CONCERNED about effective services to deal with their mental health, some high school students have objected to the idea of confiding in guidance counsellors, as they say that confidentiality is not maintained.

The five students who voiced their views were among scores of pupils from institutions such as Cedar Grove Academy, St Andrew High School for Girls, Denbigh High School, Manning’s School, St Jago High School at the National Secondary Students’ Council conference held at Wolmer’s Boys’ School on Thursday.

They were responding to mental health and psychosocial support consultant Jhanille Brooks from United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), who had asked if they felt comfortable going to a guidance counsellor at school or psychologist outside the school environment.

One young man said he does not like the idea of parents being aware of concerns shared with the guidance counsellors.

“From experience, there are instances where the parents know every sentence that was said and then you get abused physically for it because the counsellor decided to call the parent,” he said to much applause from his peers who were seemingly in agreement.

Another student said she believes that guidance counsellors undermine her feelings, as comparisons are made with the situations of others.

“As someone who has spoken to a counsellor, one thing that they love to do is invalidate your feelings and would say, ‘There are other people in other countries that have life worse than you, stop complaining’ and ‘We are young and we don’t pay bills’. Those are the things we hear and so we are taught not to speak up,” she explained.

Another student shared a similar concern.

“I think that whenever people go to psychologists or counsellors, and you convey the problems to them, they tend to deny that and say that you may have something else bothering you or don’t worry. They are professionals and they should do better but sometimes that really isn’t the case,” she said.

Meanwhile one student said she becomes self-conscious of other people knowing about the issue she discussed privately.

” I don’t believe we should go to psychologists or guidance counsellor because by the time you tell them something, you see somebody looking at you weird and you wonder why and then they come to you and ask, ‘Are are okay, is something wrong?’ And then you eventually find out that they know about your issue too,” she said.

While another student added, “Oftentimes the advice is repeated. You hear it all the time, it seems very cliché.”

According to president of the National Secondary Students’ Council Dannyelle-Jordan Bailey, mental health is not a normalised conversation in the country, which has forced students not to be socialised to discuss their issues.

“A lot of times too, guidance counsellors sometimes undervalue or gaslight students and because of those experiences they don’t feel comfortable enough to go back to them or to go to them at all because it is something that is very prevalent within high schools in Jamaica,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

In response to the students’ concerns, Brooks said she was not surprised that students do not feel comfortable sharing their problems with psychologists and guidance counsellors.

“In my experience, those tend to be the views of the general population. It’s not out of sync that young people would have that view as well,” she told the Observer.

“Some of our preliminary data would show that as well because before we had U-Matter [mental health chat line], we would have the U-Report platform where young people vote and do polls on various issues and that data would be part of the push to do this chat line because it is anonymous, available 24/7. This is driven by their voices,” she added.

The U-Matter mental health chat line was launched by the Ministry of Health and Wellness, UNICEF’s U-Report, and the Caribbean Child Development Centre of The University of the West Indies’ Open Campus.

The free and anonymous counselling service was designed to address widespread mental health challenges among Jamaican youth ages 16 to 24.