Lauren: Mental Health Awareness Month is upon us. That is the
month of May. And so I figured it would be a timely episode to
talk about addressing mental health needs, and more
specifically, I want to talk about some low budget ways to
address mental health needs, because let's be real, you do
not have a huge budget to overhaul an entire mental health
program for your school, and I get that. I have some past
episodes on mental health that I will link to in the show notes,
but let's talk about some low budget ways to address mental
health needs in this week's episode.
You got into this profession to make a difference in your
students' lives, but you're spread thin by all the things
that keep getting added to your to do list. I can't create more
hours in the day, but I can invite you into my counselor
clique where you'll finally catch your breath. Come with me
as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that'll
help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your
students. I'm Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype
girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program
and remind you of how much you love your job.
First, I want you to think about leaning on others in terms of
how you collaborate with them and use their gifts and
abilities, along with yours, to help students in their time of
need. So who are some people you could be leaning on here? Your
teachers, they don't really know what to look for right now with
your students. Maybe they want to help. They feel overwhelmed
by all of their classroom duties, so it's just like not on
the forefront of their mind because they don't know what to
do. They don't know how to help.
However, your teachers know your students really well. So I think
if you can help your teachers know what to look for, even just
in terms of, hey, this is how you notice that a student is
struggling with anxiety, depression, other mental health
issues. You're not asking them to diagnose. You're not asking
them to look at the student and say, Hey, I think you are
depressed. You should go see a counselor. Do not identify any
of those things if you do not have the education to do that.
I want you to think about giving some sort of training or maybe
just some quick tips to teachers for how to identify and how to
give some basic support for students who may be struggling
with mental health needs. And maybe that's solely walking them
down to see a counselor, but I don't want you to forget about
teachers being key players in identifying students and
connecting them to the appropriate resources.
Next, think about the people like the mental health counselor
who may be in your building, the school psychologist who may come
in for testing once a week, or the social worker who pops in
every other week to meet with some students. These are people
who are used to collaborating with others. They're used to
identifying needs with students and then helping them connect to
resources. They do what you do in a similar vein, and so I
don't want you to forget about how valuable of a resource they
can be.
Now, some of these people are only in your school building
every so often. They may not be there full time. They probably
don't know every student in the school, or a big chunk of them
like you do, but I want you to think about leaning on them for
their expertise. Could they give a presentation to those teachers
who need help identifying students? Could they be a
resource in the community or connect you to community
resources? Yeah, I think they could. So don't forget about
them in terms of what they could offer you for resources that are
just outside of the school building. But also if they would
be interested in doing something in the school building if
they're not completely overwhelmed by their own
caseloads and their own responsibilities. Maybe they
want more one on one time with students, and they want to do a
small group with you, or they want to come with you into a
classroom to do a lesson. You don't know until you ask. And so
don't forget about these people and their valuable expertise
with students' mental health needs, that's what they
specialize in, too.
And then this comes in terms of collaborating with others. I
just want you to keep this in the back of your mind. It's
important to set boundaries so that you don't burn out, because
I do think that when you are constantly working with these
students in crisis, yes, it's rewarding, because you really do
make a huge difference. Sometimes it's a life or death
difference, and you are so thankful that you were the right
person at the right time to talk to this student and help solve a
major crisis or avoid something even bigger happening. But a lot
of that, as we know, could send you into a burnout mode. So I
just want you to be aware of what your capacity is and be
able to refer out if that is outside of your scope. Do not
think that you have to be able to handle everything on your
I know we talk a lot about living in the gray. There isn't
own.
really a roadmap for deciding when to refer out. You're going
to need to consult with co-counselors, or someone at
your district level, or someone from your internship program,
like you need to have somebody that you can refer to and kind
of toss ideas back and forth, but also just hold you
accountable to not burning out. I know we don't get to choose
our caseload, and so maybe it feels impossible to really set
some strict boundaries on the students that you see. That's
not possible in a school setting, but just being aware of
what your personal and emotional boundaries might be, so that you
know, hey, I either need to go get counseling right now. I need
to take care of myself outside of the school day, or I need to
be able to refer out when this is outside of my scope.
Another big topic that I feel like comes up a lot is just
being able to provide that mental health support when you
do have limited access to other people. So I talked about who
those other people might be and how you could collaborate with
them. But what if you do not have them? What if you and your
students have limited access to outside therapists and outside
counselors? I think you never know until you ask. So if it is
an idea that could be put on the table of bringing in a mental
health counselor to your school full time or once or twice a
week like that, would be huge to give that access to those mental
health resources to students who can't go outside of the school
building and get them, or they don't have parents to drive them
there, or they don't have the means to pay for that.
I know a lot of times when we get those mental health supports
in the school, it is built on a sliding scale, and so it's
really affordable and really accessible to students. So if
you don't have that, I'd encourage you to make some waves
and ask. You will never know if it's even possible in your
school unless you ask.
A lot of times, what you're doing as a school counselor is
you're triaging. You are overwhelmed by the amount of
crises that are walking in your door, and you're dropping
everything to handle them. That is real life if you're finding
yourself completely overwhelmed by the mental health supports
that you need to create and put in place to care for all these
students, I think that's worth visiting and thinking about your
program in terms of, hey, it might be time to revamp
something.
Are all the crises that seem to be coming in, just walk ins that
interrupt your day? Are they parent calls asking to go check
on a student? Are you always putting out fires instead of
getting ahead of things? If you feel like you're always reacting
to really high need things, I think this is worth pausing to
look at, maybe problem solving at a department meeting, or if
it's just you kind of just starting to take note of what
your triaging looks like.
