Students Urged to Make Use of Mental Health Services in Schools

Minister of Education and Youth, Hon. Fayval Williams, is encouraging students to take advantage of the mental health support services that are available in schools.

She said that increased resources are being dedicated to addressing mental health and wellness and ensuring that students can access the support they need to be resilient and achieve academic success.

This includes making greater effort to understand students’ social and emotional backgrounds.

“Within our schools we are beginning to put resources into training. You will note that in several high schools we have guidance counsellors and we are ensuring they get additional training.

“We have deans of discipline who ought to be understanding of behaviour in young people. We have our nurses and, recently, we pulled together all these professionals within a school to say, ‘you are the first line of defence for our students’,” she noted.

Minister Williams, who was addressing a ‘Rapping with the Minister’ forum at Jamaica College in St. Andrew on Tuesday (February 20), noted that in the past, issues of mental health were not widely spoken about.

However, since the reopening of schools after COVID-19, there have been increased awareness of and focus on the mental health impact of the pandemic on students.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dr. Kasan Troupe, in further highlighting the work being done to address mental health issues among students, noted that there are more than 1,098 guidance counsellors in schools as well as deans of discipline and health and family life professionals, representing about $4.5 billion in expenditure.

She said there is a renewed guidance model, which involves collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Wellness and professionals beyond the school space.

“We layered additional funding for our guidance counsellors to refer students, teachers and support staff who may need support coming out of COVID-19, to access this service, by making the request through the regional office for external support from psychologists and psychiatrists,” Dr. Troupe informed.

She further cited the provision of safe spaces like wellness benches, which give students the opportunity to unwind and reflect, while being able to talk through issues with peers or educators.

There are also arrangements for mental health rehabilitation weeks and behaviour change support teams in schools.

Meanwhile, Minister Williams encouraged students to be careful about their use of social media and to be aware of its effects on their mental health.

“You have access to information like no other generation and not all of that information is true. Many people go to social media, and they see people with brand-new shiny cars and ask themselves why they don’t have those things and go into a depressive state, not knowing that this may not even be true,” she remarked.

She implored students to continue to leverage the resources in schools and assured them that the Ministry continues to work hard, in a fast-paced environment, to increase their access to mental health services.