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Those familiar with these Blog pages will recall that on 31st March 2014 I had posted a Blog under the title of The Suffering Generation: The University Student Mental Health Crisis . There I had noted that “the number of students on university and college campuses that are struggling with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and psychosis all across the world is rising. This intensification of students’ psychological needs has become a mental health crisis. The age at which many mental disorders manifest themselves is between 18 and 24, which coincides directly with the average age of student enrolment in higher education. Moreover, it is also noted that psychological disorders that students are being treated for while studying in higher education are increasing in severity. Adolescent suicide rates have tripled over the past 60 years, making suicide the second leading cause of death for that age group.”
Since that Blog I have had so many good feed-backs and ideas already. One, in particular, has touched my heart. Thus, I wish to share it with you. Believe me, you will love it too.
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'Nine in 10 first year students say they find it difficult to cope with social or academic aspects of university life.'
Photo:futurity.org
As studies after studies are demonstrating, the number of students on university and college campuses that are struggling with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and psychosis all across the world is rising. This intensification of students’ psychological needs has become a mental health crisis. The age at which many mental disorders manifest themselves is between 18 and 24, which coincides directly with the average age of student enrolment in higher education. Moreover, it is also noted that psychological disorders that students are being treated for while studying in higher education are increasing in severity. Adolescent suicide rates have tripled over the past 60 years, making suicide the second leading cause of death for that age group.
Furthermore, as noted in the Guardian today (31 March 2014) “They tell you that university will be the best days of your life. What they don't tell you is that many students suffer from mental health issues.
Leaving home and starting university can make existing problems worse or trigger new issues, from depression and anxiety to eating disorders.
Mental health is the side of university life that stays behind closed doors. It's increasingly common though. Last year it was announced that the number of university students seeking counselling rose by 33%. In a report by the National Union of Students 20% of students consider themselves to have a mental health problem.”
Given this tragedy, I am most humbled that in January 2011 I wrote an article addressing exactly the same issue as I have noted above:
Why Happiness Should be Taught at Our Universities?
There I had noted that:
‘…I believe that our education in universities is fundamentally ill-balanced. Of course exams matter greatly - they are the passport to an individual's future work and career. A university which fails to let every student achieve the best grades and results of which their students are capable of is failing to do its job properly. But education is far more than this. It is far more than grades and percentages here and there.
As a university lecturer with many years of experience, I have seen far too many tortured and unhappy students who have achieved very high grades. If they can achieve these grades while leading balanced lives, taking part in a wide variety of activities which will develop different facets of their character, and if they blossom as happy and contented human beings, then all is well and good. But as any teacher will know, this isn't always the case with high achievers. Neither is it with high achievers in life. These driven people see their lives flash by in fast living and fast cars, and most fail to realise they are missing the point of life. Is it more important to be highly “successful”, or to be a respected colleague and a valued friend, and a loving parent whose children grow up in a secure environment in which they know they are valued and treasured? I have had to learn the hard way myself, the answers are obvious. Hence the need to teach happiness while at schools and universities.
Universities should seriously consider developing courses and modules which are about emotional learning and emotional intelligence, which by definition are far more reflective activity than traditional classes. Students should learn about how to form healthy and sustaining relationships. They should gain understanding about the goals they should want to set in life, which should be realistic and appropriate for their own talents and interests. The negative emotions which are an inevitable part of life should be explored: students should be able to learn more about what it is that causes them pain and unhappiness, how they might be able to avoid or minimise these emotions and how to deal with them when they do occur. So the essence is that students learn more about themselves, which will be information that they will be able to use for the rest of their lives.
Today the university students lead a very destructively competitive life, which is all about the highest grades, finding the best jobs, the one that gives them more, the best position, highest bonuses, etc. It is all about the best, the most, the highest, and all measured in monetary terms. This is for all practical reasons a rat race. Here we can, if we ever needed to, see why we need courses in happiness and well-being, inner peace and contentment. A pertinent question at this time is: “How can we dampen the impact of the rat race?”. We have to start from human nature as it is, but we can also affect values and behaviour through the signals our institutions send out. An explicit focus on happiness would change attitudes to many aspects of policy, including in education and training, regional policy and performance-related pay, the dreaded and destructive bonus-inspired culture that has made money the main measurement of success and happiness.
