Hen Hud Works On Social/Emotional Wellness

From Hendrick Hudson School District: Recognizing that students who are anxious or depressed have a difficult time learning, the Hendrick Hudson School District has taken a major step toward helping its staff recognize signs of distress in students and providing those students with valuable coping skills.

The district has partnered with Dr. Alec Miller, a renowned expert in the treatment of anxiety and mood disorders and stress management, to help its school counselors, social workers and psychologists in supporting students’ social and emotional wellness.

Miller is co-founder of Cognitive and Behavioral Consultants, an internationally recognized evidence-based center that provides clinical and wellness services, custom designed programs for organizations, and continuing education for professionals. CBC recently opened the Schwartzberg Training Center in White Plains, a cutting-edge training facility for mental health professionals.

Miller and his team are training Hendrick Hudson staff in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a comprehensive treatment for children with emotional and behavioral challenges. Research has shown DBT effectively reduces suicidal behavior, dropout from treatment, psychiatric hospitalization, anger, substance abuse and interpersonal difficulties. The goal of DBT is to transform negative thinking patterns and destructive behaviors into positive outcomes.

In a recent online podcast with Hendrick Hudson Superintendent Joseph Hochreiter, Miller said, “If kids feel better understood by their teachers and receive some form of coaching, at the end of the day they’ll be happier and probably do better academically.”

The district is entering into its second year of collaboration with Miller and his team. A few weeks prior to the opening of the 2017-18 school year, Miller met with district staff to discuss how to recognize and respond to student burnout. “Today’s multiple pressures and distractions cause a lot of stress in students, and we need to help them learn how to unplug, disconnect and engage in self-care,” said Miller. “We also need to recognize the ‘soft signs’ of distress, those behaviors that might not be so obvious.”

CBC staff meet periodically with district counselors, social workers and psychologists, teaching them how to recognize distress and burnout in students and how to provide those students with lifelong coping skills, such as mindfulness and distress tolerance.

“We need to compassionately understand today’s students and the 21st century world they are living in,” Miller said. “Sometimes we just need to validate students’ feelings about how hard life can be.” He believes that training district staff in empathy and validation is critical, because, “in our fast-paced lives, we are often eager to ‘move things along.’”

Dr. Rick Brodsky, school psychologist at Blue Mountain Middle School, noted that CBC’s training has enabled school staff to quickly develop the skills necessary to lead DBT skills groups, engage in individual DBT sessions and provide feedback to teachers and parents. “DBT shows more promise than any other social-emotional intervention program we have seen,” he said.

Hendrick Hudson High School Principal James Mackin has worked closely with Miller during a number of professional development programs for district staff. “The information and skills Dr. Miller shared were not only relevant but immediately applicable to the work we do every day with our students. Mindfulness activities have become a regular part of all of our meetings in the building, and we continue to explore how DBT can be applied to assist our students in dealing with the stressors they face each day.”

Hochreiter participated in last month’s grand opening of the Schwartzberg Training Center in White Plains, which was attended by Miller, as well as actress Glenn Close, who created the nonprofit, Bring Change to Mind, to fight the stigma of mental illness. The center provides training for professionals in the mental health field, as well as parents, school administrators, teachers and corporate executives.

Photo courtesy of Hendrick Hudson School District: Dr. Alec Miller leads a presentation on the topic of student social and emotional wellness at a workshop for Hendrick Hudson School District teachers prior to the opening of school.