May is National Mental Health Awareness Month and the Greene County High School has been utilizing a training program to help peer to peer communication.

At-Risk Liaison Emily Gannon, along with Special Needs Counselor and Licensed Mental Health Therapist Kyle Kinne have just wrapped up a new Teens Mental Health First Aid Training for tenth graders. Kinne says all district staff have been trained in youth mental health first aid, but Superintendent Tim Christensen inquired about doing the teen program. Kinne explains why they wanted to do the program and how it would be beneficial for high schoolers.

“The number one resource that kids have is each other. So whenever there’s an issue that comes up, the first person that they usually talk to is another friend. So the idea is to be able to identify what is happening with each other. Not to diagnose, it’s not about doing counseling with their peers. It’s just to identify the warning signs and then with that, how to get the individual the help.”

Gannon hopes by doing this kind of training, it contributes to her goal of having students be proactive in certain situations like knowing the signs of when their peers are suffering from a mental health issue.

“I talk to kids about life skills a lot. I hope that kids feel like they have a lot of resources when they’re here, but that we’re also enabling them with a tool box from when they leave here, if they should experience something like this, with a school counselor down the hallway. That they feel like they’ve identified local resources or resources within their own lives. That they’re able to get help even beyond the high school walls.”

Kinne and Gannon will continue the program on an annual basis with every tenth grade class.