Emotional Security Research Paper
Madyson Clifford
October 7, 2013
Emotional Security in Schools During my seventh grade school year, my graduating class in Idaho struggled with emotional problems. Even though my school did have a counselor available to us one day a week, we had to share him with every other school in the district. When one of our students committed suicide, they had the psychologist available to all students for two days, but then we had to depend on each other. This was a recipe for disaster and caused a group of students to fall into a downward spiral. I became the person that everyone could talk to and I had to help many of my close friends deal with depression and suicidal thoughts. It was difficult for me to sit there and try to stay the positive example that I needed to be, but I managed to stay on top and help whoever I …show more content…
could. Many students are placed in difficult situations like I was because their schools do not have a psychologist available to the students. All schools need to have a full time psychologist on staff to help students cope with bullying, prevent and deal with threats, violence, and attacks, prevent self harm and suicide, and provide emotional counseling to both the students and staff of the schools. If each school each had their own psychologist, the students would be much more emotionally stable. With violent video games, movies, and music coming out in the hundreds, society has grown highly tolerable to violence. What many don’t realize is that all of the violence that is being flashed across the many screens world wide is having a direct influence on the youth; they play war focused video games and think that it would be cool to take their parents’ gun to school and show it off, or they watch professional fighting shows and think it would be cool to get in a fight at school (Jordan and Lovett 45-59). Thanks to the media, violence has become such a social norm that many children see no problem with these kinds of situations, but what happens when a person sets out to hurt another person or group of people? Having a person there that has been trained on how to handle an emotionally unstable, threatening, and potentially violent person could save a child’s life. Psychologists are trained to help people work out their emotions and having a person with that training present in volatile situations is needs to be vital to our school systems (Morrison and Furlong). With how many school shootings, terrorist attacks, and possible threats, there needs to be a psychologist in every school when classes are in session. Many violent situations could be avoided if there was an emotional counselor there. With how much the media glorifies violence, many children don’t look at violence and anger as a bad thing. They accept it as a part of society, which is one reason why bullying has grown into such a huge issue in the American school system. Recently, hazing and cyber bullying has become especially common. With the increasing number and violence of bullying cases, school boards around the world are taking action. The difficult part is that, in the schools that do not have full time psychologists available to counsel the students being bullied, those students could end up getting depressed and hurting themselves, others, or resorting to drug and alcohol abuse (Rivers and Noret 143-8). Most high school students can name at lease five students at their school that have or are using some sort of drug or alcohol. One of the jobs for a school psychologist is to work with the resource officer and the administration to lower the number of drug and alcohol using students. The best way to avoid students using these substances is through a solid prevention program, but when it’s too late, some students require an intervention (Winters and Leitten 249-54). When done correctly, interventions have a solid positive impact on the person who needs help, but when done incorrectly, it could cause the person to become more dependent on the substance. Interventions are becoming more and more popular among high school students, but only psychologists are trained to properly handle these kinds of situations (Burrow- Sanchez, Jenson, and Clark 238-45). Many parents will argue that high school is too young for interventions and that the administration should be more focused on helping the students that are not using any substances to stay away from them. By doing that, they are being no help to those students that are struggling with drugs and alcohol. With the help of a school psychologist, those students would have the chance to turn their lives around and become a successful adult (Burrow- Sanchez et al 269-76). While drug abuse is more popular among males, self harm is a common way for young females to release their bottled up emotions. Self harm has been a growing trend and is still a problem is schools around the nation. Because of the emotionally unstable nature of youth, it is very easy for young teenagers to fall into a depression and resort to self harm or even suicide. Even though self harm does not always cause suicide and vice versa, they still have a close correlation in how they could be prevented. Suicide and self harm are often overlooked in the scheme of society, but they remain to be a growing problem in our school system; and prevention is the only way to reduce that growth. While students who suffer from depression, self harm, or are suicidal claim that they would not talk to a psychologist, even