The fellowship hall at my church was the last place I expected to be one Sunday night several years ago. We were meeting there instead of in the sanctuary to grieve and process the suicide of a teen in our church family. As a teacher and a school administrator, I had been part of grieving communities before, but this was different: A son of my own church gone way too early. The leader of the session was from Pine Rest, a local mental health services organization, and he was there not only to help us process the loss but also to tell us about the Church Assistance Program. This program allows any congregation member to get counseling, three sessions per incident, for free anytime through Pine Rest. My church signed up in response to the tragic death. I wondered, What would a school with the same program look like? I approached the leader and asked, “Have you ever thought of doing this with schools?” A year later he called and said they had created a new program called the Student Assistance Program and wondered if we wanted to join. We did, and it is changing how we teach self-care, how we care for student mental-health issues, and how we discipline, all while contributing to a more positive school culture.
Christian communities often have stigma attached to caring for metal health, and introducing this program allows us a way to talk to kids about how to care for themselves.
The program is easy to set up and use. Annually, we report the number of staff and enrolled families to Pine Rest, and for a small fee per family, we have access to the counseling services, two educational events, emergency response services, and the Pine Rest mental health website. When a student needs mental health services that are beyond the scope of our own school counselors, they call Pine Rest and report that they are a part of our group. They are asked for insurance information so that if counseling goes beyond the three meetings, the services are covered. After that they are matched with a counselor who is an expert in their needs and can attend three sessions for free. Many of the issues that present themselves are resolved in those three sessions, so the free plan is very helpful. All students, staff, and their families are covered by the program, so it extends well beyond the students in our building, providing a comprehensive resource for the community. While our school never receives information about who gets help, we do get a quarterly report of how many people used the services. This data allows us to see trends and make informed decisions about future training for teachers and students.
Joining the Student Assistance Program changed how we talk about mental health at South Christian. It has freed us to normalize mental-health issues and to discuss how working on them is important and valuable. Christian communities often have stigma attached to caring for metal health, and introducing this program allows us a way to talk to kids about how to care for themselves. This is reinforced in our health classes, which make use of Pine Rest’s website. The website has vetted and researched advice on all areas of health that students and families can access. It also allows us to offer mental-health training for our teachers and students. We have done suicide awareness sessions with our student body and anxiety training for teachers through the program. Slowly, we are removing the stigma of caring for mental health that was prevalent before using the program.
The Student Assistance Program has also changed how we handle student mental health. School counseling departments continue to increase the scope of their practice in today’s high schools. There are multiple pressures creating this problem: wider academic offerings, more involved college searches, school anxiety, and more complicated family situations have all added pressures on traditional school counselors. Making this program available to our students has freed counselors up from some of these additional demands. It has reduced the amount of short-term counseling that we are providing for issues like grief and loss, test anxiety, and other short-term mental-health crises. Second, it has created a clear and easy path for students whose counseling needs extended beyond what our counselors can offer. Referring students to free and reliable help sets them up for success immediately, and it gives them access to tools and support for beyond graduation, if required. We have been able to meet the increasing needs of the day without changing our staffing while better meeting the needs of students.
Finally, the program is beginning to shape our discipline practices. Like many schools, we at times have students who are struggling with addictions of many different types. Our policy at different stages requires counseling and treatment. Sometimes the school even ends up paying for treatments because the families involved cannot afford counseling or do not have insurance, so these types of requirements are only given out for the most extreme cases. We are now much freer to require counseling as part of a restorative plan. We can also refer to counseling for addictions beyond just drugs, like alcohol or pornography. These options open up how we can turn discipline situations into community restoration.
A while back, a student called the support number to schedule an appointment to talk about her depression. She remembers the program because of one of our suicide awareness chapels. The person doing the intake talked with her, trying to figure out what kind of counselor would be best. As the conversation moved on, it became clear to the staff member that this student needed immediate support, so the student’s parents were called, and they helped bring her to care. She figured out many things while away from school and successfully joined classes again after a week. Later that year she smiled as she walked across the stage at graduation. She allowed me to share this story because this program literally saved her life. Sometimes I tell this story and think there would be one less smile at graduation if we had not had this program. When I really stop and think about it, though, if we had lost a student that day, there would have been a cloud over the graduation and the entire school year. The Student Assistance Program is an inexpensive and effective tool to help care for students’ mental-health needs, and it has become an important aspect of how we educate students.
Jim Peterson is the head of school at South Christian High School in Byron Center, Michigan. He also serves as a school designer for Teaching for Transformation with CACE, the Center for Advancement of Christian Education. He was a science and math teacher, a technology coordinator, a district administrator, and a camp director before his current role. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and a grandson.
