Mental health will continue to be a top priority for the Rocky View School division.

Along with growing population, RVS continues to see a rise in mental health complexities.

RVS Lead Psychologist, Chris Pawluk says it is not so much the numbers of students that increase but more intensity of cases.

"About three or four years ago the students who got referred from Mental Health Services 40% of them would be in this severely mentally ill range, and now we are getting up to about 70% of those students are in the severely mentally ill range. So we see the increase in severity more than the increase in actual numbers."

Pawluk attributes the rise in severity due to a number of factors. He shares we are more in tune when it comes to recognizing mental health problems and students who once would have dropped out of the system are still engaging.

"They're in our schools more, they come to school more, we identify and we are able to keep them. There is some evidence that kids are under more stress, and that kids can't handle the stress they are under as well. So we try to put social emotional programming into all the schools."

All the schools in Cochrane have a social emotional learning component especially at the elementary and middle school grades, but Pawluk shares this fall the big push will be for programming at the high school level.

"We are doing something from teen mental health.org, an organization created by East Coast Physician Stan Kutcher. Kutcher's program makes teachers go to educators so they have more knowledge not just with mental health, or mental health issues, but also with mental distress and how to recognize it.

"How to spot those things in the kids they are teaching, how to support them, and when and how to refer them for more support."

Pawluk says RVS will continue to advocate for mental health support as only 1 in 5 students get support from Mental Health Services, while the other 4 out 5 remain not serviced.

"We have to provide supports for those students to make them successful. We need all kids to turn into healthy, successful adults. If you are not healthy then you can't focus on learning, whether that that is physical health or mental health."

Pawluk shares the board has really prioritized funding by giving the schools more resources to do basic programming but also specialty programs such as ASSIST (suicide awareness) and mental health first aid. Pawluk adds there will also be a bigger component for parent and community programming next year as well.

"We have done them on addiction, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. More and more parents are coming out to those sessions too. There is a demand for information about those topics from parents as well, which wasn't really there previously."