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Connect Canyons
Learning is about making connections, and we invite you to learn and connect with us. Connect Canyons is a show about what we teach in Canyons District, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great: students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts, too. And we spotlight the “connection makers” — personalities, programs and prospects — we find compelling and inspiring.
Connect Canyons
Ep 102: Helping Students Tackle Mental Health in the Winter Months
A new study found Americans see poor mental health as one of the biggest threats to public health, just behind obesity and the opioid epidemic — more of a societal threat than cancer, COVID 19, or access to firearms. We've also seen that rise in mental health challenges in school age students over the last few years. As we've seen youth of all ages dealing with those challenges, and the cold months drag on, Canyon School District has worked to ensure we have people in place to help.
On the latest episode of Connect Canyons, we hear from two of those people working to help guide our students – Kelly Redican, Prevention Specialist for the District, and Sasha Freed, Canyons Education Therapist and School Social Worker.
“Just knowing and understanding it’s OK to be vulnerable and to express how you feel and that you’re struggling at times too,” says Redican. “I think coming out of the holidays and with winter, especially here when we get that inversion, it’s hard not just for teenagers with all the things they’re dealing with, but adults can really struggle too.”
Episode Chapters
00:56 Meet the Experts: Kelly Redican and Sasha Freed
Our guests share a bit about themselves and the experience they bring to helping Canyons students.
03:28 Support Systems in Schools: Resources and Programs
Canyons has a number of resources in place for not only students but for parents alike. We learn about the experts in place at each school across the District.
06:06 Recognizing Mental Health Signs in Students
Feed tells us about some of the signs parents can look for if their child might be struggling, and how they differ from day-to-day feelings.
11:25 Parental Guidance: How to Talk to Your Kids About Mental Health
Once parents have identified changes in their children, our experts explain how parents can start a dialogue with their child in ways that will make them feel understood. We also learn the next steps parents can take in reaching out to District staff who can help.
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by Canyons School District. This is a show about what we teach, how we teach and why we get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great Students, teachers, principals, parents and more. We meet national experts too. Learning is about making connections, so connect with us experts too.
Speaker 2:Learning is about making connections, so connect with us. A new study found Americans see poor mental health as one of the biggest threats to public health, just behind obesity and the opioid epidemic, and more of a societal threat than access to firearms, cancer or COVID-19. We've also seen that rise in mental health challenges in school-age students over the last few years and, as we've seen youth of all ages dealing with those challenges, canyons School District has worked to ensure we have people in place to help. Welcome to Connect Canyons. I'm your host. Frances Cook, joining me today are two of those people working to help guide our students.
Speaker 2:I'm joined by Kelly Redican, prevention Specialist for the District, and Sasha Freed, kenyon's educational therapist and school social worker, among other things, and we'll get into that a little bit. Thank you both for joining us. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks. I'd like to start with what it is you ladies do we? You know. Therapy, social work that's all a lot of words that, to a lot of people, mean the same thing. So, kelly, would you start us off? What is a prevention specialist?
Speaker 4:I have a background in mental health and school counseling and then I moved to Canyons District as a prevention specialist and I'm over suicide prevention, substance abuse prevention, mental health screening nights, the Canyons Family Center, which we offer great opportunities for families to have classes to support not only parents and students at the Canyons Family Center, but the Mental Health Screener Nights help us to identify students in a short-term way where parents can kind of get an idea of where their students stand and what they're struggling with social and emotionally. It's ways for us to help support them. I just kind of connect all of those things and logistically and over all of those things we implement in the district to help support our students and families. So you don't do much.
Speaker 2:Well, a little, that's a lot, that's a lot of great things. Sasha, how about you? You wear quite a few hats as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I guess just a little background. I have my master's in clinical social work and then when I started, I actually started at Hillcrest as the school-based mental health therapist there. So in contract I worked for Hopeful Beginnings and then kept a caseload of students at Hillcrest as their individual therapist. Then, when I came to Gaines, I started working out what we call Youth Academy, and so my role at Youth Academy is I work with a lot of kids who have struggled to succeed in the typical school environment, whether that's for disciplinary reasons or, you know, their own mental health concerns. A lot of times they come to us in different ways and so we work in that environment to provide them with a lot of individualized support, both educationally and social, emotionally and so like on a day-to-day basis. What I do with those students is individual counseling, group counseling, and then we work a lot with the students and the families for, like, case management support of connecting them to outside therapists, helping them find medication management providers and then getting them on a plan to get back to regular school.