if their school provided one, they would still have the choice of going and talking to someone in confidentiality. Suicide and self harm are very sensitive topics that are not talked about a lot. This also means that many schools do not have a prevention program. Generally speaking, the few schools that do have a suicide prevention program in place also have a full time psychologist available to every student and faculty member. The psychologist is able to organize meetings with parents, teachers, and administration, as well as one-on-one counseling sessions with the youth, and interventions (if they are needed). They are there for the students whenever the students need to talk and can help the students to understand situations that are difficult for youth to handle themselves (Debski et al 157-70). If a student does end up committing suicide and had talked to the psychologist before, than the psychologist could have insight on what may have happened to cause the student to take such drastic measures. They could also provide grief counseling to the friends, teachers, and associates of that person and could put a program into action that would help raise suicide and self harm awareness (Sandovaal and Brock 169-85). When one of the students at my school committed suicide, the students were searching for an answer where there was none, and they simply wanted someone to talk to about what they were going through and how they were feeling. Having a psychologist there would have made a drastic change on many of the other student’s lives. Children and teenagers are constantly going through struggles and challenges. Not only is their body growing and maturing, but so is their life. At home they are constantly getting thrown more responsibility. At school they are being pushed and challenged through their class work. Socially, they have to deal with the challenges of peer pressure and popularity. With everything in their lives piling up, the possibility of failure is great, but through a psychologist, they can easily even things out and give themselves a better chance at success (Murphy, DeEsch, and Strein 85-7). Psychologists are trained with how the brain works; how it processes and accepts information, how it reacts to different situations, and what the body’s reaction will be. When a student knows that they can go to their school psychologist with any kind of problem and they will be helped, they are more likely to take advantage of that situation. Although the students, parents, and administration may be worried about personal physical relationships between students and psychologists occurring, that situation can be avoided through simple monitoring from the administration. Students are exposed to so much at school and they have so much to deal with. They shouldn’t be all alone, but they are. There are some good reasons why they are left alone to deal with the struggles of life, the most significant one is probably privacy. While parents want their children to enjoy school, they also want their children to be able to talk to them about everything that is going on in their lives. This is all great during elementary school, but when youth start middle and high school, they also want to be more independent and they start to push their parents away (Ball et al 836-45. This is a problem for parents because they feel as if they are slowly losing control of their child. If schools were to have a psychologist there for their children to talk to, the parents worry that their children wouldn’t talk to them at all. Another point is that the parents wouldn’t know what was going on in their children’s lives, so they couldn’t help their child if they were having a hard time or struggling. Instead, the students would be able to turn to a psychologist who is bound by doctor patient confidentiality. Parents don’t like the idea of their teenagers keeping things from them, even though as children grow into adults, they will automatically try to get away from their parents and grow to be more independent. Funding is another reason why schools struggle to staff psychologists. The federal and state governments don’t provide funding for a psychologist in every school and, even though the school districts could budget in the money to hire one, they argue that the end result would not be beneficial enough to keep every school fully staffed with a psychologist. Besides that, they think that finding enough people who have the credentials, experience, and willingness to work in a school as a full time psychologist would be extremely difficult. But none of this is valid. The students need a person there to talk to about the daily struggles that occur in their lives! Students’ lives are always changes and something new is always being introduced to them. When they are under so much stress that they can’t cope with it in a healthy way, a free, school psychologist needs to be there to help them learn proper coping techniques (Perfect and Morris 1049-54). If every school had a full time psychologist available to their students, free of cost, during school hours, students would have so much more opportunity to succeed. Bullying, violence, and suicide could all be reduced with the use of preventative programs, as well as interventions and counseling. School environments would be much more controlled if students and faculty had the opportunity to see a free, full time school psychologist. The schools would be full of a more stable, safe, and sound generation of youth.
