Demystifying the Mind

Deborah and Willie Binion awoke at 2 a.m. one spring morning to find their son, Jordie (as they affectionately call him), standing outside with his guitars strapped to his body, “waiting for Drake and Eminem to pick him up.” Jordan Binion hadn’t yet been diagnosed with a mental illness, but based on delusional episodes and other symptoms, his parents suspected he might have been developing schizophrenia. 

The Binions immediately sought help for Jordan, but they soon found that the mental health system was complicated and filled with barriers. Their son was hospitalized days after that early morning incident, but since Washington state privacy laws allowed people age 13 and older to make decisions about their mental health treatment, he left the facility within 24 hours of arrival. Due to a shortage of mental health professionals, his first scheduled psychiatric appointment wouldn’t happen for months.

He didn’t make it. Jordan took his own life the day before the appointment—six days after his 17th birthday. 

The time between Jordan’s first signs of distress and his untimely death was short and agonizing for his family. “It was the worst time of my life, other than his death—to watch your child suffer, to watch your child clearly not well, and so helpless,” Deborah Binion recounts. 

She and her husband turned their grief into a mission—the Jordan Binion Project. 

The Project Becomes A Movement

The Binions began by flooding Washington state high schools with a PowerPoint presentation that detailed Jordan’s story and the importance of seeking help for a mental health issue. They researched mental health curricula available in the United States and, after failing to identify anything suitable, introduced a set of evidence-based mental health education resources widely used in Canada. The curriculum focuses on maintaining mental health, understanding mental disorders and their treatments, and learning how to decrease stigma and build help-seeking skills. The project has reached at least 106 school districts in Washington and continues to offer free training for teachers across the state. 

Deborah and Willie are part of a movement to improve mental health literacy among young people. Lawmakers are also taking notice. Two states—New York and Virginia—recently passed legislation to add mental health education to existing curricula. In New York, the new law requires that mental health education is integrated at the elementary, middle and high school levels. The Virginia law requires the inclusion of mental health education in a health class for ninth- and 10th-graders. 

Mental health awareness and destigmatization campaigns have existed for decades, but mental health advocates stress that this education must begin earlier in life. Students grapple with multiple stressors—defining their identities, coping with conflicts that might be happening at home, pushing through social anxieties—all while meeting academic and behavioral expectations. As many as 1 in 5 children between the ages of 3 and 17 have a diagnosable mental, emotional or behavioral disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports that, in half of all lifetime cases, the onset of mental illness happens by age 14, and 75 percent of all chronic mental illness begins by age 24.

There is no sign that these figures are on the decline. According to the CDC, suicide rates increased by nearly 30 percent in the last two decades; suicide was the second-leading cause of death among young people in 2016. And between 2008 and 2015, the number of youth contemplating or attempting suicide almost doubled.

Setting An Example

Niagara Falls City School District (NFCS) has been recognized by the New York State Office of Mental Health for their work in systematically creating a culture that values mental wellness as much as physical health and academic achievement. Superintendent Mark Laurrie had been working on initiatives to improve mental health literacy even before state legislators passed the new law last summer.  

But the district goes beyond teaching about mental health; it has adopted a framework that promotes a continuum of wellness from pre-K3 through high school. Mental, social and emotional support are included in the health and wellness curriculum, alongside physical fitness, nutrition and healthy behaviors. An emphasis on the connection between mind and body is rooted in the climate of NFCS schools. Teachers are trained in “mental health first aid” so they know how to respond in a crisis.  

“If a student is thinking about something outside of school with their own mental or physical health or pregnancy or what have you, they have no focus or concentration on the Pythagorean theorem or the religions of Southeast Asia,” Laurrie says. “They could[n’t] care less about that. They’re thinking about what’s on their mind now.”

Part of NFCS push to integrate mental health education and provide support stems from responses it received from a 2015 CDC survey, which looked at risk behaviors of youth in their city. The survey revealed that more than 19 percent of students surveyed had contemplated suicide, while 10 percent had actually attempted suicide.

“It was very clear to me, based on a couple of the indicators, that we needed to make some major changes ... and add programming to not only support better mental health but better health education in general,” Laurrie says. “[T]hat really was the kick in the pants, so to speak, to say, ‘We’ve got to get going on this.’”

Christine Barstys, an English teacher at Niagara Falls High School, leads a team of teachers, guidance counselors, a school psychologist and peer leaders in a program called Sources of Strength. The grant-funded program, now in its third year at the school, seeks to prevent suicide. Barstys invites organizations such as YWCA and the Niagara County Mental Health Board to talk to her ninth-grade students.

In her classroom instruction, she uses texts as springboards for discussions about mental health. For example, in reviewing the book Speak—which deals with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicide—her class has an opportunity to delve into those issues.