Speaker 2:That's really cool to hear. I'm relatively new to the district and I'd never heard of the Youth Academy, so learning about it I was like wow, that's fantastic that we have that resource.
Speaker 2:There are a number of factors that impact our mental health, whether it's lingering effects from the pandemic, political and cultural landscapes, those winter blues. Then you take all of those things and you add it to being a student, being a kid right now and the pressures that they're seeing. Can you talk about some of the people and the steps that we have in place at each of our schools to help those students?
Speaker 4:We're so lucky at Kenyans District to have a great student support team in every school, which usually includes a school social worker, a school counselor, school psych that helps support our students and families, to make sure they are checking out our students' social and emotional health and intervening when they need help, whatever might come up or anything that they're dealing with, so that we can help them get from point A to point B so that they're more successful in their school environment as well. And we have a lot of great things outside of the district. We have our Canyons Family Center, which we have great classes for our parents and students that include anxiety and anger management. Sasha luckily teaches one of our classes at the Canyons Family Center, which was new last semester for teen depression and suicidal ideation, for helping parents to identify some of those things you might see in your students and how to address those things and what you do and how you handle it and how you move forward. And she and Jessica Winward run that class. It's been a great class. We'd love to have more people in our class because I think it's a great resource, but all of our other classes are available as well.
Speaker 4:And then we offer our mental health screener nights for parents that might be a little bit concerned about their students and just want to see where they are socially and emotionally, so they come in for mental health screenings. Our next one will be January 23rd at Union Middle School. They start at four o'clock, they go till about 730. They'll take a terrasmetric screener, the parents will complete a questionnaire and then they'll meet with a screener to go over the results of the terrasmetric survey and talk about how we can best help you. Some of our families don't even know the resources they have in their school and sometimes those screening nights are very helpful for them to understand what they have right at their fingertips but also some things we have outside of those resources where we can help our families even in the community as well.
Speaker 2:You know you mentioned parents not knowing about the resources. I mean, when I was in school I hardly knew what the purview of a school counselor was right, and that's all we had yeah, we didn't have therapists, and you know these myriad of team members that are available to help.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a really beautiful thing. You mentioned signs of, you know, maybe, if your students are struggling with mental health. I think right now the fun holidays are over, santa's gone back to the North Pole, it's just cold and I think for a lot of us the wintertime can be, you know, kind of a bluesy time as it were? What are some of the signs that not only we can look out for as adults, but that we can maybe look, that parents can maybe look for in their children?
Speaker 3:I'll just go ahead and answer that. I think two of the things that you may be talking about is what we would call seasonal affective disorder, which is really those winter blues where people you know are starting to commonly say that they have seasonal depression. Right, because it's dark, it's gloomy and we're cooped up inside of our house and it's like throwing us back to living through COVID again. Right, where you can't go anywhere and it's too cold. It's literally sad.
Speaker 2:It's literally sad.
Speaker 3:And that is definitely something that we I think a lot of people need to look for. But what I think we commonly see in a lot of our teens and our kids is they're going through school and then just the pressures of right third quarter. There's no breaks.
Speaker 3:They just got through the best of the breaks and third quarter is a little rough is we have kids that are a lot of times dealing with what we would call major depressive disorder. Right, and this is what we say when we classically say our students depressed or worried about depression. The signs that we look out for are that poor performance in school. Depression makes it really hard for us to concentrate, feel motivated to go to school and really be able to learn the material that we're sitting in class trying to absorb. You also see our students start to withdraw from activities they once thought were fun. Right, you have your kid who loves gaming and now video games just don't seem that fun. Or your kid who loved to be in football and now he's like no, mama, I want to skip practice today. Depression we also think about is classically that mood change. It's that sadness and that hopelessness feeling. What is very interesting is that a lot of times with our teens, we expect them to be moody.
Speaker 3:Right, we're like oh my gosh, teens mood swings hormones, but we will see some of that sadness and hopelessness, depending on your kid and kind of how they deal with things. And then some kids we actually see it come out more in anger and rage and irritability. So this is our kid that has turned beyond normal teenage moodiness and now is excessively sad, sleeping a lot. Or our kid who is just very angry and irritable. They overreact about the smallest things. They don't want to talk about anything. They're like mom, get off my back. Why are you even asking me this? So it's more than just your teenage moodiness and a lot of these symptoms. We see they need to last longer than two weeks. That's what we're wanting, right? It's not just a. I had a bad day at school, I'm going through a breakup. It's that two weeks or more of this prolonged changes in the mood, changes in their functioning and then changes in their performance in school and at home.
