AUGUST 18 • 2022 | 31

BACK TO SCHOOL

G

oing through a mental health crisis
as a teenager can be scary.
“Data shows that, typically,
teens will go to another teen first,
” says Julia
Cohen, who works as a youth mental health
coordinator at Jewish Family Service (JFS).
“
Adults aren’t going to be that first person to
respond.
”
That’s why providing teens
ages 15-18 with the proper tools,
training and support to identify,
understand and respond to signs
of mental health and substance
abuse challenges is so important.
To address that need and cre-
ate more resources in the Jewish
community, especially for younger popula-
tions, Farber Day School will work alongside
Jewish Family Service to first train staff on
teen mental health, who will then take their
knowledge to train teens at the school on
how to respond with “teen mental health
first-aid.
”
Representing Farber Day School at the
training is school social worker Elana
Miodownik (Mrs. Mio), who,
alongside Cohen, will attend
three days of training in August.
“Teen mental health first-aid
is the most recent curriculum
to come through the National
Council of Behavioral Health,
”
Cohen explains. She adds that
similar models exist for youth
and adult mental health.
“It’s teaching teens how to identify and
intervene when they have a peer who is expe-
riencing a mental health challenge or crisis.
”

AN INCREASE IN ANXIETY
At Farber Day School, Miodownik works
with students in kindergarten through eighth
grade, but often sees previous students who
have transitioned into high school. “They’re
still like my students,
” she says. “I have a deep
connection with them.
”
This past year, she’s noticed many students
in that age group experiencing increased
anxiety. “One student happened to have a
panic attack during school,
” she recalls, “and
an ambulance came because they thought she
was experiencing a physical health issue.
”
This was an eye-opening situation that
caused Miodownik to realize that many teens
weren’t equipped with the knowledge of how
to address a mental health crisis. Paired with
increased anxiety overall due to pandemic
stressors, school shootings and more, there
was a greater need than ever to offer mental
health education to teen populations.
“I felt now is a really important time for
our students to be able to recognize whether
their peers are truly struggling,
” Miodownik
explains, “and what they should do to inter-
vene for those things.
”

LEARNING HOW TO RESPOND
Strategies for teen mental health first-aid can
include, but aren’t limited to, learning breath-
ing techniques and understanding when to
alert a teacher for help. Teens can also learn
common signs of panic attacks, such as shak-
ing and shortness of breath.
“I’ve had girls come into my office crying
because they don’t know what to do for their
friend and they felt like their friend was
really suffering,
” Miodownik says. “They feel

helpless that they’re not able to do anything
and they also don’t know the proper adult to
bring them to.
”
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic pushed
many teen mental health challenges to the
forefront as well. “I think a lot of parents
noticed while their children were home
during lockdown how their anxiety was get-
ting exacerbated,
” Miodownik says. “There
was more awareness and parents seeing
it firsthand, as opposed to what we see in
school.
”
This created a stronger opportunity for
partnerships with parents to make teen men-
tal health first-aid and beyond a reality. Once
Miodownik and Cohen complete their train-
ing, they hope to bring the curriculum not
only to Farber Day School, but also to other
schools and organizations in need that serve
teenage Jewish populations.
For now, “my goal is to roll it out at Farber,
”
Cohen says, “but I don’t think it’s specific to
just Farber. I think we should be rolling it out
throughout the whole Jewish community.
”
It would be an important addition to an
already robust menu of mental health educa-
tion and suicide prevention trainings current-
ly offered in the overarching community.
“The idea is to add teen mental health first-
aid to our menu that we offer so when there
is a school that wants to partner with us, we
can add it to our array [of offerings],
” Cohen
says. “It’s an untapped training intervention
that fits into our goal to reduce stigma.
“The more we talk about it, the more we
go to schools,
” she adds, “we can normalize
some of this so that we can be better support
to one another.
”

Teen mental health first-aid
teaches teens how to respond
to mental health crises.

Farber Partners
with JFS on
Mental Health
Initiative

Julia Cohen

Elana
Miodownik

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Teens get together in UMatter, a club
that is helping teens deal with mental
health challenges.