Talkin' Shop for a Moment (with a little bit of soapboxery)

The last few weeks have been quite eye-opening with regard to the number of students in need of more comprehensive mental health counseling services in the schools. From my own experiences and those of my peers also placed at school currently, we're seeing high trends in Axis II diagnosis for not only adolescents, but younger children as well. Many students are on one or more medications, some of which are often psychotropic or antipsychotic.

Meanwhile, community mental health services all across Illinois are being cut drastically (some areas up to 50%) due to budgetary issues and state debt. So... fewer students are able to seek services outside of the school (which would be the usual steps taken), and those who do see someone outside often still need some sort of help within the school as well to deal with crises or emotional extremes.

Where does this leave me and my cohort - as professional school counselors to be? There is a pervasive assumption, among multiple helping professions, that school counselors are somehow inadequate to provide mental health services. I tend to agree with the ASCA president, who suggested school counselors hold the unique distinction of being both teachers and counselors within an educational setting - finding a way to blend those two disciplines in order to provide students with services across a wide range of potential interventions.

I do think, if one is implementing a comprehensive school counseling program based on the ASCA National Model, one is likely to have scant time for individual counseling; therefore the prospective caseload in the wake of increased diagnoses and decreased community mental health services is probably more than any one counselor could handle and would limit the amount of work done for all the students at the school.

But some solution is certainly needed. And, like so many things in life, I am guessing it will be more holistic and systemic than black-and-white or mechanistic. Not only must school counselors acknowledge the need for mental health counseling at the schools (which requires a knowledge base and level of competency that is more clinically focused), but finding alternative ways to provide services to students must also be explored... and ultimately, the argument will likely get stuck on who should foot the bill. The schools? The family? The state?

I think there are more students in need of continuous preventiative and remedial care than society currently acknowledges. Wellness, mental health, and character education are becoming more integral to formal education, and finding ways to meet the needs of all students - wherever they may fall along the mental health continuum - requires greater flexibility and training for any health professional, particularly if we are to find ways to collaborate and support one another constructively for the benefit of our clients.