Titel
‘Your now is not your forever’: Destigmatizing Mental Health through Young Adult Literature
Autor*in
Abstract
This article explores the importance of destigmatizing the topic of mental illness among young people, and the potential that lies in working with young adult literature to meaningfully contribute towards such destigmatization efforts in our language classrooms. According to the WHO, on average, every fifth adolescent in the world was already battling a serious mental health condition before 2020. With COVID-19 presenting an unforeseen challenge to most people’s mental well-being, it is not surprising that several studies around the globe now indicate an even further decline of mental health among our youth, a decline that frequently goes unnoticed and untreated for years, in part because mental illness still has a great deal of stigma attached to it, and many feel afraid to come forward. Although written from an immediate Austrian context (bearing in mind the specifics of an Austrian school setting), this article aims to carry wider implications for English language classrooms in other countries as well. It examines John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down (2017) for viable classroom discussion ideas and features a range of suggestions for practical classroom application that aim to help teachers interested in broaching the topic of mental health with their students.
Stichwort
mental health representationdestigmatizationyoung adult literaturelanguage classroomJohn GreenTurtles All the Way Down
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:1596586
Erschienen in
Titel
Children’s Literature in English Language Education
Band
9
Ausgabe
2
ISSN
2195-5212
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Publication
Nord University
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Zugänglichkeit
Rechte
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