Mental Health and Safety: Product Approaches to Pressing Issues Facing Students

A brand new decade brings with it many aspirational tones and resolutions. It is hard to pinpoint where the education sector might be looking to improve in the next decade, but when nearly one in three adolescents will be with an anxiety disorder by the age of 18 and spend an average of nine hours per day on digital entertainment, perhaps the most pressing intention is to enhance the mental wellbeing for all students.

Luckily, schools and teachers have slowly begun to address these concerns through positive shifts in mental health education-the practice of mindfulness being at the forefront of this attack. Concurrently, technology has offered quite a bit of hope in helping schools implement mental wellbeing initiatives through mindfulness applications.

With all of these changes and trends, what are the purported benefits and actual results of mental health training in a classroom setting? There remains plenty of skepticism around the return of investment on these programs in schools. Furthermore, how does technology play a role in increasing mindfulness practices? Although meditation, for example, is an ancient practice that is well over 3,000 years old, the implications technology has on it and the effectiveness therein remains unanswered.