Part II: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Youth Mental Health
When confronting a crisis such as declining youth mental health in densely populated regions like Hong Kong, the first line of defense seems to be to throw money into program creation. More often than not, these programs address symptoms like depression or poor academic performance or harmful sleep patterns.
However, there is more going on beneath the surface, and more time should be invested in identifying gaps within a child’s psychological needs to develop customized interventions that treat the root cause of these symptoms. By ensuring children’s basic needs are met, caregivers, families, professionals and educators can help foster environments that promote healthy development and well-being before moving on to more complex psychological needs.
Understanding Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a five-tier model of human needs, usually depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. The first four levels are often referred to as deficiency needs (D-needs): physiological, safety, love and belonging, and esteem. Maslow considered physiological needs to be the most important, as all the other needs become secondary until these needs are met.
As a child of immigrant parents, I now understand that my parents' sole focus was physiological and safety. I always had a roof over my head and food on the table. My basic needs for stability and education were met comfortably. However, my need to feel loved, appreciated, and valued was expressed in ways that didn’t always align with what I truly needed. I believe that failing to nurture a child’s sense of love and belonging and neglecting to build a child’s self-esteem has grave effects on their mental health and well-being. If children do not feel love for themselves, they cannot love others. If they cannot appreciate themselves, their appreciation for external things decreases.
Using Hong Kong as a case study, because it is where I live and raise my two young sons, I have identified economic, social, and environmental factors that prevent, or hinder, the meeting of those two key areas of D-needs. Housing is at a premium in Hong Kong; a 400 square foot tear-down apartment can be valued for over a million Canadian dollars. Needless to say, it's easy to see how these factors could shake the very foundation of Maslow’s pyramid. If parents cannot provide shelter for their children and job insecurity makes it difficult to put food on the table, they won’t have the energy left to invest in love and belonging or esteem. If this happens, parents themselves may suffer the shame and stress of being unable to provide life's very basic necessities. Understandably, and unknowingly, they would then pass these feelings of unworthiness on to their children.
To add to these challenges, we are all learning to navigate a new normal where remote work and social-distancing have changed how we interact with each other. Pre-pandemic, parents went to work, and children went to school. Then, without warning, schools shut down, and home became the place where everyone had to coexist.
Strained family dynamics cracked under that pressure as survivors who were used to only being responsible for providing food and shelter were called upon to also provide emotional support. Neither parents nor children had the tools or strategies to manage under these conditions. Stuck in cramped apartments with no physical activity or in-person socializing, children’s already shaky sense of love and belonging and esteem suffered. Many social distancing and isolation orders further disrupted normally flowing social connections critical to sound psychological health. Minimized physical contact and increased digitized communications could not compensate for the lack of tangible social interactions (Loades et al., 2020).
The rising incidence of mental health challenges since the pandemic underlines the necessity for very simple yet effective solutions. Basic psychological principles applied in an easy way may be of help, especially when an expert is not around the corner. Integrating Maslow's hierarchy of needs into our understanding helps guide the development of tailored interventions that reflect individual circumstances, including background, socioeconomic status, and environmental factors.
Building Resilience in Our Children
Resilience is an important element in mental well-being, especially for young people. It is the ability to bounce back after adversities and cope effectively with setbacks that life may present. For example, one study finds that resilience or the ability to withstand stress can increase greatly when children develop a growth mindset that views challenges as opportunities for development (Dweck, 2006).
Therefore, teaching adaptability is as important as providing for children’s emotional needs. In a rapidly changing world, children and youth must be positioned to adapt well to new circumstances. Research suggests that adaptability skills, such as behavioral and thinking flexibility, are essential mechanisms for maintaining psychological well-being when under stress (Martin & Marsh, 2006).
This is a transformational process that begins by practicing self-love and self-compassion. Self-love is acknowledging an individual's worth and being kind in embracing strength and vulnerability. Self-compassion, or the practice of kindness and forgiveness toward oneself in hard times, seems to be significant for achieving resilience. According to Neff (2003), self-compassion can encourage emotional resilience by a large percentage, decreasing the impact of depression and anxiety by fostering a nonjudgmental understanding of personal experiences.
Encouraging such attributes from an early age not only supports the individual but also spreads the practices in the societal folds, thereby teaching the next generation how to assist and care for each other. Developing a sense of self-love and self-compassion leads an individual to learn the art of dealing with challenges more supportively and understandingly, which is quite necessary for one's long-term mental health.
In fact, simple but very powerful approaches based on the core psychological principles of resilience, adaptability, self-love, and self-compassion are cornerstones of mental well-being. These may go a long way toward ensuring that we produce a future generation that is more resilient and, as a result, cushion some of the problems associated with poor mental health.
A Simple Way to Teach Children Social-Emotional Learning
If all of this resonates with you and you are looking for ways to introduce social-emotional learning into your child’s foundational learning, you might want to check out the Elm Sprout Series children's digital books. Designed for ages four to six, these books feature characters who explore the physical world around them and learn to identify and manage their emotions and actions in social settings.
Families and children can read these books together, then discuss and practice what they read to develop home-based SEL strategies to foster self-love, self-esteem, and self-confidence. Working through these elements together will nurture each area of development through these most critical early years of emotional and social development.
Each book is well thought through and designed with the perspective that every young mind will learn the need for emotional safety, identification of feelings, and healthy coping mechanisms. This meets their current need for security while laying an intensive foundation for emotional resilience that will benefit them as they grow.
Our stories introduce these concepts early and, in so doing, ensure that potential gaps in emotional development are filled. This ensures that children can effectively navigate their emotions from a very tender age. This preparation is invaluable for the successive levels of Maslow's hierarchy, providing the individual with all the necessary emotional instruments to succeed in life.
References:
Maslow, A.H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.
Mcleod, S. (2024). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In Simply Psychology. Retrieved from link.
Loades, M. E., et al. (2020). Rapid Systematic Review: The Impact of Social Isolation and Loneliness on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in the Context of COVID-19. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
Martin, A.J., & Marsh, H.W. (2006). Academic resilience and its psychological and educational correlates: A construct validity approach. Psychology in the Schools, 43(3), 267-281.
Neff, K. (2003). Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Attitude Toward Oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85-101.
