May is mental health awareness month, and Montague High School’s Hope Squad has been doing a lot to aid both the student body and the community in promoting mental health discussions, and ending the stigma behind poor mental health and mental illness.
MHS junior Addyson Hall and senior Kiley Miller joined Hope Squad with the same goal: to positively impact their school and Montague community.
“I had a couple of friends in Hope Squad, and I was wanting to help around my community and help my fellow peers,” Hall said. “I thought it would be a good way to get engaged.”
“I had a close connection with somebody in town who committed suicide and it had a big impact,” said Miller. “People were trying to share her story, spread awareness around the whole community.”
Hope Squad recognized mental health awareness month in March, to allow seniors to fully participate.
“We did a project called ‘take what you need,’ Miller said. “There were a lot of positive affirmations for when students were having a bad day. Another project was ‘shred your stress.’ Even though it’s not actually physically doing anything about your stress, it feels good to be able to do something with it metaphorically.”
“We did a photo booth this year as well,” said Hall. “We took photos of everybody and made signs out of cardboard that said many quotes promoting positive mental health.”
A few years ago, MHS counselor Alyssa Bernardi was approached by the district superintendent, Jeff Johnson, with the idea.
“There may have been a couple other teachers interested, but we only needed one at the time because we only had one seminar class,” Bernardi said. “(Johnson) said Montague had the opportunity to have a Hope Squad funded. He kind of put me in charge of figuring out if this is something our district wants and is interested in.”
Alecia Hughes was one of the teachers who was immediately interested and invested in the program.
“I teach art, so it’s definitely a very different part of my day, which is nice to switch it up,” said Hughes. “It’s been really great working with a different set of kids than I normally would. It’s really cool seeing them get passionate about it, because that’s not a side of them that we get to see often. I’ve learned a lot myself since I’m not a counselor.”
Both administrators said they’ve seen a different side of students, who get passionate about helping their community and peers.
“I really enjoy the experience,” Bernardi said. “I’m a mental health counselor, so this is a really different experience than counseling. It’s the other side of it. It’s the teaching and prevention. It’s exciting to be able to work with a group of students and get them excited about mental health and encourage them to ask, ‘How can we help? How can we do things not only for this building, but for the whole community?’ It’s empowering. I think youth are a lot more vocal about things and get excited about things, and have really great ideas. For me, it’s been really fun to see the flip side of what I do on a daily basis.”
Both Bernardi and Hughes said they have seen a major positive difference in the discussion of mental health at the school.
“I get a lot more kids coming up to me, asking questions about mental health in general and what the stigma is,” said Hughes. “That gives the kids and me a chance to answer questions from their peers, them being out there, visibly doing things like this makes that conversation happen naturally. I see mental health being talked about more.”
Bernardi credits the students for their creative ideas on how to promote awareness and spread positivity not only throughout the school, but through the entire community of Montague. “It’s definitely broken down barriers,” Bernardi said. “It’s identified a lot of strengths in the community and it’s also helped identify areas of need, which to me was kind of surprising. Realizing that this is something we can improve on. The kids are really great at problem solving. Them realizing some things would be really helpful. In just doing work around mental health, they’ve been able to get out there and talk about it, but then say ‘we need more, we need something to fill this gap.’ Then they create it, they talk with admin about it. They are really great advocates for themselves and the student body.”
Miller and Hall are both proud of the work they have done for the school, in both Hope Squad’s big projects and the small things that are encouraged daily.
“It’s super community based, getting down to the gritty part of mental health and ending the stigma around it,” said Miller. “It’s super important not just for teenagers, but it brings the whole community into the loop and connects everybody, encourages loving everybody. “It’s the little things that make it better. It can be a simple compliment that brightens your day. Even though something bad might have happened that day, you had this little good thing that makes it a little bit better.”
