Breaking the Silence in Student Mental Health

I am Dr. Christine Sartiaguda, Director of Clinical Counselling. Clinical Counselling is a mental health program that provides counseling services to students in school settings, including elementary, middle, and high schools. Students who come to counseling are suffering from mental health issues: depression, anxiety, sexual abuse, gang involvement, etc.

Since high school, I started to be interested in psychotherapy, which is helping people with problems through talking and processing. I enjoyed being a good listener. So, after high school, I went to college and got a chance to study psychology, which I really enjoyed. I got a master's in marital and family therapy. It is a master’s degree that teaches you how to provide therapy specifically to couples, families, and children.

In 2003, I talked to a friend who had opened up several charter schools, and I proposed this program about providing mental therapies to students. My friend agreed and recruited me, and that is where the program started. Graduate students from college who want to be therapists could do internships in these schools, where they earn free counseling services, while students in the charter schools could have someone to talk to. The program started with 16 interns in 2004 and helped to support 6 schools. Now, there are 80 interns supporting 40 schools.

Over the years, I have observed a steady rise in mental health issues among students, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Children in schools always had mental health issues where they had a lack of support. Since the pandemic, kids experiencing the trauma of staying home for a long period of time have caused severe spikes in depression and anxiety. Besides, kids face so many more challenges while lacking socialization and education during the pandemic. People lost loved ones and faced financial hardships. Children were dealing with parents losing jobs and parents being stressed. Overall, the lack of safety during the pandemic in recent years was a problem. 

Additionally, social media have also played a huge role. Children are addicted to the screen and social media platforms, affecting people's sense of self. Self-esteem begins to tie up with likes and validations through social media. People are obsessed with trying to be something that they are not. Also, social media has opened a new form of bullying: a dramatic increase in cyberbullying. It became easy for kids to hurt each other over social media, doing it anonymously. All of that has been taking a toll on students’ mental health.

As a result, students across the nation have been struggling academically and socially, and the need for mental health support has dramatically increased. There has been a big demand for my mental health treatment program since the pandemic. Before the pandemic, there were only 40 counselors; after the pandemic, the number became 60 counselors. The number of counselors is continuing to grow. Since the pandemic, more schools have been reaching out to me to provide counseling services. 

I have counseled so many different cases. The program worked with several kids who have experienced severe sexual abuse. Cases where students have had years of ongoing abuse from several family members. It had such an impact on me because students like this have no one to talk to before the program and would feel alone and experience such shame. Seeing these students being able to use our program so that they could be loved and that they matter has been significant. We’re able to support students who wanted to kill themselves or feel deeply depressed. They have been able to find support by talking to counselors while also helping families learn how to support each other. 

However, the counseling process is complicated. There are always students who are resistant to wanting to talk to a counselor. Some students are so broken that they have a mistrust of an adult, and counselors have found it hard to connect with them. I’d say around 50 percent of students decline the counseling process; they don’t trust adults with good intentions. They still have these misconceptions that counseling is only for crazy people and not for people who are upset and feel worried. 

My advice to anyone struggling with mental health is that there are always people out there who can help by just talking. Talking to a real person, a trained and certified adult, can be healing. There are multiple ways, such as art, music, and cinema, and modalities that counselors can use to connect with people. My advice is to still trust people who deserve to be trusted and stay positive throughout your life.

Reflecting on my career, I realize that my largest gain would be knowing that thousands of students are getting support because I started this program. This kind of program does not exist in many places, and millions of students go to school without mental health support. However, at least at the schools where I am working, kids have an adult that they can trust and always talk to.

- Christine Sartiaguda

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