A year ago, I wrote âThe Next Pandemic: Mental Healthâ for National Mental Health Month, published in May 2020 in EdSurge. We were two months into the pandemic in America and already early signs of a mental health crisis were emerging from isolation and trauma.
It is now time to update this piece for 2021. Because the reality is that we are not only experiencing a mental health pandemic; we now have a three-headed learning crisis consisting of mental health, empathy and creativity.
Our children are growing in precisely the opposite direction. They are less mentally healthy, less empathetic and less creative than they were at the beginning of the decade.