Saintly Elmo’s Fire

Saintly Elmo’s Fire

“The world is burning, Elmo. No amount of tickles can fix this.” X user who goes by Not the Bee

It started out as a response to a post on X back in January, where Sesame Street’s Elmo just asked folks how they were doing. There were tens of thousands of replies like the one above. To Sesame’s Street’s social media manager, Christina Vittas, this was an opportunity to open “up conversations about the serious mental health crisis in our country.” As noted by Karen Kaplan in the August 19th Los Angeles Times, “Six months later, Elmo’s creators at Sesame Workshop have collaborated with the Harris Poll to conduct a more thorough check-in on the state of Americans’ mental health. They conducted 2,012 online interviews in May on an array of topics with a nationally representative sample of Americans ages 16 and up… The resulting State of Well-Being Report was released this [August].”

Behind the television character is a genuine non-profit Sesame Workship, and this inaugural joint effort with the Harris Poll, was reflective of family concerns that impact young children more than many adults understand. Kaplan continues: “When Elmo tweeted, ‘Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?’ on social media, the consensus was clear: people are struggling. Leveraging its five-decade history of addressing the most pressing needs of children and families, Sesame Workshop—the global impact nonprofit behind Sesame Street—partnered with The Harris Poll to shed light on the mental health crisis, launching a first-of-its-kind index on the state of well-being in America.

“The inaugural study found that Americans view mental health and education as on par with economic stability. When asked what we should prioritize for the future well-being of our country, Americans indicated that economic stability isn’t enough—and is not alone as a top priority—but must be accompanied by investment in mental health and education. Parents are particularly affected – 1 in 3 say their or their family’s well-being is negatively impacted by mental health issues, and 61% say their family is still experiencing negative effects from the pandemic.”

Simply, most Americans don’t actually know when or by how much they are having diagnosable mental issues, minor or major, in a world filled with normal stress plus recent extremely abnormal (at least when compared to the relatively recent past) factors. Or how they just might be making life worse for their families and neighbors. These realities, which earlier generations did not have to face, include a toxic social media pandemic, climate change, a new polarized political world where we seemed to have legitimized personal insults (exacerbated by the anonymity of social media) and have elevated blame to a fine art. Are our children learning how to communicate with their heads bent forward on their smartphones? Do parents know how to communicate back with this army of neck-benders?

“Americans say getting honest about mental health and asking for help are critical steps to improving the state of well-being today. Sixty-seven percent of all Americans, with those numbers going up to 79% of parents, agree, ‘I wish my parents had been more honest with me about their mental health struggles’—suggesting that today’s parents are looking to break the silence around mental health with their own children. The study also found stark generational differences around attitudes towards mental health: 82% of Gen Z and Millennials agree, ‘I wish I had been taught more about how to understand and manage my emotions as a child,’ compared to 65% of respondents from older generations. That number jumps even higher to 84% of parents, signaling a major generational shift around the appreciation of speaking openly and honestly about emotional well-being from a young age.

“Half of Americans describe the average American child as anxious, with a sizable number experiencing negative impacts to their well-being due to mental health issues, said Jill Crane, Vice President of Consumer Insights, Sesame Workshop. ‘As an organization grounded in research and focused on impact, this new index will allow us to keep a pulse on the well-being of Americans and their families and make a meaningful contribution to our collective understanding of what drives well-being today.’

“And there is reason for hope: Americans see kindness and resilience as pathways to improving well-being. Strong majorities of Americans say it’s important for society to promote kindness (85%) and resilience (83%), with over a third (42% and 35%, respectively) saying it’s extremely important. Eighty-two percent agree, ‘My well-being would improve if society was kinder’—increasing to 89% when asked about children. Seventy-two percent agree, ‘My well-being would improve if I had the tools to be more resilient’—increasing to 88% when asked about children.” Kaplan. Actually, it seems when pressed, especially one-on-one, most Americans are actually pretty nice and decent. We need to remember that when tempted to feel otherwise. We probably didn’t need Elmo to set us straight… but maybe we did.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while some people at the top deserve those nasty epithets, most of us would do a whole lot better with true communication skills reflecting genuine feelings, empathy, listening more and avoiding words and phrases that pass negative judgment on others.