Garden Grove district adds Wellness Centers to give students a space for mental health

Marisol Rayo, a Gilbert Elementary sixth-grader, said she stops in the Garden Grove school’s Wellness Center at least once a week.

She describes the “very open place” where she said she feels very welcome as having “clouds in the sky” and “calming music in the background.”

“You matter. Dream. Freedom. And, Results,” she reads off the posters that hang on the walls to encourage the students.

It’s been just over a year since schools within the Garden Grove Unified School District began opening Wellness Centers to ensure students “have a safe space on campus to focus on their mental health.”  And one year in, about half of the schools have opened a center staffed with a counselor.

And even if there is no Wellness Center on a campus, there’s mental health counseling available through the district’s ASPIRE  program, which was started to address the socio-emotional needs of students and staff.

In the current school year, ASPIRE is expected to serve more than 7,500 students with 60,000 hours of counseling. In comparison, in 2017, before the current effort to expand mental health services, the Garden Grove district only had one social worker and six interns serving four high-need schools.

The addition of the Wellness Centers is part of the district’s Choose Wellness campaign, launched in 2019 to increase and expand mental health awareness and support. Currently, the school district has 60 school psychologists, 22 school social workers, 30 mental health specialists and 44 mental health interns on staff.

The center at Gilbert, which launched last year, serves as a “space that’s safe for students to meet with a counselor or take a break,” said Marilyn Vu, a social worker with the ASPIRE program.

When students returned in-person to classrooms after the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders were lifted, many were struggling with anxiety, Vu said. “We provide that space where it’s encouraging and we help them transition.”

In addition to anxiety, kids also struggle with peer issues and developmental issues, where they might be struggling to build healthy relationships and effectively communicate. Others “have experienced trauma,” Vu said, such as losing a family member to COVID-19 or food insecurity and financial struggles.

Untreated trauma or not addressing socio-emotional issues can manifest in the classroom with mood or behavior changes, Vu said. Teachers often recognize these shifts and will reach out to counselors based within the Wellness Center, she said. Sessions between the student and counselor can take place on an individual basis or in a group setting.

Murdy Elementary School Principal Marcy Griffith said having these specialty rooms on campuses has helped mitigate anxiety among students because they are given tools such has “how to do deep breathing” to manage their stressors.

“We want them to be able to have the tools when they walk out of here to be able to self regulate, whether it’s at home, whether it’s the classroom or on the playground,” she said.

Initially Murdy’s space served as a drop-in center for students struggling emotionally, but then it grew to this year having ASPIRE team members on site daily.

The room, decorated in shades of blue, has been warmly received by parents, Griffith said, adding it has helped to de-stigmatize conversations around mental health because of how issues children are dealing with are framed: Instead of asking the student to go to the room because something is wrong with them, they are asked to spend time in the space to find their peace.

“It’s one of the things I am most proud of as principal that we were able to do,” Griffith said. “When families are struggling, that means kids are struggling and when they’re struggling, they aren’t the best learners.”

©2023 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit ocregister.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.