Mind-Body-Spirit Integrated Healing Expert Dr Chris O'Banye's Institute Of Wellness & Integrated Healing

The cable channel MSNBC started this past weekend a month long discussion on crisis of education in our schools and ways to improve the ever falling grades of our youth. The problem with the discussion is that participants continue talk academic mambo jumbo and ignore to address the big elephant in the room. Just as it’s the case most of the time with most debates on some of our nation’s crisis, participating groups tend to address issues that benefit their special interest groups and constituents. What most of the time never get to be addressed are the real issues of the people involved. In this case the root of our youth’s failing grade and the fundamental relationship of the problems to poor outcome of our education system.

The big elephant in the room that every group overlooks or avoids to address is the fact that over 75% of our youth ages ten to seventeen are either dependant on drugs or are abusing substance/s. This is a conservative number bases on my data working with youths for over a decade now. This number also comes from recent revelation by the youths who came into State’s residential treatment Center I also currently work in. Majority of these kids revealed that eight of ten kids in their various schools are addicted to one and in many cases multiple substances or chemical.

Few years ago, when I helped opened the very first Children (ages 10-17) Crisis Unit in the state of Oklahoma, chemical dependence and substance abuse was related in 8 out of 10 kids admitted for crisis stabilization. 9 out of 10 these kids admitted disliked school and had failing grades or had been kicked out of school for disruptive behavior and in some cases possession of chemical. Almost every single one of the kids has discipline and disruptive behavior issues. Many of these children simply go to school for socialization. A good number of them go to school not to learn anything but to trade and sell drugs by their own admission.

Here is the tragedy of the drug epidemic among our youth. The ten year old kids I worked with few years ago are in treatment with me today as older kids. They are still not making good grades; do not like school or had been kicked out of schools and absolutely have minimal plans for the future. They maintain an average of eight weeks of sobriety after treatment before they were back again to the revolving doors of co-occurring treatment Centers.

One can make a valid case that the following issues need to be addressed—updating and upgrading current curriculums in our schools to meet today’s academic needs; integrated behavior training for teachers; more structured classroom environment; and accountabilities for teacher, school administrators, students and parents.

However, all of these measures would be simply academic if students are coming to school drunk and have drugs-altered brains, in addition to a mindset that school is not important. The class of street chemicals and substances these young people are addicted to and abusing alters and degrades their brain functioning. Their addiction and addictive behaviors make it difficult for them to focus on schoolwork. These drugs induce high risk and explosive behaviors in these kids. The negative attitude and disruptive behaviors these students bring to school creates serious difficulties for classroom teachers and school administrators maintaining structure and safety.

This generation is in trouble. The future of this country is in danger. This is not the time to play politics, cast blames and cater to special interest groups who are primarily interested in imposing their special interest and political agendas on school districts. If this nation is interested in improving the quality of outcome of education and test scores of our children, we must solve the problem of drugs epidemic in our school and neighborhoods.

How can this nation look herself in the eyes of her soul and not save our young people? How can we spend billions of our tax dollars building nations that do not care about us and ignore the crisis of our own children and their future?  Most of our treatment programs are inadequate because clinicians are looking at old problems with the same set of eyes, in addition to serious states and federal budget cuts.

We can no longer look at this epidemic of chemical addiction among our youth, and how it affects their overall life with the same sets of eyes we did several years ago. We must bring a comprehensive and integrated approach to these issues. I have been calling attention to these issues for some time now. I will continue to call attention to it and continue to advocate for our children. I will talk to anyone and everyone genuinely interested in the future of these children. Now is the time. This problem cannot wait anymore.

By Dr Chris O’Banye

http://www.Internationalinstituteforwellnessandintegratedhealing.com

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