The goal should be to help our students lead happier lives, not in the sense of experiencing pleasure - of moving from one immediate gratification to the next - but in the sense of leading a meaningful and fulfilling life, of flourishing emotionally, spiritually and intellectually.
Education can be informative or transformative. Information may “educate” the students, but to transform, in contrast, is all about changing the way students perceive the world and interpret the “information” that they receive in their lectures. Today our universities by-and-large are all about the information and not much about transformation. This must change. To help students lead fulfilling lives, information is necessary, but not sufficient.
These courses should remind the students that “Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness, therefore, is not about making it to the peak of the mountain, nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain: happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak”. They should be encouraged to discover the beauty and the wisdom of happiness, self-esteem, empathy, sympathy, friendship, humility, love, kindness, generosity, tolerance, service, altruism, creativity, nature, music, literature, poetry, spirituality, and humor.
What is the purpose of university if not to prepare its graduates for a life beyond? It is not only at university that personal difficulties arise. Most of us have had to cope in our lives with professional rejections, breakdowns of relationships, bereavements and periods of depression. These are all part of life. I wish our universities can communicate more effectively with the students that money, fame and worldly success do not necessarily lead to happy and fulfilled lives.
I would like to see all universities within the next few years begin to teach courses on happiness and what it means to be happy. I do believe that by taking the subject seriously, universities will not only be doing a much better job morally for their students, but they will also help produce young men and women who will help to build a far better society than their parents did. This is a real challenge and it is one to which I believe all universities should rise.’…
Today, I ask all the people of good will, my academic colleagues and others all over the world, please let us come together for the common good. Let us come together and address this crisis. Those who are suffering, for all practical purposes, can be our children and grand children.
This matter requires our urgent attention. Please write to me and share your vision, ideas and suggested remedies with me. I will then, compile a report to include all responses that I have received for further studies and analysis.
The youth, all over the world, deserve better. Please let us come together and give all the love we have to the next generation of leaders, our best hope for a better future and a better world.
Contact me by sending email to k.mofid@gcgi.info
Kamran Mofid
Read more:
An Open Letter to University Leaders: Students’ Mental and Emotional Wellbeing Must Be Our Priority
Why Happiness Should be Taught at Our Universities?
Students: share your stories of mental health at university | Education | theguardian.com
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Remembering the Spirit of Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940. She was the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which, through networks of rural women, has planted 40 million trees across Kenya since 1977. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya’s Parliament in the first free elections in a generation, and in 2003, she was appointed Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, a post she held until 2007, when she left the government. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, Matthai was honoured around the world for her work, including an appointment to the Legion d’Honneur by France and the Order of the Rising Sun by Japan. As well as her well known book- Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World- she was the author of two previous books: The Green Belt Movement and Unbowed, a memoir, and she regularly gave lectures to organizations around the world. Professor Maathai died on 25 September 2011 at the age of 71 after a battle with ovarian cancer
An impassioned call to heal the wounds of our planet and ourselves through the tenets of our spiritual traditions, from a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World
Photo: betterworldbooks.com
It is so easy, in our modern world, to feel disconnected from the physical earth. Despite dire warnings and escalating concern over the state of our planet, many people feel out of touch with the natural world. Wangari Maathai spent decades working with the Green Belt Movement to help women in rural Kenya plant—and sustain—millions of trees. With their hands in the dirt, these women often find themselves empowered and “at home” in a way they never did before. Maathai wanted to impart that feeling to everyone and believed that the key lies in traditional spiritual values: love for the environment, self-betterment, gratitude and respect, and a commitment to service. While educated in the Christian tradition, Maathai drew inspiration from many faiths, celebrating the Jewish mandate tikkun olam (“repair the world”) and renewing the Japanese term mottainai (“don’t waste”). Through rededication to these values, she believed that, we might finally bring about healing for ourselves and the earth.
