IBGEeduca
IBGEeduca launches material on mental health conditions of students
April 25, 2025 02h00 PM | Last Updated: April 29, 2025 01h15 AM
With the objective of approaching topics from the everyday lives of students in Basic Education, IBGEeduca (IBGE's educational project) will be presenting, throughout the school year, teachng materials for teachers and students. The first edition, on the topic Mental health in Brazil, is available on the website of IBGEeduca and consists of texts, graphs and tables with data from IBGE surveys, besides suggested activities to be used in class. Coming topics, to be released every two months, are: Screen and cell phone use by students, Life project, and Climate change.
IBGEeduca has released, to cover the first two months of the year, “Mental health is also a topic for class." The material presents data on mental health and depression indicators in Brasil. The document shows information from the National Survey of School Health 2019 (PeNSE); the National Survey of Health 2019 (PNS); besides data from the World Health Organization (OMS).
The material, with appropriate format and approach for use in the classroom, is intended to help teachers include official information on the topic in the school, besides contributing to the elaboration of cross-cutting activities related to the subjects listed in the National Base for a Common Curriculum (BNCC), among which are the development of socioemotional capacities and the presence of statistical and geoscientific literacy in schools.
“The purpose of this material is the development of BNCC capacities. The case of mental health is a real issue affecting students. We can avoid mental illnesses when we are informed about the problem and are aware of what to do to prevent solitude, isolation and bullying. The IBGE has some data from the National Survey of School Health, so you get to understand the problem and then try to act in the school environment, in order to help students develop self-defense, mental strength and how to avoid illnesses," said Marcos Balster, manager of the IBGE' Educational Affairs Department and of IBGE Educa.
In the proposed activities (from Primary School up to High School), besides having contact with data, the students are invited to reflect about the impact of mental health in their lives, prejudice in relation to patients and treatments. The material was developed by the educational specialist of IBGEeduca, Tatiana Barbosa Miranda.
Marcos Balster highlighted the fact that the IBGE generates a great volume of information about Brazil that is essential to build the citizen, and that IBGEeduca has the duty of creating ways for the yeouth to acess that data. “We try to make things easier for the teacher and, as a result, inform students that are citizens being formed. More than diseminating information produced by the IBGE, we have the responsibility of dealing with current topics and fulfill society's need to understant problems better and act on reality.”
Teacher's Blog
The IBGEeduca website also has a Teacher's Blog, where the teachers who use the materials in class share and report their experiences. IBGEeduca presents with gifts teachers who use a kit of 10 School Atlases for activities in class.
"We hope that, now the material on mental health has been released, teachers will feel encouraged to participate in the Teacher's Blog and give us some feedback on it,” Marcos Balster added.