Speaker 2:I really liked your point about how we expect teens to be moody to some extent or to have a bit of an attitude, because they're learning, they're growing, they're adjusting to a different world, but then there's that crossover. I would imagine parents can be almost that first line of defense, right, like you said, after that two weeks, if parents are still seeing it, what can they do? Can they come to their schools? Who do they go to to say, hey, you know, maybe this is my kid being moody, but I don't know, you know, my parental instincts are telling me it's something else.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, there's a lot of things you could do. Obviously, you could reach out to your school counselor or school social worker just say I have some concerns or I'm worried. But you could also set up an intake at the Canyons Family Center. We could assess what is going on or attend a mental health screening night. We don't diagnose at either of those events, but we could see signs of patterns of behavior that would show depression, anxiety, other things, and then we would offer supports that could help you navigate the new things that you might be dealing with with your students' moods and behaviors, the new things that you might be dealing with with your students' moods and behaviors.
Speaker 4:So there's some initial ways to do that. But also to reach out to them to maybe get some resources in the community. If parents are maybe uncomfortable going to talk to someone at the school, sometimes parents feel like they want to have things more confidential or they might, you know, not feel comfortable doing that we can help you access services outside of the school. So if someone wanted to contact me at the district, I could certainly link them to some resources outside as well. And on Mental Health Screener Nights, we give the family a packet with tons of resources that are not only within the school but outside of the school as well. Just some options where people can reach out and try to find resources for their students where people can reach out and try to find resources for their students.
Speaker 2:I feel like we're finally hitting that point where mental health isn't this taboo topic. I think there's still a stigma to it, but I think a lot of the younger generation is more open to talking about it. And oh, my therapist said this. You wouldn't hear somebody having openly talked about their therapist 10, 20 years ago. What are some ways that maybe parents can talk to their kids to see if something's wrong or what that underlying issue is? Maybe it is just they're having a bad week at school, they fail a test or they broke up with their partner, you know, but maybe it's deeper. What are ways that they can go to their child and start those conversations?
Speaker 3:This is my jam.
Speaker 2:I love this Okay.
Speaker 3:So I mean I'm going to credit Bruce Perry. He does a lot of work with trauma, but I like his format of I call it the three R's. And this is what we talk about in our teen depression class with parents is it's regulate, relate and then reason. And the idea is, as adults, we want to jump to problem solving. We want to say, hey, kid, something's going on. I think I need to take you to the doctor. I think. I need to talk to your school counselor.
Speaker 2:How do we fix it right now?
Speaker 3:Right, and then your kid goes. Why are you even bugging me Like, leave me alone?
Speaker 2:You're very good at that, by the way. Thank you.
Speaker 3:This is where we pause, we take that step back and we think, okay, is my kid regulated right now? Meaning, are they in a calm state of mind? Because, right, any of us who are calm and somebody goes up to us and says, hey, calm down, I want to talk, I would, we're not. That's not going to help me.
Speaker 2:Never in the history of calming down. No, no, calm down, yeah.
Speaker 3:Calm down has never worked when someone is uncooperative. So make sure that they're regulated and that they're in an emotional state where they're open to talk and that they're everything's, not a heightened situation Once they're there. We want to relate to our kids. Most of the time these teens are smarter than we think they, but sometimes dumber than they think they are. Our kids know a lot of what they should do or they know that they need to reach out to their parents. They're just worried that they're going to be misunderstood.
Speaker 3:Most of the teens I work with that's one of the number one things they say is that people don't understand or my parents don't understand, and so what we can do with that relate, that second R is validate our kids. Just say, hey, you know, don't ignore your parental gut and say, hey, I've just been noticing some things that you know, the little changes. You know you seem a little bit more frustrated with things or you're having more bad days at school. I just want to understand, tell me what's going on. I want to be here for you and support you in any way you need and then open that door, see if they're willing to talk. If they start talking, we listen to learn right. It's that TikTok. We listen, we don't judge.
Speaker 3:But, you just listen to learn, figure out what are they trying to tell you, rather than listening to respond. And then from there, once your student is starting to feel like they're understood, then that's when we can move into the reason thing. And a lot of times kids just want to feel empowered. So you just kind of say, you know, like, hey, what do you think we should do about that? Or I wonder if you've been thinking about this a lot and you've kind of had some ideas about what you want to do. Tell me, what could I help with? Where do you want to start? And then usually your teen will just start saying you know, hey, man, I want to talk to my school counselor. She's really cool and let's be like, great, let's take you, you want me to call, you want me to set it up. But really, those first two R's before we jump to the problem solving, because as adults we just want to jump to the reason.
