Tipp City schools give more focus to emotional and mental health

Students’ emotional and mental health is the focus of several initiatives at the Tipp City Exempted Village Schools.

The board of education recently heard presentations from school counselors on mental health and wellness and a growing need for related services. It also heard details of a life skills assessment tool that will be introduced in early 2019 to help identify students who may need support in areas of social and emotional wellness.

“Our expertise is education, not mental health. As we are seeing more and more students coming to our counselors with mental health needs, it is outside their area of expertise,” said Steve Verhoff, principal at Tippecanoe High School.

High school counselor Christine Schmidt and middle school counselor Anne Toohey talked with the board Dec. 17 about mental health issues for students, how more schools are offering services and the benefits a school-based mental health therapist would offer the district. A therapist could offer onsite counseling for individuals and groups as well as provide staff mental health education, they said.

“It is common in this area and some of the other area school districts to have a therapist on site” at least a couple of days a week, Toohey said.

“It’s time to let the professionals who are trained to do it, do it. The need is there and it’s time,” said board member Theresa Dunaway.

Toohey said counselors would continue to work with students and with any school-based therapist. The counselors shared statistics from the National Alliance on Mental Health for youth ages 13-18. They included suicide being the second leading cause of death and one in five youth in the age group will have some type of serious mental health illness.

Superintendent Gretta Kumpf talked about a Terra Metrics Life Skills Assessment tool the district plans to start, with parental permission, for students in the middle and high schools. The tool is designed to identify students who may be at risk and needing support in “social emotional wellness,” a program description said.

Among areas covered in the assessment are anxiety, bullying, depression, ostracism and resiliency.

Board members and others said the district should be prepared to, with the help of others, work with those identified as needing support.

“We’ve really tried to make an effort to be proactive,” Kumpf said. Schools representatives have sent a letter to area health care providers asking what more can be done to provide adolescent mental health services, she said.

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