Mental Health Regional Conference focuses on fighting stigma

More than 200 educators, school administrators and school personnel attended the first-ever Mental Health in Schools Regional Conference Friday.

The goal for the conference was to provide educators with strategies, resources and tools to improve the effectiveness of working with students who are dealing with mental health conditions.

“These are the folks that are in the classroom,” Albert Villa, project manager for behavior and mental health, said. “Oftentimes they deal with students who have mental health issues. Some may be be in a mental health crisis, some may have longer term mental health.”

Villa said one of the most critical things teachers can do is to make a connection with their students. “They need to connect with them, however they can to whatever degree they can and to get to know them, because the more they become connected with them, it becomes easier to pick up on certain signs and things that may not be typical for that student.”

The conference touched on topics, such as social and emotional learning. Villa said the signs could be subtle or dramatic, such as mood swings or a change in appearance.

“We know adolescents go though a lot of changes and that is typical, but some of them are not typical and the things that are not in the norm are the things that you have to look out for,” Villa said.

This conference comes the heels of the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 people dead.

“All of us know that we are not immune (to such a tragedy),” Villa said. “As safe as we feel, and I am sure the people in Florida felt that safety, too, we have to understand that we are not immune and we have to always be vigilant and aware of what is happening.”

Villa said educators attending this conference are being proactive in taking steps to prevent another tragedy.

“I think that mental health is something that we need to be aware about,” said Nallely Carrillo, a special education teacher from Montana Vista Elementary. “If we do things like this and we involve ourselves and educate ourselves we can definitely do something to prevent things like what happened in Florida.”

Another big issue associated with mental health is the stigma.

“The more education and awareness we bring to the mental health issues the slowly we start to chip away at that stigma,” Villa said. “If you feel different or you feel that something is wrong we need you to reach out to someone, whoever that may be.”

The director of counseling and advising for EPISD, Manuel Castruita, was among the hundreds.

“We never know what exactly every child brings every single morning to us,” he said. “We even as adults walk into our work places and our houses of worships, and we all carry emotional backpacks and we don’t know what’s going on inside of them. “

Castruita stressed the “profound” importance of the impact that one caring adult can have on a child’s life.

“It’s not just a school issue, it’s not just an isolated issue for communities and agencies or stuff like that,” he said, talking about the incident in Florida. “It’s about having a conglomerate and working together to address the growing myriad of issues that we see in society.”

Villa echoed the same sentiment by saying, “when in doubt, reach out.”

“No matter what it is that you are feeling, just reach out and make contact with someone and oftentimes that will lead to a path of healing and recovering,” Villa said.