Speaker 4:We do but let's get them regulated, help them feel understood and then problem solve and once you break that barrier, a lot of times it just opens up the floodgates for students being able to understand. I can talk to my parents and actually they're pretty level-headed and maybe they do have some wise thoughts for me and actually do get it, because they were teenagers once themselves, which they seem to forget sometimes that we do understand and we want to help.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we've been there. We've all been in high school and had to deal with some of those stressors. Although I feel like nowadays there's a lot more stress and pressure, it seems to me that it's a lot more than I had to deal with, for example.
Speaker 2:But helping them to hear and actually take in that we do recognize that in that. We do recognize that you know, we know there's a lot going on these days. That are maybe some different issues or challenges that we didn't have to face, but we can probably understand some of those key underlying issues. I loved your point about listening to learn. I think that's one of the biggest For me. I struggled with that. I would listen to respond and found myself waiting for the other person to stop talking so that I could start talking. And we want to show that we're empathetic. Oh, I totally understand when I was your age and sometimes that doesn't really help because the kids are like well, what was that 1914?
Speaker 1:Kids are like well, what was that 1914?
Speaker 2:So I think you hit the nail on the head having that safe space, knowing your parents want to hear what you're saying and are more than willing to take the time to sit down with you. And then maybe you do need to take it to that next step. What would you like people to know about mental health? Like we've said, it's kind of a different landscape these days. What message would you want out there?
Speaker 4:I just want people to understand that, paying attention to what's going on with you socially and emotionally your kids yourself first sometimes. Sometimes we have to put on that oxygen mask in the airplane before we can put on, you know, the mask of our child, understanding where you're coming from and what you might be dealing with or what you bring to the table based on your past trauma or your experiences, whatever it might be. There might be some underlying mental health issues that some of our you know parents have as well, that are struggling and understanding that piece. It's okay to get help, to also talk about it to other people. We want to get our kids help and we want to support them when we want them to be successful or be better than we have been, whatever it might be. Just knowing that understanding that piece and it's okay for you to be vulnerable and for you to express how you feel and that you're struggling.
Speaker 4:Maybe at times too, I think, coming out of the holidays and with winter, especially here when we get that inversion, it's hard, not just for teenagers with all the things they're dealing with, but adults really struggle with that piece. You know the holidays can be extremely stressful. There's a lot of family situations that can be highly traumatizing or stressful or amazing. You know you have extremes of that and understanding that. That's all okay. Everyone deals with it in different ways, but if you feel like you need help too, we have ways to support our parents so we can be the best we can be to help support our students as well. And mental health. You're right. I think we are breaking down barriers and we're able to talk about it more, and it's okay. It's okay if you have a diagnosis. It's okay if you need to take medication. It's okay if you need to talk to someone. We all want everyone to be happier and healthier and lead better lives, so there's nothing stigmatized about it or should be, and we should be okay expressing that.
Speaker 2:It's okay to not be okay. Be you guys.
Speaker 3:I think, just as a parent, I think what we worry about is like are we overreacting? And I think you have that parental gut for a reason, so respond to it and just being aware of your headspace, right, am I in the right time and place to listen to my kid and have this conversation, or is there other stuff that's going on for me? Because it's taking that step back and think is this the time that I want to have this conversation? And then, if you're midway through the conversation and you need to stop, because you're feeling all those feelings and you have that urge that you want to problem solve, you have that urge that you want to be like why? Why are you depressed? Right? That's where we just take the step back and be like hey, you know, thanks for talking with me about it. I really want to continue this conversation, but why don't we put a pin in it and let's chat again tomorrow? Then you take that break, you stop and don't say anything you don't want to say, but still leave the door open.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think, like you said, once that doorway is open, they realize that and they see that there's a light on the other side and that there's help on the other side. I see that there's a light on the other side and that there's help on the other side. You know, it's really a beautiful thing to hear just the plethora of amazing resources that we have here at Canyons, from the Canyons Family Center to our teen classes, to the Youth Academy, you know these mental health screening nights. I just want to thank you both and all of your teams for all the hard work that you do to help our students, both and all of your teams, for all the hard work that you do to help our students especially like you said, third quarter can be kind of tough without those breaks and graduation still looks like it's over the hill and summer break.
Speaker 2:But I think if we work together and we're willing to ask each other for help and show some compassion, then we'll all get through it together.
Speaker 4:I agree. Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, and thank you for listening. If there's a topic you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, send us an email to communications at canyonsdistrictorg.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect Canyons. Connect with us on Twitter, facebook or Instagram at Canyons District or on our website, canyonsdistrictorg.
