By Christian Zeitvogel & Ellie Fisher
Scriptor
Wylie E Groves HS
1st Place
Division 3, News Writing
Informative Feature
Sweet.
That was how senior Sid Bostek described the taste of the anti-freeze he drank in an attempt to end his life.
He wrote his mother a note after drinking the anti-freeze, saying that he loved her and his sister, but “Life… Nahh.” After battling social anxiety and severe depression for years, Bostek, a member of the Gender-Sexuality Alliance (GSA), decided that the only way out was to end it all. At first, he felt calm about his decision. He had a few sips of the liquid before realizing he couldn’t go through with it.
If Bostek hadn’t told his mom what he ingested and if she hadn’t taken him to the hospital, he could have died from kidney failure.
Though he was lucky and survived, many other teenagers, especially LGBT teens, do not survive. According to the Center of Disease Control (CDC), suicide is the second leading cause of death for ages 12-18. With a suicide rate of 12.5%, suicide rates among adolescents have steadily been on the rise in the past few years. LGBT youth are one of the most at risk demographics for suicide as LGBT teenagers are about five times more likely to be bullied and four times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers.
Senior GSA member and Italian exchange student Federico Louvin noticed more hostility in the U.S. regarding LGBT youth.
“I do recognize a big difference between Italy and the US. Americans tend to separate everything to either black or white. They either love LGBT people or hate them; want to convert them, electrocute them, and eventually kill them when they realize that they can’t truly change,” Louvin said. “Italians, on the other hand, tend to stay in a grey zone. I’ve met so many people here, who, probably because of uneducated fear, dislike LGBT members, but easily come to ‘cope’ with them.”
These dangerous trends in suicide and lack of acceptance for LGBT students are partly why the school chose student mental health as this year’s building goal.
When a student does not feel the community accepts their identity, their performance in nearly every aspect of their life decreases: from academics, to extracurricular, to day-to-day functions, such as decision making, as school social worker Susan Rodgers explained.
“If students are struggling with emotional needs, their capacity to learn is going to really be decreased. Teachers aren’t expected to be mental health professionals, but it’s important to know where teachers can steer a student to find help,” Rogers said. “I think what teachers can do is to simply reach out to a student. Without prying and probing but just letting the student know that they know something is going on. Sometimes students will say nothing is wrong and that they’re fine because that’s human nature. A teacher could follow that up with saying that they are there for the student and that Mrs. Wilson, the crisis and prevention counselor is there for the student.”
Science teacher Cynthia Sherman witnessed first-hand how a small gesture of compassion can help a student in need. Sherman distinctly remembers when one of her students- who was bright and had a lot going for her- broke down in front of the class just after submitting a test. Sherman was stunned.
“At that moment I was like ‘oh my god’. This is the kind of kid where on the outside they have everything going for them, and they broke down right in front of everyone,” Sherman said. “It was kind of a strange moment, but I followed my first instinct, and I just got up and hugged her. She just cried. Of course, I let her go to get a drink of water and I talked with her after class to make sure she was okay. Afterwards, she thanked me for the hug,” Sherman said.
Math teacher Cristina Antoniolli also has experience comforting her fair share of struggling students, but addressed a staff concern about the difficulty of juggling twenty-five students and knowing how to interpret the more subtle signs of distress that Rogers discussed.
“I’ve had students come to me that were actually having anxiety attacks and didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. It would be helpful to identify it; it’s not always easy when you have a classroom full of students to address the issue right at hand because we can’t physically leave the room,” Antoniolli said.
Like Antoniolli, many staff members expressed their desire to increase awareness for how to help students in emotional crisis. Rodgers believes that the ability to recognize the warning signs of depression and suicide are the first steps. These signs can often be mistaken for student defiance, when they are truly a cry for help. These signs include the following: angry outbursts, irritability or frustration, even over small matters, along with a lack of energy that makes complying with small task an extreme effort on the student’s part. Restlessness, slowed thinking, speaking, or body movements along with a change in appetite and trouble concentrating are also signs of possible depression. When a student appears fixated on past failures and expresses a sense of hopelessness or recurrent thoughts of death, even a sudden change from hopelessness to a sense of calm, these can be signs of an imminent suicide.
“Our focus on mental health and on knowing these signs, that what we may perceive as misbehavior can actually be a student in emotional crisis, is really important because, as we know, the rate of depression and suicide with young people is really high,” Rodgers said. “Being able to recognize warning signs of distress or even suicide and being able to know where we can steer a student to find resources is extremely important.”
To fulfill this focus, Sherman, Antoniolli and many other staff members took a Youth Mental Health First Aid course for professional development this year.
“We had a service where we kind of get a refresher on the phone numbers and learn how we can get this information into students’ hands and all the different hotlines, but I feel like even being able to identify when a kid is having a panic attack, is still difficult. It’s one thing to be able to know some telltale signs of panic and another to know when to direct students to where they can get help,” Antoniolli said. “I think if you’ve never had a panic attack or you’ve never felt depression, then you don’t really understand how debilitating it can be for somebody. Without that experience, maybe some people can’t understand, and it’s hard for them to have empathy.”
Considering that some teachers may not know what to do when it comes to helping mentally ill students, Sherman recommends all teachers not only take classes throughout the year but that this training begin much earlier in a teacher’s career.
“I think, initially, training in mental health awareness should be within the teacher program before a teacher even earns his or her teaching certificate. In other words, while I am learning methods on how to teach science, I should be also taking a class dealing with more than just developmental psychology but in specific strategies for recognizing and immediately responding to students going through a rough time emotionally,” Sherman said.
Antoniolli also wishes she had this type of training early on but does her best to spend extra time with a student when she notices they need mental or emotional support, especially as she can relate to their struggles. Despite her ability to relate, she worries that teacher intervention in the classroom is not enough and wishes that crisis counselor Sheree Wilson could be at school full time rather than split her time between Seaholm and Groves.