"We've become detached from nature," Maathai once remarked. "And as you move away from nature, you become lost."
"I didn't think digging holes and mobilizing communities to protect or restore the trees, forests, watersheds, soil or habitat for wildlife that surrounded them was spiritual work," Maathai remaked.
But over time, her feelings changed. She found what was driving those who joined the Green Belt Movement — and in time, what was driving Maathai herself — wasn't just about fixing material needs. It was about meeting something intangible within people. The poisoning of the earth, the destruction of the forest — Maathai came to believe that human beings could feel these losses. "If we live in an environment that's wounded — where the water is polluted, the air is filled with soot and fumes, the food is contaminated with heavy metals and plastic residues, or the soil is practically dust — it hurts us, chipping away at our health and creating injuries at a physical, psychological and spiritual level," Maathai noted. "In degrading the environment, therefore, we degrade ourselves."
Maathai came to understand, however, that the opposite is true as well. As we work to heal the earth, we heal ourselves as well. There's even an emerging field of treatment behind this — "eco-therapists" have begun prescribing nature walks and time spent outdoors for the depressed. The challenge is that we're growing more and more divorced from nature. Today more than half of the world's population now lives in cities, and even Maathai's largely rural Africa is becoming more and more urbanized, and more and more industrialized. "In Africa, we're busy trying to catch up with the West and live the same kind of life that we see on TV," said Maathai. "But we end up destroying the environment to get the things that we perceive as development."
Maathai was right when she pointed out that we can't forgo the natural connection that we feel for nature, even if we are becoming an urban animal. "A certain tree, forest or mountain itself may not be holy, [but] the life-sustaining services it provides — the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink — are what make existence possible," she wrote. "The environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself."
Wangari Maathai passed away on 25 September 2011, at the Nairobi hospital, after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer. She left us too soon. But her legacy is the light that guides our path to build a better world for generations to come.
Her tireless work for a better and sustainable world could be the "simple solution" of faith, strength, wisdom and persistence needed to surmount the escalating challenges of super storms, droughts and other natural disasters of our ever-changing world.
As we mourn the loss of such an important African heroine, let us also celebrate her life and her contributions as we remember five quotes she left behind as seeds for change:
“My heart is in the land and women I came from.”
“African women in general need to know that it’s okay for them to be the way they are – to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.”
“We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind.” “All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it’s the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet – at least everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet.”
“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own.”
The Passing of a Humming Bird – A Tribute To Prof. Wangari Muta Maathai by the Kenyan poet Mburu Kamau
The bird hummed where eagles feared,
Sang the taboo words,
Tuned to the emancipation of masses,
With an ecstatic difference.
She walked where angels feared,
Talked the language of the voiceless,
When the breeze blew against all odds
And put on a brave march.
As the dawn for our liberation – the Second Birth,
She stood for the truth, with fearless attitude,
And earned a viper’s wrath.
The bird lifted the land high above,
When she held the coveted prize,
For the quest in restoring our dignity,
And we all shouted in her praise.
She fought for you, me and us,
And made us proud,
Our future was restored,
At last, as it ignites our heritage.
Then the wind blew so hard,
That it was too difficult to steer,
Or perch on the nearest tree.
The wing could not move further,
And the sun finally rested on her,
Before, just before the dawn.
The daughter of the African cause,
The tigress that pounces,
The mother of restoring our dashed hope,
The fertility of the land,
The peace beacon of Kenya, Africa, the earth.
Rest in peace,
Prof. Wangari Muta Maathai
Sources consulted for this Blog:
Our History | The Green Belt Movement
Wangari Maathai: Spiritual Environmentalism—Healing Ourselves by Replenishing the Earth
Watch the video:
PRINCE CHARLES HONOURS WANGARI MAATHAI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT6RmcRPlOE
Read more:
Mother Earth is Crying: A Path to Spiritual Ecology and Sustainability
Visions of a New Earth: Responding to the Ecological Challenge- The Report