Here & Now

Cindy Bourget on Mental Health Needs of Wisconsin Students

Frederica Freyberg:

In declaring 2023 “the year of mental health,” Evers Tuesday announced spending $270 million to ensure every student has access to mental health services. Because among children, anxiety, depression and suicide reports are up. And a third say they feel sad or hopeless every day. This is according to the Office of Children’s Mental Health. To understand more about student struggles, we turn to Cindy Bourget, an academic counselor at Elk Mound Middle School. She’s been named counselor of the year by the Wisconsin School Counselor Association, and her school has also received the Program of Promise Award for their work with students. She joins us now. And Cindy, thanks very much for being here.

Cindy Bourget:

Of course. Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how welcome is the attention and potential funding for student mental health?

Cindy Bourget:

It’s very welcome and very needed. We’re very excited that people are starting to pay attention to the needs of our students, and when I say people, our community has always known that our students need support, and it’s just nice to get the validation that everyone is starting to notice that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because how big is the need and what are you seeing on the ground with your students?

Cindy Bourget:

The need is growing. I would say that the concerns and issues have always been there, but the stressors that the pandemic brought has really brought that spotlight to those needs. So for example, we as school counselors focus on academics, so their achievement. We focus on their attendance and we focus on their behavior. And here in Elk Mound, we have been focusing on absenteeism, because we’ve been seeing an increase of school avoidance and anxiety since going virtual and coming back.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so school avoidance goes to anxiety. How so? I mean, what are students more anxious about?

Cindy Bourget:

And I think we all, as people, have felt that urge when we’re anxious to avoid something. And so students tend to be worried about things like grades. They get worried about things like how they’re going to interact with their friends, but there’s also that added worry of I’m not with my parent, and I’ve been with my parent for the last two years and what’s happening when I’m not with them? And to be quite honest with you, a lot of our students are not able to identify why they’re anxious. It’s just there. And so what we have been doing is focusing on building up the resiliency to be able to overcome that anxiety.

Frederica Freyberg:

How do you build resiliency? What are the steps? What are the tools?

Cindy Bourget:

It’s multifaceted, really. But as the school counselor, the beauty of being able to use data, which we are using absenteeism, like the rates of absences, to be able to identify which students need one on one support and what students need general support. So for me as the school counselor, I do programming with small groups. I do a mighty minds group where we talk about growth mindset. We talk about how to sit in the uncomfortable and how to overcome those feelings of wanting to be away. But my staff has also been wonderful because they have implemented programming in their homerooms so all students are getting instruction on how to deal with anxiety and build the resiliency back.

Frederica Freyberg:

And have you seen a change in either attendance or behavior or overall kind of a sense of well-being amongst the students?

Cindy Bourget:

I would say yes. Our data is showing that our students with the highest rates of absenteeism have gone from 85% of days to 90% of days. So it’s a 5% increase specifically among our highest rates, and then overall, our rates of students feeling connected to their building and their staff has increased 15% as well. So it can really have some significant changes and some significant attitude changes with our students.

Frederica Freyberg:

And how do you bring the families into this kind of mix of wellness?

Cindy Bourget:

You make a wonderful point, because it’s not just the school building where these feelings come from. And everyone in a student’s life is reacting differently to the stress, and that’s kind of the nature of life too, because there’s always going to be stress. So what we’ve been doing with families is teaching them how to support their child when they’re stressed. Quick little things on how to be able to respond when a student doesn’t want to come to school, but also we use a program called Care Solace, where anyone in the district, you don’t have to have a student in the building, you don’t have to work here, can use this service to be able to get connected to outside counseling services so when the problems get too big, we here at the school are connecting you to the resources you need to overcome those issues.

Frederica Freyberg:

Your district also now has, I understand, a mental health coordinator. How meaningful has that been toward helping the school community?

Cindy Bourget:

It has been a game changer, really. Because as school counselors, we’re here to help students within the school day and within the school building with their academics, their attendance and their behavior. But anxiety and mental health doesn’t just affect that. So when we have a student who has been identified as having a higher need, and so what that means is that they’ve been meeting with me pretty consistently. We aren’t seeing improvement in grades or attendance, then it’s maybe time to connect them with some outside services. That’s what our mental health coordinator is able to do. And they’re able to help the family maneuver that system because as we all know, it can be kind of tricky. And so what better way to have the school help than to help them maneuver that process.

Frederica Freyberg:

I do understand that coordinator is a grant-funded position and so if there were any kind of sustainable funding going forward, that would be very welcome as well.

Cindy Bourget:

I would agree. So listening to the State of the State address and all the wonderful opportunities and fundings that we’re being provided are very welcomed and very appreciated, but as you’re working with a student who is with you from K-12, so up to 15 years, being able to have a consistent source of income to make sure that those supports are there their entire school career is really essential. So as we move forward and as we really look at those concerns, considering consistent funding surrounding that would be appreciated.

Frederica Freyberg:

We leave it there. Cindy Bourget, thank you very much.

Cindy Bourget:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

For 24-hour help, the suicide and crisis lifeline can be reached by calling 988.