With mental and emotional health shifting to become a major focus within the school system, coupled with the reality that most teachers are trained teachers and not counsellors or therapists, schools are required to outsource resources to adequately provide information and services to students that will positively impact them.

Before you begin to read through what an integrated and specific approach could look like at your school, please read information on the counselling model used at New Life Counselling & Training.

Once you’ve read through the above information, you may have noticed that the school system’s approach to dealing with students is normally only at the behavioural, or uppermost, level. When you begin to understand that there are four levels down from this before real change occurs, it may help you realise it’s no wonder why schools don’t see changes in behaviour that they would expect or hope. No amount of behaviour management policies, vision statements or culture development will change students in a lasting way. It’s only when the base assumptions and beliefs are uncovered. Considering that schools really are training students for life, and a person’s brain goes with them wherever they go (for more information please click on information in the main menu above) schools should really be looking at ways of educating students on mental and emotional health in a strategic way.

A strong, integral approach to mental and emotional health is needed. This should have a three-pronged approach to it, as detailed below:


1. Intensive Counselling for at risk students

Specific time/resources should be allocated for at risk students to receive individual counselling. These students are typically the ones that coordinators, school counsellors and assistant principals spend the majority of their time on, yet mostly see little or no change for the time invested.

This service would be made available to students deemed to need personal counselling (by the assistant counsellor, student counsellor, year level managers etc) in order to move them forward in their life. Students in this category would clearly present with life issues that are adversely affecting in particular their school life (but most likely all areas of their life) and would also appear to be beyond the scope (or time) of support a school counsellor could provide.

The number of counselling sessions available for these students would be capped to three sessions per student (negotiable). The school would determine how many students they could fund to access this service. 

The counselling would be best done off of the school campus, in the counsellor’s office, for privacy issues and to avoid negative stigma etc.

Costs involved would be the standard counselling rate, see this link for more information.


2. General Information/Education of All Year 11/12 Students

General presentation/information for students (in no larger than HG size, ideally 15-20 though), which would equip them with information on a combination of some of the following;

13 Fundamentals for Mental and Emotional Health Real choices can’t be made until you have real alternatives Burnout and Breakdown Anger Habits and Addictions – Escaping Addiction’s Pit Suicide Survival Kits Emotion-Based Reasoning Relationships and Compatibility (different levels of need as a person, eg physical, social, intellectual, emotional etc, frontal lobe still developing that includes assessments/values of things – see Abstinence workbook, also clarifying goals, expectations etc) Telling Yourself and Others the Truth – saying what you mean in an appropriate way Effective Communication

Session times would be 1.5 – 2hrs in duration, rolling through in some way for all students (eg could be one per week).

The actual content could be shaped by negotiation depending on any particular needs the school perceives are most relevant to their cohort.

Costs would be $200 per session.


3. Regular Weekly Wellbeing Clinic

This is a ‘drop in centre’ type concept, where students would come to a room with the counsellor and have the opportunity to air concerns they have. It would be a Group Therapy, or support group, approach to counselling. The counsellor would listen and provide direction and facilitate, but the members of the group would also have opportunity to learn from each other, listen to others’ concerns and needs etc. Involvement in the group therapy would be purely voluntary.

Group therapy has the potential to be quite powerful. It will provide students with an avenue to air their concerns surrounding their mental and emotional wellbeing with a person who isn’t connected to the school (ie not a teacher currently on staff), be part of a support network to assist them through, form closer friendships with others etc.

This would be a weekly occurrence, with separate groups running for each year level. The time of each group would be an hour, and they could be placed in the day where they cross over lunch and a lesson, or even scheduled at different times each week, to allow students not to miss the same subject all the time.

These ‘wellbeing clinics’ could also include brief (obviously one hour) training seminars, possibly refreshing and continuing with information delivered at the beginning of the year, as well as other relevant information depending on the needs of the students/school.

The cost for this would be the same as the normal counselling rate – see here for current fee structure.