MT: Challenges Mentally Impaired Students Face in their School
MD: Mentally impaired students need more specialized attention to be able to go through the education system. However, many challenges hinder or stop them from going to school.
H1: Challenges Facing Mentally Impaired Students
Education is an important investment that any person can make, and adequate resources have to be availed to facilitate a smooth learning process. Unfortunately, this hasn’t always been the case, especially for the students who are mentally impaired and need specialized attention. These students are the most vulnerable and need more love, support, and encouragement. This love and attention is a positive reinforcement that helps ensure that they emerge with a strong sense of self-worth, confidence, and the determination to keep going, despite the circumstances. However, these students still face challenges both at school and at home during their studies. These challenges include:
- Community misconceptions and stigma
- Inferiority complex
- Lack of adequate opportunities
H2: Problems That Hinder them from Completing their Education
One of the biggest obstacles students with mental health problems face is the community misconceptions and stigmas. These students often encounter this problem both in their areas of residence and school environments. In the end, this leads to an attitude and behavior of isolation, neglect, abuse and marginalization, and discrimination. Students with mental challenges face difficulty coping with their peers and the society at large, who often under look them. Parents who have other who are normal at times neglect the impaired children, leaving them to their own devices. Studies that have been conducted in the past seemed to point to the immediate family members as perpetrators. Some of the parents and guardians will even hide and deny them their basic human rights, thinking that they are helpless.
Most of the challenges that children with mental health problems face while studying come from their immediate surroundings. This problem seems to be taking a toll on some of them, who feel inferior and think that they do not fit in the society. This is even visible from their loss of self-esteem, self-pity, as well as how some of them do not report abuses and other forms of human rights violations that are done to them. The worsening of the situation can be attributed to the service providers and the general public, who do not appreciate that these students have rights, just like normal people. The result is a lack of social networking skills, which make them even more miserable.
Compared to a normal student in the class, a child who has a mental disorder or any other special needs is up to ten times more likely to drop out of school and not pursue a career. Some of these students won’t even reach or complete their high school education. The enrollment rate in primary schools seems to be very low. Out of the 9% who attend school, only 6% will see through primary education and advance to high school, where the numbers will also drop.