Podcast

The podcast episode begins with a disclaimer acknowledging the sensitivity of mental health issues and the importance of support. The hosts, Roger and Hannah, share their personal experiences with mental health and their motivation for researching effective ways to support struggling students. They refer to a CDC survey that shows an increase in the number of students experiencing poor mental health. They also mention a TED Talk by Maya Dawson, who highlights the lack of preparation among students to address mental health struggles. Roger and Hannah conduct a survey among their peers and find that over 40% perceive their peers as struggling with mental health. They discuss the potential benefits of peer group support systems based on research. They propose exploring this form of support in high schools, as the current model of one-on-one counseling may have barriers for students. They emphasize the importance of school connectedness and suggest conducting further research involving stu We'd really like to start off this podcast with just a disclaimer to acknowledge that mental health is a very sensitive issue and we want to acknowledge that. Several of our listeners might be struggling with all sorts of feelings that might include hopelessness or anxiety, depression, or other things that might be limiting your current state of satisfaction. We want to encourage you that you're not alone and that there are people in your lives at school, at home, at clubs, on teams, or other places where you might experience community who sincerely care for you and they want to be there to support you. So I just wanted to say that up front about this. The purpose of our research is to explore more effective ways to help a growing population of students who are struggling with mental health issues. I'm Roger Chamberlain and I am the father of four kids that are either just coming out of high school or have just been in high school. So this is an important topic to me because I have seen both the benefits of therapy for myself as well as kids and I understand the challenges that we all face, especially after the COVID-19 time that we went through. And my partner in this project is Hannah Lindenau and here she is. Hi, yeah, my name is Hannah and I wanted to do this project because I myself have struggled with mental health on and off throughout my life and through that and through my experience with that I have learned that for me it's really important to turn to people I care about and get support from people that I care about in order to feel like I can manage everything and so I think that practicing that and just learning more tools to help your mental health and to manage it, I think is just so important, especially in these times with COVID just happening and everything, I think it's really important. According to the Center for Disease Control survey from 2022, 43% of students responded with reports that they struggled with poor mental health demonstrated by the fact that they had experienced ongoing sadness and a lack of hope during the past year. This compares to just 23% of young people responding the same way in 2011, just 11 years earlier. Doctors Helstrom and Beckman in their 2021 study titled Life Changes and Barriers to Help Seeking pointed to social pressures that come from social media, influential people, and influencers that have access to young people through smart technology at a virtual limitless pace, putting an exceedingly heavy burden on young people that hasn't been experienced in previous times. This contributes significantly to that 43% number that the CDC came out with as well. We also listened to a TED Talk by Maya Dawson, and Hannah, can you tell us a little bit more about that? Of course. So, Maya Dawson in a TED Talk addresses mental health access for high schoolers, and she points out that students in her generation are not being adequately prepared to address the growing epidemic of mental health struggles. Her research reveals that her peers are experiencing the highest suicide rates since World War II. As we researched this information, we were led to wonder how our own local community of students compared, as well as what resources might be available to help them. We used Google Forms to do a short survey of classmates about their experience in high school. Several of the respondents are currently in high school or have just graduated. We found that our classmates perceive that over 40% of their own peers struggle with their mental health. This lines up with the data that the CDC reported. Based on our own personal experiences, as well as the research that we explored, we started to wonder what kind of support students might be getting in school. Our hunch was that intentional peer group support systems might be beneficial to all students and may not be widely available in the high school setting. A study that was conducted that analyzed 56 studies over 20 years in 2017 reported in the Journal of Clinical Child Psychology that group therapy was proven more effective for children and teenagers than any other forms of therapy. It said that the average child or adolescent treated by group treatment was better off than 73% of those that were not. Our survey inquired about this by asking questions to our peer group about group support systems. We found that only 20% of respondents had ever tried such a support system. But at the same time, 86% of them would be open to the opportunity if it presented itself in school. This raised the question of what is the effectiveness of peer support groups? So Nina Brown of Old Dominion University says that participants of group therapy benefit as a whole because they see progress in others. Each member can become an agent of change simply by being a group member and either growing themselves or watching others grow. They all realize that they too can cope and feel better as they participate actively with one another. Stanford University's Irvin David Yalom, MD, in the 2005 book, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychology, said that hearing from peers may be more helpful than receiving guidance from a therapist since peers can identify with one another. Those peer interactions appear to translate well to real-world gains. We wonder if purposely presenting young people with an in-school opportunity to participate in peer group support therapy would be beneficial. The current models in school are presented in the form of one-on-one counseling with a school counselor that generally occurs before or after school. This current model puts barriers in front of the few students who even want to admit that they are struggling. Those barriers affect all people but might disproportionately affect those that are marginalized in our schools. This is because getting the help that they need requires them to step outside of their normal day to accommodate for their own need. This affects their homework load, their class schedule, their family schedules, and potentially work and other activities which may be positive things in their day. In light of this current structure, we propose looking at a different way to address our growing mental health needs at the high school level. Based on our survey results and the research that has been conducted so far, we find that exploring peer support group situations during the class day for all students might be beneficial. We recognize that many young people don't recognize their own mental health needs until it's too late, and choices have been made that could have been curbed or prevented by more intentional help. The CDC in a 2001 study found that school connectedness is a very important ingredient to creating an environment where students flourish the best. We found it curious in our survey that when we asked why students would participate in our peer group support setting, three people out of 15 respondents, without prompting, stated that they wouldn't feel so alone. Eight others didn't specifically use the term alone, but they did recognize that being in a group gave them community that was lacking. We propose looking into alternative forms of peer group support within the public school system that intentionally provides opportunity and guidance from trained therapists. More studies would need to be conducted to explore this idea. It needs the input of students, staff, administrators, and professional counselors in order to establish ground rules and boundaries for young people in this kind of setting. Our recommendation is to conduct more extensive and broader research that addresses the need as well as the form in which such a setting might take place. Our counseling professionals would need to be heavily involved at the table of this research so that they can bring a depth of knowledge and experience to the table. The same goes for our teachers and administrators. Young people's participation is highly valued as well because they will be participating in creating a peer culture that invites and runs this kind of outside-of-the-box thinking. We thank you for taking the time to listen to us and we hope that our research is a starting point to have a conversation about peer group therapeutic settings in the high schools.