Goldie Hawn speaks about about how COVID affected mental health in children
Goldie Hawn told Fox News Digital her foundation and program MindUP can help families and children learn awareness and mental fitness.
Actress Goldie Hawn said she believes COVID exacerbated, and made Americans more aware of, mental health issues among children in the United States, and her foundation is working in response to teach mindfulness and mental fitness.
In 2003, Hawn started The Goldie Hawn Foundation and MindUP program to address many of the mental health issues Americans are still seeing in children today.
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"There was a rise in suicide, there was children who getting on … psychotropics, they had ADHD and anxiety, and I think no one was really looking at it as a problem until we reached a place where we were no longer able to cope," she told Fox News Digital.
Actor Kurt Russell and his partner, actress Goldie Hawn, and her children, actress Kate Hudson and actor Oliver Hudson, attend the film premiere of the romantic comedy "Raising Helen" on May 26, 2004 at the El Capitan Theatre, in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images)
Hawn acknowledged that today, there is a greater awareness of the mental health issues plaguing America’s kids, but that children need to be "more aware and … to know about their brain so they can have agency over their thoughts, over their emotions, and be able to be … the arbiter of how they look at life."
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Hawn, who spoke to Fox News Digital at the Milken Institute Global Conference last week, said when she created MindUP 20 years ago, it was to provide children with this knowledge.
Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell attend Goldie's Love In For Kids at Ron Burkle's Green Acres Estate on November 3, 2017, in Beverly Hills, California. ((Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images))
Hawn added that during COVID, her family prioritized spending time together, but she also recognized they were "privileged."
"Here’s the reality: The reality is, we were fine," she said. "I’m not concerned about us. We’re privileged. But what I am concerned about was everyone else that lived in apartment buildings that lost their job, that didn’t know what to do with their children, and had loss of an ability to manage their own emotions."
Honoree Goldie Hawn attends the Child Mind Institute's 2019 Change Maker Awards at Carnegie Hall on May 01, 2019, in New York City. (Getty)
Hawn said during this time, she just kept thinking "Just get [MindUP] in the schools."
"Because one day, we can build enough children that have the intelligence and the emotional intelligence to actually run a better world," she said.
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Hawn encouraged parents, educators and others who want to help teach children mindfulness to visit mindup.org, where there are resources for schools and families.
"Since 2003, MindUP has been helping children globally develop the mental fitness necessary to thrive in school and throughout their lives," the website reads.