I am a grade 9 Ontario student advocating for mental health education to reflect current scientific understanding of the brain. Mental and emotional health are often taught through coping strategies, resilience and well-being, but without explaining the brain and biological systems underlying them. As a result, mental health is treated as emotional or behavioural rather than physical and biological, even though mood, stress, attention, and emotional regulation are controlled by brain function, which leaves students without a clear framework when suggested strategies are not effective.

The curriculum also treats mental health, mental illness, and stress as distinct concepts without explaining the neurological systems that connect them, which often reduces mental health to how an individual feels at a given time. This framing relies on vague terms like "poor mental health" without clear mechanisms, blurring the line between normal stress responses and pathology. Additionally, separating mental health from mental illness overlooks the fact that dysfunction can exist even without a diagnosis. Health education already covers other biological systems, making the absence of brain health education inconsistent.

Similar patterns exist in topics like substance use, which are taught behaviourally without sufficient explanation of pathways of substances neurologically. Teaching the neurological basis of substance use, including reward pathways, can help students interpret urges as temporary brain states rather than personal identity, supporting regulated decision-making and understanding. 

Modern neuroscience makes it clear that mental health cannot be taught accurately without the brain. Mental health is brain health, and Ontario students deserve age appropriate education that reflects this reality.

Please add your name if you support updating Ontario's Health curriculum to reflect current science.