The Sconi

In a move that is designed to help school districts in La Crosse improve their responses to mental illness and provide better access to treatment for students, the La Crosse Police Department offered mental health training at Aquinas Catholic Schools this month. 

The department has been offering training as part of the Mental Health First Aid training program since 2018. The program is meant to help provide professional training to teachers and officers to help them identify mental health struggles and provide students with the information that they need for their mental health. 

Police Chief Shawn Kudron said that the program is extremely versatile and can have a huge impact if applied correctly.

“We were so pleased with the program that we had some of our staff members become trained as trainers for the program. Once we did that, we started reaching out to some of our community stakeholders to say we have this program, and we also have the opportunity to bring it to you and your staff,” he said.

This week, the LCPD worked in conjunction with Aquinas Catholic Schools to complete their third training session. 

Aquinas President Ted Knutson spoke to the importance of the mental health training.

“Mental health has always been an issue with youth, more so than ever before with what’s been happening the last two years. Not just with the COVID-related issues, and the learning gaps that have been caused by that, but also social media, the political environment,” he said.

Mental health training has become more common in schools across the country, especially with the added stress that students are under during the pandemic and ever-increasing intensity of extracurriculars. 

“With everything that’s going on, it’s really just important that our teachers are trained to be able to identify some of the things that are causing the anxiety and the stresses,” Knutson said.

Teachers that go through the training program are expected to be better able to lead students to appropriate mental health care.