Preparing School Counselors for the Upcoming Student Mental Health Crisis

I don't know about you, but keeping up has been extremely difficult for me personally and professionally.  In the fall, I decided to leave my comfortable life of retirement and take a full time position as a counselor/college advisor at a private school. You may ask why I decided to do this in the middle of a pandemic???? Good question.  Well, this is due to the fact that all my family members were now home from school and work and I was tired of them screaming my name constantly. My name being called a thousand times a day was not something I personally found comforting, so when I received a text from a friend that an opening was available for a counselor, I jumped on it.  Although I love being a counselor, the job entailed more of college counseling than personal-social counseling.  Students and parents were extremely worried about college admissions for the upcoming term and this left little time to deal with any mental health issues that students may have been facing due to the pandemic.  And, believe me, there were many obstacles this past year.  Students were sick, students lost loved ones, students were out due to quarantine, students lost instructional time, students were stressed, faculty members were out for extended periods of time, and on and on.  In March, I eventually contracted COVID-19 and I was out of school for several weeks.  The physical and mental toll of the virus left me feeling fatigued and lethargic for over three months.  Some of my colleagues, who have had the virus, informed me that their symptoms lasted for up to six months.  These physical and mental symptoms have negatively impacted so many areas of my life and my blog.  At one point, I was writing on my blog two to three times a month, but now, I am lucky to write on it every two months.  Why I am telling you all this?  I find myself to be a pretty driven person.  I work a full time job at a private school, I teach a peer leadership class part-time, I volunteer for several organizations, and now, I found myself just wanting to sit in front of the television and just zone out.  If I am feeling this way, I know many of our faculty and students are going to be facing similar challenges as they arrive back in our buildings in the fall.  According to the experts, as school counselors we will be facing one of the greatest mental health challenges that we have ever seen.  This blog is to help you think about what you can do when the students return.

My goal in this post is not to tell you things that you don't already know.  You know that before the pandemic that depression, anxiety, and suicide rates were on the increase.  You know that many students were not utilizing counseling services.  You know that there is an impending mental health crisis on the way.  Urggghhhhh!  So, what can the school counselor do to prepare for this mental health tsunami?  One suggestion, by researchers is to adopt an identity that you are not just an educator, but you are a mental health provider as well.  Often, as school counselors, we tend to compartmentalize our jobs.  For instance, this past year, I was only serving in the capacity of academics and not really assisting with mental health services.  At the end of the year, I realized that I am going to have to be pro-active in the area of providing mental health services for my students.  Although, I am comfortable providing mental health services, I realize that the majority of school counselors do not feel as comfortable with providing these services.  I totally get that many school counselors do not feel that their counselor education programs have adequately prepared them for providing mental health services; however, studies have shown that school counseling and clinical mental health students share the same CACREP competencies. Although there may be differences in our field experiences, studies show that school counselors are able to handle the mental health crises that arise in schools.  I know, you may be thinking, I don't have time to handle these situations...there is testing, transcripts, scheduling, and the list goes on and on.  Well, I would love to tell you that you are off the hook, but the reality is that schools that do nothing to assist students in crisis can be liable for negligence, especially in the state of Colorado with the passing of the Claire Davis Act of 2015. So, doing nothing is not really an option for us...

Maybe you are thinking that you are pretty effective in helping a student during a crisis.  I am with you as I feel this is one of my greatest strengths.  I can identify a student in crisis, get that student  help, and make a referral in no time at all.  However, here is one  area in which researchers feel that school counselors need more training and this is in the area of postvention.  Postvention is defined as strategies employed following a traumatic event, like COVID-19.  The question for us, and for me, is are we ready for students arriving back in our buildings in the fall?  In fact, professors Vasti Holstun and Joe Maldando, believe that in order to be effective in helping students in the upcoming mental health crisis, school counselors can be most effective in helping students grow from this trauma event.  The idea of growing from a trauma event is known as Post-traumatic growth (PTG). Founded by psychologists, Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun in the 1990s, Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is the transformation following trauma and holds that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterwards (source: American Psychological Association).  

There are five areas of growth:

1. Appreciation of life.
2. Relationships with others.
3. New possibilities in life.
4. Personal strength.
5. Spiritual change.

The question becomes, "how do we help students to grow following COVID-19?" Holstun and Maldando have several postvention strategies that you may want to consider employing in your practice this fall.

Desensitization

This is the technique of lowering the anxiety response by helping students to create a narrative that makes sense.  School counselors can help create a sense of safety in the school environment by assisting students in recreating a worldview that can encompass what happened and move beyond the event to create a new narrative.

Making Meaning - Existentialism

School counselors can help students make sense of life and create new goals.  This technique helps students to become unstuck and allows them to move on with their goals and dreams.  

Cognitive Behavioral Techniques

School counselors can assist students with ruminations and negative cognitions using optimism.  Counselors help students pinpoint challenges by using the ABCDE model.  This model was created by Albert Ellis and is very effective in helping students see how their thoughts and actions are connected. Here are the five stages of this model: Activating event or situation, Beliefs, Consequences, Disputation of the beliefs and Effective new approach to dealing with the problem.

See the free handout that you can use with your students to walk through their ruminations or negative thoughts. 

Creating Positive Emotions or Growth

School counselors can encourage engagement with the world through proving connections to community service, clubs, organizations, mentoring, etc.

Boosting Resilience

Again the ABCDE model can be helpful to help students to overcome their negative beliefs and thoughts.  Once those negative thoughts are pinpointed, they can challenge those thoughts and find support through talking to others.

Supportive Relationships

School counselors can help students identify relationships that are positive. Relationships have been found to ease and regulate emotions.  Group interactions can be beneficial and supportive. The ASCA Standards state that school counselors provide small groups that: "help students overcome impeding achievement or success;

help students identify problems, causes, alternatives and possible consequences so they can make decisions and take appropriate action; are planned, goal-focused, evidenced-based and short-termed in nature."

Source: ASCA Small Groups Position Statement

If you are looking for some small group ideas, please check out the following resources:

Small Group Forms from Missouri Career Education

High School Small Group Counseling Ideas from Counselor Clique

Forgiveness

Part of the post traumatic growth process is to help students with forgiveness.  Forgiveness is not condoning, pardoning, forgetting, reconciling, excusing, denial of harm, or restoration. 

Some examples of helping students with forgiveness can include:

Letting go of a grudge each day.

Writing letters to the event or offender

Ruminating less on the event or offender

Teaching empathy

Appreciate being forgiven

See my free poster on forgiveness from Teachers Pay Teachers. 

Find Student Sources of Strength

Help students identify their sources of strength by using a tool called an ecomap.  

Ecomap Tool to identify Sources of Strength 

Find the free handout on my Teacher Pay Teacher page.

School Counselor Self Care

Don't forget, above everything else, to take care of your own mental health.  In order to help your students, you need to be rested and ready for the new school.  Take time over the summer to get as much rest and relaxation as you can.  Also, consider taking some time for additional trainings to help get ready for your returning students.  One conference you can attend in person or virtually is the American School Counselor Conference this summer. Here is the link for the virtual conference. 

Also, check out the ASCA On Demand webinars.  I just watched the one by Wendy Rock and Carolyn Stone on suicide and it was well worth the hour of time I spent listening to it.

ASCA On Demand Webinars

I hope this post was helpful and I will see you in the next blog post!!