By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
Grade 6 students at Lennoxville Elementary School (LES) are addressing life’s big questions through art as part of a project aimed at supporting youth mental health.
Catherine Malboeuf-Hurtubise, a Bishop’s University professor and psychologist specializing in the intersection of child psychology, the arts, education and climate change, is part of the team coordinating the project through the Institut universitaire de première ligne en santé et services sociaux (IUPLSSS) and the CHUS research centre. She explained that the project has been running since 2019 and now covers several English- and French-medium elementary schools and nonprofits working with elementary-age students in Estrie, in the Laurentians and in the Montreal region. Phelps Helps in Stanstead also participates in the program.
Malboeuf-Hurtubise, whose research interests also include preventive care, explained that the workshops are aimed at preventing normal existential questions from giving rise to more serious mental health problems, by discussing such questions frankly and openly.
“Oftentimes as adults, we’re afraid to kind of dive into these questions, and we seem to be even more afraid when these questions come from kids – but everyone asks themselves existential
questions, right? They’re not the same questions if you’re four, if you’re 15 or if you’re 45, of course, but you still think about death [at any age],” she said. “Kids do ask themselves questions about existential issues, about life and death, about love, about climate change, and they don’t have the space to explore it. But if you don’t have the space to explore the questions you’re asking yourself, that’s where anxiety can come in. If you do have the space to express how you feel, it has a calming effect.”
She noted that exposing children to the arts or philosophical inquiry has been shown to decrease anxiety, improve mental health and foster self-determination and “the ability to act in accordance with your values.”
The weekly modules combine an artistic activity – drawing, sculpting, dancing, photography and building with Legos are popular choices – based on a philosophical issue, followed by a discussion centered around the artwork: “In the first half, we have kids create around a theme, and in the second half, we open up the dialogue.” One of the most popular activities, she noted, was having students create a self-portrait using Legos, as a jumping-off point for a discussion around identity. Teachers listen and join the discussions alongside their students, and students see that they aren’t the only person in the room wondering about climate change, for example.
Through feedback questionnaires submitted to students, Malboeuf-Hurtubise and her colleagues have seen that participants report feeling more at ease in school and building stronger bonds with their classmates.
If a student seems to be in deeper distress than their peers, she added, a teacher may be alerted, but the program isn’t aimed at diagnosing or treating mental illness. Students who already struggle with anxiety get a form of art therapy, and those who don’t get preventive support. “We want to equip them so that if they go through a more difficult phase, they have some tools to manage their emotions, to explore, identify, acknowledge and express them.”
She emphasized that experiencing existential anxiety does not necessarily mean a person is suffering from an anxiety disorder or another form of mental illness: “All emotions are part of life. All emotions have a function and a value.” Climate anxiety in particular “is not something we pathologize.”
In the long term, Malboeuf-Hurtubise said she hoped the program would give young people the tools to acknowledge and manage difficult emotions and decrease the stigma around mental health and around talking about mental health within families. “If we equip the kids today to explore existential issues, maybe once they’re parents, they’ll be able to accompany their kids through those stages. Today’s kids are tomorrow’s parents,” she said.
The Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) of which LES is a part, referred a request for comment to the CIUSSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS. No one from the Phelps Helps elementary school program was immediately available to comment on Thursday afternoon.