Wellness In Our Schools

By Bobbie Jo Disch, NAMI Dane County Intern

NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) of Dane County and Madison Memorial High School have partnered to create youth wellness groups. These groups will begin the week of December 6th and aim to provide support for students in the understaffed school. Nicole McCue, NAMI Dane County’s Youth Program and Outreach Coordinator, describes the wellness groups as a “supplement for existing mental health education frameworks”.

The goal of these groups is to provide education on topics that students would not normally have the space to talk about in class or to parents. NAMI Dane County and Madison Memorial have worked together to create a curriculum that caters to children and young adults. Some of the topics that will be covered are anxiety, depression, body image, social media, and coping skills. Students will be encouraged to share their own questions or lived experience in addition to the curriculum. These are the students who do not regularly go to therapy or counseling outside of school, but take advantage of the resources at school. Now that schools are back in person, McCue observed that more students were in need of mental health support. She states: “I don’t think people realize just how much our children were impacted by the pandemic. Not only were they separated from their friends and families, they were separated from all of the resources they need.”

Many of the modules that will be used in the wellness groups can be used in more traditional class settings as well. McCue hopes that giving teachers the resources and information surrounding mental illness will encourage staff to open up conversations about mental illness.

The wellness groups will begin with a pilot program stating the week of December 6th. The groups will be held during the school day for 50 minutes during lunch. Each group will consist of 10 students and will last for 6 sessions until they switch to another cohort of 10 students. McCue hopes that after this pilot program, wellness groups will become a permanent fixture in Madison Memorial. NAMI Dane County plans to branch out to other area high schools and create wellness groups throughout our community.