Jefferson School District #251 hoping to help students’ mental health
RIGBY, Idaho (KIFI) - With the ever growing number of screens in the home ,Jefferson School District #251 is becoming concerned about their students mental health.
As such, Monday evening the district showed a documentary titled "Screenagers."
The documentary features insights from psychologists and neurologists about how teens can balance their screen time and avoid addictions, or if they have a screen addiction, give them tips on how to handle it.
In the trailer for the documentary, filmmaker Delaney Ruston says, "I made the film Screenagers to understand the risks of screen time for young people and solutions for healthy use."
She added her inspiration came from her desire to reach out to her daughter.
"She's been really struggling emotionally. Even though I'm a doctor and feel competent at work at home, I'm feeling completely lost. How to understand test Sarah and how best to help her. I know lots of teens are struggling with hard emotions like stress, anxiety and depression."
The district's director of secondary education Sherry Simmons says the district hopes this will be a conversation starter for parents and students.
"It's an entry point into a conversation about how students are doing mental health wise in their in their lives and really focusing on how they can navigate stress, anxiety and depression in different ways and can use the strategies to help parents," Simmons said.
She says in the movie parents and teens will not only receive tips on managing screen time but strategies on approaching a conversation on mental health.
"And so there's going to be some different strategies for having kids identify emotions and navigate through those and even some information about for parents," Simmons said. "Sometimes it's really tempting as a parent to try and solve our our kids problems.And instead of doing that, really just validating the student and or the child and and then talking to them about ways that they can solve their problems and giving them the power to do so."
The school district is thankful for this opportunity to help their students and families within their district.
