Fern’s Article

Mental Health Supports in BC High Schools

For many students, mental health and the high school education system in British Columbia are incredibly linked because students often struggle with trying to keep up with their busy everyday lives and maintaining their education and turn to their schools for support. This is especially notable in the teenage years because teenagers are in the middle figuring themselves and their personal identity out which can cause the need for stronger mental support. High school is also often when the pressure of academics and worries about the future begin to really set in. For many years, secondary schools have been developing mental health supports so they are able to help students navigate these tough times and are better equipped for adulthood. This is because while students of any age struggle with mental health, high schools are often when the pressure of begins to really set in. Additionally, what students learn in their adolescence to manage their mental health become tools for the rest of their lives. If students were taught how to seek the help they need and have supports readily available in their schools, they can learn healthy coping skills.

In British Columbia, BC Ministry of Education has begun to put aside money to facilitate these supports, so that mental health supports can be more readily available to those that need them. Over time the money and supports have increased because the demand for better supports has increased. However, mental health supports are varying between each individual school and district which means some schools have better developed mental health supports when compared to other schools. The B.C. education system has seen many changes in relation to mental health but still has much to improve on. In a Tyee article, journalist Katie Hyslop shared that in 2014, the government of British Columbia announced a two million dollar boost to mental health supports in schools across the province. This adds to the other 11.9 million the government has previously put aside for mental health in the years prior. Federally, in 2020 the government also decided to add an additional 1.3 million dollar boost to the budget for mental health supports in schools and in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. These financial boosts are necessary to improve how mental health is being dealt with in schools as more funding means that mental health supports can be strengthened either by adding more supports that did not previously exist or to better develop pre-existing ones. However, this begs the question, where is the money going?

Many students and teachers agree that mental health supports are currently inaccessible despite them gaining more funding than ever before. Teachers and students alike want to know what is being done to change the lack of accessibility. In the Tyee article, one tenth grade student, DJ Gill, wanted to know what was being done at her school for mental health. She began to research because she realized she had no idea what was being done at her own school. Gill also found that it was great that the government had started putting money away for mental health but wasn’t sure where the money was going which further increased her interest of what supports were available at her school. She found that, “there is an inclusion of mental well-being but has not seen any changes except being told that there are counsellors there for support.”  This inclusion is crucial but is missing key aspects of what students need. Gill wants high schools like hers to add a focus on the origins of mental illnesses, their physiological effects on the body, how to seek help and what the signs of mental illnesses are. She suggests making half of the physical and health education curriculum be about mental health or to add an elective course entirely dedicated to mental health. Gill’s ideas about improving mental health are also backed by teachers as well.

As shared by Hyslop, a Burnaby physical and health education teacher and president of Physical Education in B.C., Josh Ogilvie, agrees with Gill and believes it would help adults too. Everyone can benefit from learning about mental health and having students learn about it would help students and teachers alike learn valuable life skills such as how to help themselves and each other. Elizabeth Bailey, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s nursing program says Gill’s idea supports what research on mental health has shown about developing better resources in schools. Students’ attitudes and knowledge surrounding mental health improved with mental health literacy. This type of literacy is not often taught but is valuable information that would be incredibly useful if it were to be included in the secondary school curriculum. Mandatory classes for students to be taught about what good mental health looks like and how to manage it healthily would teach students useful skills about how to help others and themselves. Mental health literacy gives students a way to describe how themselves and others around them may be feeling which creates a better understanding for what good mental health is and gives students an opportunity to learn how to cope better.

In the recent years, mental health programs are being put in place in schools such as Everyday Anxiety Strategies for Educators or “EASE” which was developed in the Vernon school district. In a Cloverdale Reporter article written by Jennifer Smith, the EASE program focuses on breathing strategies, mindfulness, coping strategies, test anxiety, facing fears, managing how social media impacts mental health and how to manage unhelpful thoughts. EASE was originally launched in 2019 for kindergarten to seventh grade age kids. Since then, EASE has expanded to include the eighth to twelfth grade, French translations, and online resources as well. Another similar program is the BC Children’s Hospital Kelty Mental Health program. Kelty Mental Health works with B.C. Children’s Hospital to help support people with mental health struggles. They have many resources available provincially for individuals, families, and specific ones for schools. All their resources are free and made to help people in any way they need. Kelty Mental Health works as contact points for school professionals, connecting school communities and other mental health learning resources, customized learning opportunities and support for school counsellors who are providing help for students. To do this Kelty Mental Health uses ideas centered around their four main values, “Healthy Policy, Partnership and Services, Teaching and Learning and Social and Physical Environment.” These such values help all those that are seeking resources to be able to better find them as each value is designed to help specific aspects of the Kelty Mental Health program. As highlighted in ___ article, the Minister of Education in B.C., Jennifer Whiteside, approves and advocates for programs such as EASE and Kelty Mental Health because she believes that they are providing great opportunities for students to get the help they need.

