Children’s mental health explored

News — 11 May 2011

The Centre saw a gathering of youth, social workers, teachers, school board administrators, councillors, and other mental health professionals to take in the Children and Youth Mental Health In Schools Awareness Symposium on May 6.

“It’s a celebration of the last year’s work in this area around children and student mental health,” said Sean Monteith, Superintendent of Education for Keewatin-Patricia District School Board (KPDSB).

The symposium was a result of the KPDSB’s work with the Northwest Catholic School Board and children’s agencies working together to discuss and address mental health with kids, specifically stigma reduction, awareness for staff, realizing this is a very legitimate concern and a very legitimate need for kids.

“One in three fifteen year olds have an identifiable anxiety or depression disorder. Half of them will say nothing to anyone, we know that. We also know that our statistics are probably higher in northwestern Ontario and so when we look at student achievement and student learning, if we’re not looking at the whole student and their emotional, behavioral and environmental needs then we need to take a greater look at what we can do to support the student,” said Monteith.

The team was also looking at resiliency in kids, and ensuring that the students know that if something happens on the weekends, the teachers and staff are still there for the student when they come back to school on Monday.

A youth panel was compiled for the symposium, made up of all secondary school students, to speak on their own life experiences with mental health concerns, whether it be with the student personally, or experiences with family and friends.

Monteith reported, “Some of the youth on our panel have been, by their own admissions in some pretty dark places themselves. Some have been there for friends, some have watched things happen in their families and they are going to talk about how that impacts them at school, what happens to them at home, with their friends, and outside of class.”

The symposium opened with a speech from Elder Robert Kelly, followed by a presentation by Dr. Michael Stambrook titled Mental Health in Schools: A Northwestern Ontario Context. Following that was a video presentation and another lecture on Mental Health In Schools Initiative by Karen Ingebrigtson and Monteith.

To end the day was the youth panel and a final presentation from Joseph Cloutier on Putting a Face to FASD.

By Ally Dunham

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