Comic-Making: A Powerful Tool To Aid Troubled Students

MakeBeliefs 2 Help U Smile & Lift Your Spirits

Here’s the latest installment in our ongoing MakeBeliefs series to provide comfort and hope to young and old who are feeling distressed and anxious in our too fast-changing and sometimes unforgiving world. It’s our way of making things better by helping you imagine! I created these MakeBeliefs to find hope. If you find value in the MakeBeliefs project, please share this newsletter with someone you care about. If you would like a paid subscription but cannot afford one, please email me at billz@makebeliefscomix.com If you’d like to sponsor a reader, you can do so by donating a subscription here. 

Comic-Making: A Powerful Tool To Aid Troubled Students

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Dear reader,

When I was a kid growing up in a tumultuous family, I suffered from great anxiety and depression.
That is why I take so personally today’s alarming news showing worsening trends in mental health in adolescents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes as of 2021:

• 42% of students felt persistently sad or hopeless

• 29% experienced poor mental health

• 22% considered suicide

• 10% attempted suicide

According to the CDC, certain adolescent populations are more affected, including LGBTQ+ students, females, and marginalized racial and ethnic groups. In fact, almost half of LGBTQ+ students considered suicide, and Black students were more likely to attempt suicide than teens of other races and ethnicities.

A year ago I started this Substack newsletter series, in part, as a way to help troubled students.  Now, MakeBeliefsComix.com, the parent vehicle to our weekly newsletters, has launched a new HELP 4 STUDENTS section as a way to aid young people with emotional problems. School guidance and mental health specialists -- as well as educators and parents -- can find it useful to encourage youngsters to express what is deep within them through creating comic strip stories about their troubling issues. Comic strips can be a helpful way to communicate one’s fears and concerns, as well as joys. The new section guides you how do accomplish this. 

Comic-making with MakeBeliefsComix.com has been successfully used by educational therapists for youngsters with special needs, such as autism and behavioral problems,(see HERE) and can now be used for other troubled, anxious students. 

This new section complements the work we have been doing with our newsletters all the past year to present our regular interactive writing prompt series, ‘’MakeBeliefs to Help U Smile & Feel J_Y,’’ which you can see at https://makebeliefscomix.com/printables_categories/smile/

As always, I welcome your suggestions and ideas to improve what we offer in our new section. You can send your comments to the newsletter or write to me directly at billz@makebeliefscomix.com.
This is a big undertaking for us and we urge you to share what we are doing with your communities.   Thank you. 

Yours sincerely,
Bill Zimmerman, Creator of MakeBeliefsComix.com

(You can see our ‘’MakeBeliefs to Help U Smile & Feel J_Y’’ series at: https://makebeliefscomix.com/printables_categories/smile/  )

Now, Here’s a Wonderful Comic That Tries to Save Us from Ourselves – Just for You to Smile and Enjoy!

As many readers know by now, I am crazy about the loveable Pig character in Stephan Pastis’ syndicated ‘’Pearls Before Swine’’ comic strip.  He is so good and lovable and so desperately, like many of us, wants a better world which he tries to achieve with his magical thinking.  Sometimes he succeeds, other times as in this comic he falls a little short of the mark.  If you held the ‘’magic’’ wand which Pig holds in his hand as shown in the comic, what would you wish for. Indeed, is it so very different from what we each want for ourselves and our loved ones? I am Piggy, too.  What about you?

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