. Although I anticipate pushback on this plan because there is already a crisis and a shortage of mental health providers, I propose that it would be better to focus our resources on preventing forest fires rather than focus all our resources on fighting a raging fire out west that has no hope of going out until the weather shifts.

If prevention and wellness were the focus, eventually the need for crisis intervention and the number of mental health providers would decrease. And boy would I change in a heartbeat to working as a baker or something if all the children, teens, and young people were happy, learning, and did not need my help. :)