 Likewise, there are other programs being put in place for mental health support as well. According to the B.C. Ministry of Education’s “Mental Health in Schools Strategy” report,  mental health in high schools is being tackled by two key strategies. These two strategies are called “A Pathway to Hope” and “Expect Respect And a Safe Education (ERASE).” A Pathway to Hope is a three-year strategy that plans on transforming mental health in schools. ERASE is all about creating a safe and caring school community so that students feel supported. These strategies are meant to be used “system-wide” and include the Compassionate System. The Compassionate System is meant to drive internal work (self-reflection and practice), relationship work (authentic connections) and system work (connections between self, others, and the broader systems). Essentially, this means that high school education is supposed to use the above-mentioned strategies to promote social emotions learning, mental health literacy and included trauma-informed practices in its learning. This was implemented so that students and faculty alike can understand what good mental wellbeing is and how to properly facilitate it. According to authors Shelley Hymel et al. , half of all lifetime mental illness cases start by age fourteen. This makes learning about mental health in secondary schools crucial. Since mental illness effects many individuals, and those individuals need help accessing the help they need especially if they may need resources for their entire life. A key element in this is mental health competence, which includes self-awareness, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making. Mental health secondary school education needs to include mental health literacy in order to properly help its students.

B.C. has multiple mental health supports put in place to help students but many of them are spread across districts. Some teachers even have their own individual methods of helping their students. Josh Ogilvie, the physical and health teacher, has mental health checkpoints with his students where he encourages them to check how they are doing mentally each class. It’s a simple but effective way of providing mental health supports for students because it encourages students to be mindful of what they are doing and feeling. While Ogilvie is one example of a teacher’s response to mental health supports it further highlights how spread out the different approaches to mental health help in education as his “mental health check point” idea isn’t a widespread idea. Ogilvie developed the idea for his own use, but it would be a helpful support for other classrooms if it were to be implemented provincially in physical and health classes. Some other supports such as Kelty Mental Health are available provincially with help from B.C. Children’s Hospital. However most other supports such as EASE are only used at certain districts which creates a gap between schools.

It is difficult to implement mental health supports when mental health support approaches are all done so differently. However, if supports were made accessible provincially it would be much more accessible as the supports could reach a wider variety of students. According to Hymel et al., “Roughly only forty-four percent of those experiencing a mental health disorder in B.C. are receiving help.” This statistic extends to secondary schools as well. There are varying approaches to mental health supports in schools which creates a lack of reliable supports. Additionally, many school and districts do not collaborate with one another which creates an added challenge to finding mental health supports. Each school has specific things they have found that helps with students’ mental health. If schools were to share what works and what doesn’t, would be extremely helpful in creating a system that actively helps students’ mental health. The differing approaches between schools are all needed in finding the right supports for students because no one method will help every individual. This would also aid those schools that aren’t quite sure yet how to help their students as those schools can model their mental health supports after other schools.

Creating a combined approach of supports that have shown to be helpful in different schools would reach farther for students as it would have more than just one way of appealing them. Combing approaches would also help students better understand what was going on at their own schools as they would be able to see real and effective changes in their schools. Additionally, this would help support high school students as it would include a wider spread of their needs which would in turn create more accessible supports for students like DJ Gill who have been otherwise confused by their school’s lack of help for mental health support. If schools were to share their findings with one another the B.C. Education system could create and implement a curriculum for all high schools to use that would be effective and informative in accordance with what works best with students.

Finding what works best with students may be a complicated process but it is a needed process to provide better support for secondary students. There is funding being provided for schools to begin this process so that they can better develop the pre-existing mental health supports. Additionally, if districts and schools learned to collaborate between one another with what has worked for them so far, they would be able to create a stronger support system because it could include all of the best parts across different schools. As stated above by Professor Elizabeth Bailey, research has shown that students’ mental health benefits from a higher mental health literacy. This justifies why mental health curriculum should be expanded upon what already exists so that it will create a greater impact on students. Once students can learn what good mental health looks like they will more easily be able to replicate mental health literacy skills. If schools were to consider this research about collaboration and how mental health literacy helps students listen to students like DJ Gill’s suggestions, collaborate between districts and listen to what individual teachers have found works (such as Josh Ogilvie’s), their mental health supports would become much more effective. Over time, having a singular system to help students would be much easier to implement. It would take longer to sort out but would have a much bigger payoff. Following a more straightforward and direct approach would become more accessible because it would be simpler for students to be taught and to be accessed.

Overall, the British Columbia secondary education system has made many strides in an attempt to create a more supportive environment for secondary students and their mental health. This includes curriculum changes, developing more accessible mental health supports and creating a bigger budget for such changes. However, these strides are not doing enough for students. Many schools are lacking the resources needed. This is largely because most mental health supports are not available province wide and create a large gap between what students can access depending on what school or district, they are a part of. The B.C. education system needs to create a more concrete outline for what should be included in schools to help students’ mental health. This should also include collaboration between districts and schools as well as adding teacher and student input. The most effective mental health curriculum would be one that is built by what has been found to work so far and one that includes what people within the system think should be included (such as teachers and students). The education system in relation to mental health have come a long way but still has lots of room to grow and change for the better and changing the curriculum and how it interacts with mental health would be a welcome and necessary change.