“I’ve had panic attacks before, and I’ve learned to
breathe through them though it’s still a very scary experience. I can definitely sympathize with my students when it’s happening to them,” Antoniolli said. “Sometimes I’ll send a student to go for a walk or get a drink of water, but I’ll send someone who I know is a friend with them; it’s not the best solution but it’s all we have. Or, that’s all that I feel like I have. We do have a crisis counselor, but I feel that she can only be in so many places at so many times. Kids can book her, but if her calendar is full, it’s not like a student can suppress those feelings until next time.”
While teachers want to help struggling students, certain privacy laws also prevent them from effectively solving the problem. Science teacher Sarah Stukey experienced the difficulty of helping students while adhering to these laws.
“We hear about if a student has an IEP [Individualized Education Program] because of learning disability. But often times, if a student suffers because of mental or emotional health, teachers aren’t privy to that information. No one on staff is withholding the information to keep us in the dark, you know, but the parents have told the counselors that they don’t want the staff to know about what’s going on,” Stukey said. “I’ve had a counselor speak with me and share information with me that benefited me quite a bit. It all comes down to the parents, however. Some parents don’t want their kid labeled. Unfortunately, that stops me from having that tool of modifying what I say.”
Antoniolli concurred. She feels that, while privacy laws are understandable and necessary, they also hinder a teacher’s ability to help students with special, emotional needs.
“Because of privacy laws we know that a student is struggling and they might have gone to see their counselor, but their counselor cannot necessarily tell us or provide details. They could straight out say, ‘I can’t share that with you because the family has asked to maintain their privacy,’ and I completely respect that, but it makes it really hard for us; we want to be able to accommodate and support the student, but most of the time we can’t because we don’t know what’s going on,” Antoniolli said.
Teachers may feel at a loss to help students because students themselves will not talk about their mental health issues, fearing that a teacher will judge them or even overreact.
For this reason junior Ev Christie hesitates to discuss mental health issues with teachers, though at times she has wanted to.
“I’m mainly worried about teachers assuming the worst about any situation I come to them with. If I say that I have anxiety, that doesn’t mean that I want to kill myself,” Christie said.
To avoid complications with privacy laws and to help those students who feel isolated or fear staff overreaction, Bostek recommends adding more staff whose main function is to help students with their mental health.
“I think that these staff members should be more accessible. They should have cards. With their face on the card, their name, and a personal little anecdote that’s like ‘Hey, I’m this person. You can come talk to me about anything because I’m cool,’” Bostek said.
Bostek envisions a large stack of these cards in the office so that students could take one and know what the staff member looks like who is willing and trained to help and how to get hold of them immediately if the student is in crisis.
Guidance counselor Monica Fugedi agrees with Bostek that the building needs more resources to help students through mental health and other emotional struggles and suggested that crisis counselor Sheree Wilson’s becoming full time at Groves would help.
“I feel like we’re doing the best we can with what we have. There are still only five of us, and the emotional roadblocks kids face is far greater than really what we can handle. We have our crisis counselor Ms. Wilson, but she travels between two buildings [Groves and Seaholm] and sometimes it’s hard for her to be present because she’s constantly, constantly busy.”
Fugedi also explained how students forget that she and her colleagues are part of a team to help students with emotional and mental needs throughout the day; that guidance counselors are not just someone to go to when that student wants a schedule change. This misconception reduces students’ resources even more.
“I think that school counselors are misunderstood as to what our role is. That is our role, to help kids in need. We are basically the same as crisis counselors; we just have a few more responsibilities as well.”
Fugedi added that the increasing demands of school and rigorous college requirements also exacerbate the problem.
“The mental health of students should take precedence over their academic performance; they go hand in hand. So I think a lot of the times we’re solving emotional issues with academic solutions and not even realize it,” Fugedi said.
Retired science teacher Len Klein, who taught at both Groves and Northwestern University, lamented that teachers and counselors do not have enough time or resources to help students suffering with a mental or emotional health crisis because of pressure on both students and teachers to cram in curriculum.
“I taught high school and college for a total of forty-seven wonderful years, but I have seen, though, too many disturbed students that I or someone else had referred to a counselor or a crisis counselor. While I remember some successful interventions, I remember the failed ones and the ones that were unrecognized until too late the most,” Klein said.
Klein will never forget four of his students who committed suicide, wishing he had more knowledge to support those students in time.
“We knew the students were stressed academically, but no one knew the extent. Teachers need more training in how to recognize the symptoms and counselors need more training in how to address the situation,” Klein said.
Klein also feels that a move back to the semester schedule from the current trimester would help all staff bond better with students and be better able to address students’ mental health needs.
“It’s easier to get to know students in a block or extended class environment as compared to a 50-minute or so class period. The many good counselors that I have known have had little time to work with individual students for an extended amount of time,” Klein said. “Both teachers and counselors are over extended. Both groups likely need more time with students, more training, and more resources.”
Klein’s suggestions coincide with current staff members’ desire for more one-on-one time with students, especially to help students on an emotional ledge, as Bostek was last year. Bostek used an analogy to explain why, along with more mental health professionals on staff, all teachers should have formal education in mental health awareness.
“When teaching a shop class, the teacher has to learn physical first aid because the class can damage students’ physical health,” Bostek said. “In the same way, all teachers should have to take a class on mental health to understand the mental and emotional issues they will most likely encounter. All teachers worry about panic attacks and kids getting super depressed and receding into their own minds. Knowing what to do at that moment, even when the kid is not saying much about their pain, just knowing the signs of students in emotional pain, might help a teacher prevent another student from feeling as desperate as I did last October.”