Works Cited
Ball, Carrie R.Kratochwill, Thomas R.Johnston, Hugh F.Fruehling, J. Jay. "Limited Prescription Privileges For Psychologists: Review And Implications For The Practice Of Psychology In The Schools." Psychology In The Schools 46.9 (2009): 836-845.Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Burrow-Sanchez, JasonCall, Megan E.Adolphson, S. LillianHawken, Leanne S. "School Psychologists’ Perceived Competence And Training Needs For Student Substance Abuse." Journal Of School Health 79.6 (2009): 269-276.Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Burrow-Sanchez, Jason J., William R. Jenson, and Elaine Clark. "School-Based Interventions For Students With Substance Abuse." Psychology In The Schools 46.3 (2009): 238-245.PsycINFO. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Debski, Jennifer, et al. Suicide Intervention: Training, Roles, And Knowledge Of School Psychologists." Psychology In The Schools 44.2 (2007): 157-170. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Jordan, Alexander H., and Benjamin J.
Lovett. "Stereotype Threat And Test Performance: A Primer For School Psychologists." Journal Of School Psychology 45.1 (2007): 45-59. PsycINFO. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Morrison, Gale M.Furlong, Michael J. "School Violence To School Safety: Reframing The Issue For School Psychologists." School Psychology Review 23.2 (1994): 236. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Murphy, James P., Jesse B. DeEsch, and William O. Strein. "School Counselors And School Psychologists: Partners In Students Services." Professional School Counseling 2.2 (1998): 85-87. PsycINFO. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Perfect, Michelle M.Morris, Richard J. "Delivering School-Based Mental Health Services By School Psychologists: Education, Training, And Ethical Issues." Psychology In The Schools 48.10 (2011): 1049-1063. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Rivers, Ian, and Nathalie Noret. "Participant Roles In Bullying Behavior And Their Association With Thoughts Of Ending One’S Life." Crisis: The Journal Of Crisis Intervention And Suicide Prevention 31.3 (2010): 143-148. PsycARTICLES. Web. 8 Sept.
2013.
Sandoval, Jonathan, and Stephen E. Brock. "The School Psychologist 's Role In Suicide Prevention." School Psychology Quarterly 11.2 (1996): 169-185. PsycARTICLES. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Winters, Ken C., and Willia Leitten. "Brief Intervention For Drug-Abusing Adolescents In A School Setting." Psychology Of Addictive Behaviors 21.2 (2007): 249-254. PsycARTICLES. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
October 7, 2013
Emotional Security in Schools During my seventh grade school year, my graduating class in Idaho struggled with emotional problems. Even though my school did have a counselor available to us one day a week, we had to share him with every other school in the district. When one of our students committed suicide, they had the psychologist available to all students for two days, but then we had to depend on each other. This was a recipe for disaster and caused a group of students to fall into a downward spiral. I became the person that everyone could talk to and I had to help many of my close friends deal with depression and suicidal thoughts. It was difficult for me to sit there and try to stay the positive example that I needed to be, but I managed to stay on top and help whoever I …show more content…
could. Many students are placed in difficult situations like I was because their schools do not have a psychologist available to the students. All schools need to have a full time psychologist on staff to help students cope with bullying, prevent and deal with threats, violence, and attacks, prevent self harm and suicide, and provide emotional counseling to both the students and staff of the schools. If each school each had their own psychologist, the students would be much more emotionally stable. With violent video games, movies, and music coming out in the hundreds, society has grown highly tolerable to violence. What many don’t realize is that all of the violence that is being flashed across the many screens world wide is having a direct influence on the youth; they play war focused video games and think that it would be cool to take their parents’ gun to school and show it off, or they watch professional fighting shows and think it would be cool to get in a fight at school (Jordan and Lovett 45-59). Thanks to the media, violence has become such a social norm that many children see no problem with these kinds of situations, but what happens when a person sets out to hurt another person or group of people? Having a person there that has been trained on how to handle an emotionally unstable, threatening, and potentially violent person could save a child’s life. Psychologists are trained to help people work out their emotions and having a person with that training present in volatile situations is needs to be vital to our school systems (Morrison and Furlong). With how many school shootings, terrorist attacks, and possible threats, there needs to be a psychologist in every school when classes are in session. Many violent situations could be avoided if there was an emotional counselor there. With how much the media glorifies violence, many children don’t look at violence and anger as a bad thing. They accept it as a