), the assistant principal at Westgate Community School, a K-12, public charter school in Thornton, Colorado. “And we noticed right away just that our counselor was like running around all day long just trying to meet with kid after kid after kid. She was literally just running around the building all day.”
The idea of enlisting students to serve as peer counselors was born out of a conversation with high school students who say this is a problem, too, Novak says., a 17-year-old senior and peer counselor at Westgate, says the students just needed someone to talk to. “I just tell them like, 'It's always happened. We just have so much technology at our fingertips now that it's recorded more. It's more known because we're not, we're more connected than we've ever been as a society in general.' ”
Kids should be able to have their mental health needs met through their doctors, which is why we need universal healthcare. There aren’t enough resources at schools, even schools in wealthy areas, and frankly there isn’t time- kids have to miss class to go to counseling.
I think the government shutdown has had a major effect of kids this year, due to the stress on parents and families.
We didn’t have a counselor at any of my schools, but I wish we had. Could it be that reporting is going up because access to someone to report TO is increased?
Oh geez-louise...CRY me a frickin' river. Kids these days don't have a CLUE how incredibly EASY they have it, compared to literally EVERY. SINGLE. damned generation that preceded them. Kids in crisis my BUTT.
Try getting them off the electronic version of crack we know as the smartphone. It's not doing them any favors.
“How we help them is just letting them talk because they have the solutions themselves. They just don't know until they say it out loud, until they have someone to bounce ideas off..they ultimately have solutions...they need to organize their thoughts to get to that solution.”
It's not the schools job to meet the students emotional needs .
I think this is an even better idea than an adult counselor for general issues. Often scaffolding with a near peer is better accepted and more useful.
I hope your story was about the need for more money for more school counselors, not about how great it is to have teenagers step in to help each other when adults fail
Because they're parents are mentally ill liberals, they make their children mentally ill liberals. It's a disease and a lie, just like we're all going to die in 12 years from climate change. LiberalLies DefundNPR
Social media is detrimental to mental health.
Btw, I don’t like the word “peer”. Group is a better word for them.
We don’t do enough to address mental health in the world. Look at the adults on the internet you can see the lack of self care adults get I can only imagine the damage these adults do to children. We need to limit adults from having children. It’s insane children having children
The oligarchs have given the rest of us an extractive colonoscopy of our wallets..it stems from unaffordable housing 🙄
What does kids 12-17 have to be depressed about...life hasn't even started for them!!! There must be a problem with our food or something...there has to be common denominator..this is no accident..
Group counseling program was successful in deaf mainstream school but you never seen this program happen in a regular school. Bring the group counseling back to school for all students.
depressed adults raise depressed kids
Suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents.
Remember: the less we have in common the stronger we are!
Liberals