Indigenous students face higher levels of anxiety, survey reveals
Hazel Dixon noticed a change in one of her students.
“She had that little hidden smile on her face,” Dixon said. “And I don’t see that now.”
In her work as an elder in residence at four public schools, Dixon tries to be there for students in trouble. But she doesn’t know what stripped that girl of her smile.
“Something has changed,” Dixon said. “I don’t know what, and nobody knows what.”
She hopes a three-day session of intensive mental health training will help her figure it out. Regina Public Schools sent elders, teachers and Indigenous advocates to a mental health first aid workshop this week, in the wake of a survey suggesting Indigenous students are dealing with far more anxiety than their peers.
The statistics date from a 2017 questionnaire. The school division determined that 40 per cent of Indigenous high school students have medium or high levels of anxiety, 12 points higher than non-Indigenous kids.
The results aren’t a diagnosis. Students voluntarily answered questions like “I am too fearful or nervous” or “I am afraid that other students will think I’m stupid.” Their answers were used to compile a score.
“It’s perceptual data we’re collecting,” said Sarah Longman, the division’s supervisor of Indigenous education.
“We want to know how the kids are feeling.”
The workshop is a response, she said. Longman wants it to arm staff with an understanding of anxiety and tools to ratchet down those statistics — one student at a time. The framework they’re learning incorporates Indigenous culture and spirituality.
“We’re exploring the cultural connections, looking at a holistic model for helping our students,” she said.
Jeff Cappo, an Indigenous advocate teacher at Kitchener Community School, spent part of Wednesday afternoon drawing a picture. He was comparing his own Indigenous cultural background to other traditions — via an illustrated Venn diagram.
“They asked us, ‘What does culture mean to you?’” he explained. “A lot of these kids don’t even know their culture, so that kind of helps me… I can utilize this Venn diagram to help them understand too.”
He then learned about the top stressors that students report facing. Bullying came first. But living in a foster home was right up there too, he said.
Dixon said she can emphasize with that.
“I know one young lad that I talk with; he’s struggling because he’s in foster care,” she said. “I can say to him ‘I understand how you feel, because I was in foster care when I was little.”
Longman suspects that some of the anxiety Indigenous kids face is really the aftermath of residential schools, passed down to them through their parents and grandparents.
“Many of the symptoms that we see in our community are a result of some of that intergenerational trauma that we’re still dealing with,” she said.
In the days ahead, her staff are set to learn how to recognize the signs of anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges. They’ll get a list of community resources they can draw on to support their students.
Dixon said she hopes to find out what questions to ask. She wants to get a better sense of how she can get that girl — the one who lost her smile — to open up and talk.
“Maybe that’s what I’m going to pick up from this,” she said.
“Maybe I can approach her again.”