part of society, which is one reason why bullying has grown into such a huge issue in the American school system. Recently, hazing and cyber bullying has become especially common. With the increasing number and violence of bullying cases, school boards around the world are taking action. The difficult part is that, in the schools that do not have full time psychologists available to counsel the students being bullied, those students could end up getting depressed and hurting themselves, others, or resorting to drug and alcohol abuse (Rivers and Noret 143-8). Most high school students can name at lease five students at their school that have or are using some sort of drug or alcohol. One of the jobs for a school psychologist is to work with the resource officer and the administration to lower the number of drug and alcohol using students. The best way to avoid students using these substances is through a solid prevention program, but when it’s too late, some students require an intervention (Winters and Leitten 249-54). When done correctly, interventions have a solid positive impact on the person who needs help, but when done incorrectly, it could cause the person to become more dependent on the substance. Interventions are becoming more and more popular among high school students, but only psychologists are trained to properly handle these kinds of situations (Burrow- Sanchez, Jenson, and Clark 238-45). Many parents will argue that high school is too young for interventions and that the administration should be more focused on helping the students that are not using any substances to stay away from them. By doing that, they are being no help to those students that are struggling with drugs and alcohol. With the help of a school psychologist, those students would have the chance to turn their lives around and become a successful adult (Burrow- Sanchez et al 269-76). While drug abuse is more popular among males, self harm is a common way for young females to release their bottled up emotions. Self harm has been a growing trend and is still a problem is schools around the nation. Because of the emotionally unstable nature of youth, it is very easy for young teenagers to fall into a depression and resort to self harm or even suicide. Even though self harm does not always cause suicide and vice versa, they still have a close correlation in how they could be prevented. Suicide and self harm are often overlooked in the scheme of society, but they remain to be a growing problem in our school system; and prevention is the only way to reduce that growth. While students who suffer from depression, self harm, or are suicidal claim that they would not talk to a psychologist, even if their school provided one, they would still have the choice of going and talking to someone in confidentiality. Suicide and self harm are very sensitive topics that are not talked about a lot. This also means that many schools do not have a prevention program. Generally speaking, the few schools that do have a suicide prevention program in place also have a full time psychologist available to every student and faculty member. The psychologist is able to organize meetings with parents, teachers, and administration, as well as one-on-one counseling sessions with the youth, and interventions (if they are needed). They are there for the students whenever the students need to talk and can help the students to understand situations that are difficult for youth to handle themselves (Debski et al 157-70). If a student does end up committing suicide and had talked to the psychologist before, than the psychologist could have insight on what may have happened to cause the student to take such drastic measures. They could also provide grief counseling to the friends, teachers, and associates of that person and could put a program into action that would help raise suicide and self harm awareness (Sandovaal and Brock 169-85). When one of the students at my school committed suicide, the students were searching for an answer where there was none, and they simply wanted someone to talk to about what they were going through and how they were feeling. Having a psychologist there would have made a drastic change on many of the other student’s lives. Children and teenagers are constantly going through struggles and challenges. Not only is their body growing and maturing, but so is their life. At home they are constantly getting thrown more responsibility. At school they are being pushed and challenged through their class work. Socially, they have to deal with the challenges of peer pressure and popularity. With everything in their lives piling up, the possibility of failure is great, but through a psychologist, they can easily even things out and give themselves a better chance at success (Murphy, DeEsch, and Strein 85-7). Psychologists are trained with how the brain works; how it processes and accepts information, how it reacts to different situations, and what the body’s reaction will be. When a student knows that they can go to their school psychologist with any kind of problem and they will be helped, they are more likely to take advantage of that situation. Although the students, parents, and administration may be worried about personal physical relationships between students and psychologists occurring, that situation can be avoided through simple monitoring from the administration. Students