Swedish schoolchildren's declining academic performance, demonstrated in, for example PISA survey, may partly explain their low mental wellbeing, writes four pediatricians related to school health, the debate site in the Daily News today. How children feel physically affects how they cope with school, believes the debaters and refer to the WHO's latest compilation of how Swedish teenagers are far down among OECD countries in terms of self-perceived mental health.
As schoolchildren the opportunity to see a doctor within the school health for a qualified medical assessment of their psychological symptoms, cropped hard, caught the kids not in a sufficiently early stage. Mental illness often takes physical expression at first, in the form of stomach ache, headache and so on. With school doctors who actively participate in health checks, the problems would be detected and even children with neuropsychiatric symptoms could be found at an earlier stage. "Sweden is probably the only country where the welfare of the general medical checkups of children have been abolished after 18 months of age," writes the debaters.
The four doctors require a statutory health care guarantee which would allow all children to do at least once during their school years to meet a school doctor for a health check. They also believe that children with symptoms of kropplig or mental illness should have a guaranteed right to consult a school doctor in the care guarantee - one month.
DN-debaters are Joseph Milerad, school consultant and associate professor at the Karolinska Institute; Carl Lindgren, a pediatrician; Cecilia Renman, a former school nurse consultant and Olle Söder, a pediatrician and professor at Karolinska Institutet.
No comments:
Post a Comment