Docile Minds: Discursive Implications of Mental Health Policies Related to Young People in Ontario

Abstract

This study investigated how administrative interests impact understandings of youth mental health in Ontario’s public education system. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s model of Administrative Control as a theoretical framework and Norman Fairclough’s five-stage method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a research methodology, this report examined seven (7) policy documents released between 2011 and 2015. These documents include the Ontario secondary school Health and Physical Education curriculum document, two provincial policy documents, a report commissioned by an independent charitable organization, an online resource hosted by a children’s mental health centre, a report commissioned by a national non-profit organization, and a public school board implementation plan. Results of the study revealed a powerful underlying interest in Administrative Control that presents systemic barriers to the development of positive student mental health outcomes. Discursive constructions of youth mental health in Ontario were found to associate mental health with a set of adverse clinical outcomes to be monitored and reported. More specifically, existing discourses were found to (a) prioritize clinical approaches to addressing adverse individual outcomes over developmental approaches to promoting psychological resilience, (b) call for sweeping normalization, to promote simplistic notions of risk and protection, (c) discursively appropriate the concept of mental health through collectivization, and to exclude the role of challenge as a developmental tool. Instead, this study suggests that mental health should be reframed within the context of public education policies as an ongoing developmental process of adjustment to a range of environmental factors. Finally, this study recommends the application of psychological resilience, academic resilience, and academic buoyancy as underlying constructs in the development of future school mental health policies. This study contributes to ongoing discussions about the role of discourse in both reflecting and shaping mental health outcomes among young people in Ontario.