If it feels overwhelming, like it's interrupting your day, like
the mental health needs of your students are out of control,
we've got to change something. So whether that's doing some
more education on the front end and giving students the coping
skills that they need, or maybe that's just creating a system of
supports of how you refer out. Maybe you need to create the
roadmap that allows you some freedom to address mental health
needs in a more standard way.
I'm sure doctors have standards of care that they triage their
patients with. I haven't looked into that, and that's not my
background, but I'm just thinking there are systematic
ways that maybe you could send a student down a certain path if
they have these characteristics or these qualities, and these
are the resources you have within your means in your school
counseling program. And this is what you don't have, and this is
where you need to send them. If that hasn't been built out
already, maybe you need to pause and think about that if your
days are becoming super overwhelming because of mental
health needs.
I know that there are seasons where it can feel more like
that, or certain grade levels at certain times of the year, just
thinking with senior stress at the end of the year, or freshmen
transitioning into high school at the beginning of the year.
There are moments and pockets where these mental health needs
feel like they bubble up and kind of explode, and if you can
kind of get ahead of that with some of the proactive training
and educating and teaching the coping skills that students
need, I think that you're gonna see a more manageable caseload
as you're trying to address these things.
A lot of what I'm thinking about as I'm talking about addressing
mental health needs, is creating support systems and training
other people, even though this might not be their level of
expertise, but training them just to identify some key
factors that can help you be more proactive. So creating peer
support systems or training your administrators to notice warning
signs.
If you don't feel like you have the capacity or the margin to
create a whole new presentation, don't forget about the people
who probably have presentations prepared on stuff like this. Is
there someone in your district who does crisis training for
people at the district level, or people in schools? Is there some
interventionist somewhere who has already done some of these
presentations to parents? Is there a head of your crisis team
in the district? I know when we would have a student death,
there be a crisis team disseminated out to a school,
and honestly, it was maybe a key counselor from each school that
volunteered for a little bit and felt like they had the capacity
when it wasn't at their school, to go visit the middle school
and be the counselor who comes in and helps with some of that
grieving. I don't know who that is in your district, or if that
is even a thing, but if there's a person who's the point of
that, they've probably been trained or they've probably
trained other people on how to handle different crises.
Do you have a friend who's left school counseling, who has gone
into the field to get their LPC and now they work in private
practice? Honestly, they probably miss talking about
students, working with teachers, collaborating with a team. Bring
them in and have them do a presentation about warning
signs. If you have an intern, do not forget to use your intern.
Have them help you put together a research based yet interactive
presentation. Maybe they have the newest research on hand from
the classes they've been sitting in, and then you can add in the
real world examples, and y'all can do a presentation together
that would educate people.
Obviously, you're probably already, but it's worth
mentioning, leaning on your community based mental health
resources. Maybe that's Nami. Maybe you have a funeral home in
your neighborhood, or a hospice organization that does a lot of
educating around grief, because I feel like grief is a mental
health need that comes up a lot. Get a list from your social
workers of community resources that they are giving to families
and parents and students.
Have a list of those community resources on hand. I always like
to have a paper copy in my drawer, like a stack of them, to
hand out, whether that's a list that you've built out from your
own expertise and your own assimilation of what's out
there, or you have something from the United Way in your area
that literally lists out mental health needs, but also
everything from, you need food stamps, you need to contact WIC.
What do you do if you need to refer for an abusive
relationship? I mean, they have so many resources out there. And
instead of having to reinvent the wheel every single time
someone comes to you in a high need situation, and you are
having to research the best resource to give them, have
those on hand. And you know, I am a digital person, mostly
everything lives in my Google Drive, but this is something
that I would have paper copies of on hand at all times to hand
to a family or parent or student who needs it.
And then lastly, just have a few low budget, but high impact
resources on hand as you run into students with very specific
needs. Have some things ready to start a conversation with
students, maybe some grief conversation starters, or I have
a bunch of different like check in activities that can be used
on Google Drive or on a phone or a tablet. Most students are
gonna be able to pull that up really easily, and you can go
through it with them and start a conversation and let them
reflect. Whether that's on the stress that they're feeling, the
mindfulness skills or coping skills that they need to have in
practice, maybe it's just a mental health check in that
you're sending to your entire caseload to see who needs a
follow up conversation.
And then I know I've talked about them before, but EverFi
has a bunch of free resources, including a mental wellness kind
of course online that's totally free that students can use.
And so I just want to put those out there for some low budget or
even free resources to have on hand, because you're not gonna
be able to think straight when you're in the moment of crisis,
just like your students can't. And if we can have some low
budget ways to get ahead of the mental health needs that our
students have, then we are going to feel so much more confident
about serving this high need and very intense population.
It doesn't go away. It's never going to go away. It's probably
only going to rise, based on recent statistics and what we're
seeing in terms of trends in school with our students. But
you know what? It's where we get to make a huge impact as high
school counselors with our students. Who are the students
who come back to you and thank you after their time in high
school? The ones that you had real serious and intense, often,
conversations with about real issues in their lives. So don't
discount the work that you can do when you are thinking about
your students mental health needs. I know it can be
exhausting, but with the right tools on hand and just having
them at all times in your back pocket, you're going to be more
prepared.
And so maybe going into May's Mental Health Awareness Month,
all you're doing is equipping yourself and refilling your
toolkit with what you need to help students find success with
their mental health. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next
week.
Thanks for listening to today's episode of High School
Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today
can be found in the show notes and also at
counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you
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Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me
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week.