Each year, Hillsboro high schoolers in Mrs. Bisarek's Servant Leadership class are trained in Teen Mental Health First Aid. The program, overseen by the National Council of Mental Wellbeing, focuses on training teens to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental health or substance use challenges among their friends and peers.
This year, certified Teen Mental Health First Aid Instructor Jamie Gates visited Mrs. Bisarek's freshmen classroom over the course of several class periods to onboard students with evidence-based training and resources in building a peer support network.
Teen Mental Health First Aid employs a set of core principles to help students:
Change Their Perspective - Motivate teens to care for each other and promote belonging — making bullying and social isolation a thing of the past.
Break the Stigma - Most teens would rather open up to their friends than to a mental health professional. Help them understand it’s OK to not be OK, and how to create a safe space to talk.
Give Them the Vocab - It can be hard to talk about mental health, and most teens don’t know how. They’ll learn the signs and symptoms and how to talk to someone who needs them.
Motivate Them to Step In - In 2024 alone, 2.6M teens had thoughts of suicide. When a teen shows symptoms, their friends can be the first to offer help. The MHFA Action Plan shows teens what to do before or during a peer’s crisis.
Teach Them When to Tell an Adult - Help teens know when to escalate their concerns to a parent, guardian, or trusted adult they can trust to find resources and professional help.
Help Them Reach Their Potential - When schools create support systems for teens to care for their mental health, they’ll build the resilience they need to be their best — at school and in life.
The 2026-2027 school year marks the sixth year that Mrs. Bisarek has been coordinating the program. The district has been a bellwether in student mental health initiatives.
In 2020, the district employed two of the seventy teen instructors that existed nationally.