As part of Mental Health Awareness Month this May, INTEGRIS Health is sounding the alarm on a national epidemic. Serious mental health conditions and suicide rates among adolescents have increased substantially across the nation and our state. Alarmingly, the age of children making these attempts is getting younger and younger.
As part of Mental Health Awareness Month this May, INTEGRIS Health is sounding the alarm on a national epidemic. Serious mental health conditions and suicide rates among adolescents have increased substantially across the nation and our state. Alarmingly, the age of children making these attempts is getting younger and younger.
Allie Friesen is the new Commissioner of the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. She is also the former director of behavioral health at INTEGRIS Health. “We all know that COVID has changed our society and it markedly has changed our children and adolescents and the way their brains work. So that, combined with the digital age, is really transforming how we need to foster a child or adolescent's emotional well-being.”
Recognizing this and wanting to save as many children as possible, INTEGRIS Health created Community Health Improvement Plans focusing on suicide prevention. Encouraging Oklahoma schools to implement Hope Squads is a major part of this effort.
Watch Hope Squad video below.
“Since COVID we have seen an uptick in mental health issues, not only in our high school but in the surrounding areas as well,” says Seminole High School Counselor Emma Speer. Kelly Johnson is another counselor at the school. “I think probably most of our students have been touched by suicide and by suicide attempts. And we could probably look at our community and most of them would have been touched as well.”
Seminole High School is one of seven Oklahoma schools that has applied for and received Community Giving Fund grants from INTEGRIS Health to bring Hope Squads to their campuses. The grants cover all training and curriculum costs of the program.
Speer says it was the students themselves who were asking for this type of program. “We had more and more students wanting to get involved with mental health awareness month. Over the last few years, we have had students start posting positive affirmations on the walls, numbers they can call. They were wanting a platform.” She believes the Hope Squad program truly is a lifeline of support. “We filled out the grant and by Sept. 18 we had it. We got access to training with the national Hope Squad, which is an online curriculum that is really, really great. We’re talking this is close to $13,000 worth of curriculum.”
Hope Squad members are trained through scaffolded, evidence-based modules. Recent findings suggest Hope Squad schools have less suicide-related stigma and significantly more referrals to mental health resources than non-Hope Squad schools.
Speer and Johnson have noticed an improvement in the overall mental health of their students and are hopeful for continued success in the future. “After the initial Hope Squad graduates, because it’s an ongoing thing,” says Speer. “I hope that it becomes part of the fabric of our tradition at Seminole High School and we see it grow not only within our school district but Hope Squad becomes something that every school knows of and participates in.”
That’s what Friesen and INTEGRIS Health are hopeful for as well. “INTEGRIS Health wants to support the mental health and well-being of as many students as possible and that spans the entire state. We encourage every school of every size to apply so we can provide the support,” says Friesen. “It’s not just the care that we provide within the walls of our acute hospitals, it’s that preventative community-based care that is enormously important in the field of behavioral health.”
In addition to Seminole High School, INTEGRIS Health grant funds have helped implement Hope Squads in Grove Public Schools, Epic Charter Schools in Oklahoma City, Stanley Hupfeld Academy in Oklahoma City, Atoka Public Schools, Crossings Christian School in Oklahoma City and Perry Junior High.
Please download the application to apply. All applications from Oklahoma schools that have district or board-level approval will be considered.
Anyone contemplating suicide or experiencing a mental health emergency can call 988, the state’s new mental health hotline number. The helpline is the first step to a multi-level crisis response.
