After the city of Fishers, an Indianapolis suburb of about 90,000, had 13 suicides in 2016, city officials launched a campaign to destigmatize mental health issues - including in the school system.
District Mental Health Coordinator Brooke Lawson and Assistant Superintendent of Staff and Student Services Michael Beresford discuss the challenges of addressing mental health issues, and how a student-launched club is helping to remove the stigma attached to mental illness.
Tell us about Stigma Free HSE.
Lawson: In my second week here, I got an email from a student asking for my help in creating a mental health club at his high school. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, but I had never really heard about a school mental health club.
We helped him identify the vision of this club - we wanted to be very careful that it wasn't going to be a support group for kids. We knew there would probably be some kids who would come to the club who were themselves struggling with mental illness, but that wasn't really the goal of the club.
This student wanted to raise awareness of mental illness and educate his peers on what mental illness is. He wanted to be a voice for other kids and a resource for his friends if they were struggling.
I didn't know whether kids would want to come to a mental health club, but we had 30 students show up to our first meeting. Since then we've had between 50 and 70 students attend each meeting.
Beresford: What's remarkable is that from the onset, we've identified stigma as the No. 1 barrier to helping people who are suffering in silence.
To read more of Tim Goral's article, please click here.
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