Joseph Meyer on Nostr: After becoming a parent of a child with serious mental illness and seeing him ...

After becoming a parent of a child with serious mental illness and seeing him struggle in school, I became interested in the academic success of students like my son. What I learned is that most students with serious mental illness never attend college. In fact, the US Department of Education reports that only 40% graduate from high school. Data regularly reported by public school officials, student responses to annual surveys by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and data from the National College Health Assessment survey show that mental illness as a category of disability is associated with a higher rate of student stress and dropout than any other type of disability. It makes sense, right? The brain is the most important organ for academic success and those with disabilities that interfere with correctly processing and interpreting information face a difficult challenge. And human biases that too frequently result in a tendency to judge and punish behavioral symptoms rather than accommodate them makes it even harder. (2/4)