are exposed to so much at school and they have so much to deal with. They shouldn’t be all alone, but they are. There are some good reasons why they are left alone to deal with the struggles of life, the most significant one is probably privacy. While parents want their children to enjoy school, they also want their children to be able to talk to them about everything that is going on in their lives. This is all great during elementary school, but when youth start middle and high school, they also want to be more independent and they start to push their parents away (Ball et al 836-45. This is a problem for parents because they feel as if they are slowly losing control of their child. If schools were to have a psychologist there for their children to talk to, the parents worry that their children wouldn’t talk to them at all. Another point is that the parents wouldn’t know what was going on in their children’s lives, so they couldn’t help their child if they were having a hard time or struggling. Instead, the students would be able to turn to a psychologist who is bound by doctor patient confidentiality. Parents don’t like the idea of their teenagers keeping things from them, even though as children grow into adults, they will automatically try to get away from their parents and grow to be more independent. Funding is another reason why schools struggle to staff psychologists. The federal and state governments don’t provide funding for a psychologist in every school and, even though the school districts could budget in the money to hire one, they argue that the end result would not be beneficial enough to keep every school fully staffed with a psychologist. Besides that, they think that finding enough people who have the credentials, experience, and willingness to work in a school as a full time psychologist would be extremely difficult. But none of this is valid. The students need a person there to talk to about the daily struggles that occur in their lives! Students’ lives are always changes and something new is always being introduced to them. When they are under so much stress that they can’t cope with it in a healthy way, a free, school psychologist needs to be there to help them learn proper coping techniques (Perfect and Morris 1049-54). If every school had a full time psychologist available to their students, free of cost, during school hours, students would have so much more opportunity to succeed. Bullying, violence, and suicide could all be reduced with the use of preventative programs, as well as interventions and counseling. School environments would be much more controlled if students and faculty had the opportunity to see a free, full time school psychologist. The schools would be full of a more stable, safe, and sound generation of youth.
Works Cited
Ball, Carrie R.Kratochwill, Thomas R.Johnston, Hugh F.Fruehling, J. Jay. "Limited Prescription Privileges For Psychologists: Review And Implications For The Practice Of Psychology In The Schools." Psychology In The Schools 46.9 (2009): 836-845.Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Burrow-Sanchez, JasonCall, Megan E.Adolphson, S. LillianHawken, Leanne S. "School Psychologists’ Perceived Competence And Training Needs For Student Substance Abuse." Journal Of School Health 79.6 (2009): 269-276.Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Burrow-Sanchez, Jason J., William R. Jenson, and Elaine Clark. "School-Based Interventions For Students With Substance Abuse." Psychology In The Schools 46.3 (2009): 238-245.PsycINFO. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Debski, Jennifer, et al. Suicide Intervention: Training, Roles, And Knowledge Of School Psychologists." Psychology In The Schools 44.2 (2007): 157-170. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Jordan, Alexander H., and Benjamin J.
Lovett. "Stereotype Threat And Test Performance: A Primer For School Psychologists." Journal Of School Psychology 45.1 (2007): 45-59. PsycINFO. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Morrison, Gale M.Furlong, Michael J. "School Violence To School Safety: Reframing The Issue For School Psychologists." School Psychology Review 23.2 (1994): 236. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Murphy, James P., Jesse B. DeEsch, and William O. Strein. "School Counselors And School Psychologists: Partners In Students Services." Professional School Counseling 2.2 (1998): 85-87. PsycINFO. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Perfect, Michelle M.Morris, Richard J. "Delivering School-Based Mental Health Services By School Psychologists: Education, Training, And Ethical Issues." Psychology In The Schools 48.10 (2011): 1049-1063. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Rivers, Ian, and Nathalie Noret. "Participant Roles In Bullying Behavior And Their Association With Thoughts Of Ending One’S Life." Crisis: The Journal Of Crisis Intervention And Suicide Prevention 31.3 (2010): 143-148. PsycARTICLES. Web. 8 Sept.
2013.
Sandoval, Jonathan, and Stephen E. Brock. "The School Psychologist 's Role In Suicide Prevention." School Psychology Quarterly 11.2 (1996): 169-185. PsycARTICLES. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.
Winters, Ken C., and Willia Leitten. "Brief Intervention For Drug-Abusing Adolescents In A School Setting." Psychology Of Addictive Behaviors 21.2 (2007): 249-254. PsycARTICLES. Web. 8 Sept. 2013.