After seeing so many older students suffer from depression and anxiety, one former Las Positas College professor has made it her mission to bring mental health awareness to parents, young adults and even elementary schoolers.
Siah Fried was a health, women’s health and nutrition professor at Las Positas for 17 years before eventually teaching at a high school level in 2017. During that time, she said several students came to her saying they were experiencing different levels of depression.
“The students wanted to talk more and more each year about mental health, and more and more would pull me aside and say, ‘I think I’ve got depression,'” Fried said. “I just was seeing it and it was really upsetting. It was still so stigmatized.”
She had tried reaching out to principals across the Tri-Valley school districts to see what they could do about the growing epidemic, but she said that because of the lack of data surrounding mental health 10 to 15 years ago, she never heard back.
Fried said she didn’t like seeing so many college students with depression or issues with anxiety, so she decided to do something about it. Her solution: Target kids at a younger age so that they have the skills to cope with mental health issues when they grow up.
Fried already had a side business where she would offer individual health and parent coaching — which she still does — but back then it was mostly centered around obesity and nutritional health.
But after the pandemic, she started incorporating mental health into her Flex-Able Minds program, which is when she saw a growing need for those services.
“I think the pandemic … kind of leveled the playing field in the way that there were people who’ve never had depression before, or anxiety, who were getting it,” Fried said. “I think there was a little more compassion … or empathy for people who deal with it a lot more. So I think that helped with the stigma.”
While she still offers her services to anyone who needs them, Fried is slowly making more efforts to visit elementary schools so she could teach younger students better coping skills to deal with depression and anxiety, which is what she recently did at Vintage Hills Elementary School in Pleasanton.
Over the span of three one-hour sessions — one each week — Fried taught a class of fifth graders everything from the basic understanding of how the brain works to how to deal with stress and remain resilient when experiencing certain emotions.
The classes, which were funded by the school’s parent teacher association, started the first week of September and went on for the next two weeks as Fried came back to teach the group of students.
“She does a good job of just sort of relating to them so it feels more fun and they’re not falling asleep,” Tammy Creighton, whose fifth-grade class participated in the classes, told the Weekly.
Fried had originally taught a session back in spring with the intent of preparing outgoing fifth graders for their transition to middle school.
“It was, for those kids who hadn’t been in school for long, a big deal to come back here and then have to go back to … middle school,” Creighton said
But the school brought Fried back this year to help teach the current group of students more social skills, which is something that Creighton said has been lacking since the pandemic.
She also said that the classes are beneficial simply because a lot of people — not just students — don’t seem to know how to manage their emotions effectively, even before the pandemic.
“I can’t imagine raising a kid in the middle of all of this right now because it just seems like they’re exposed to so much that they’re not ready for,” Creighton said. “They’re 10 and 11, they’re just not ready for so many of the things that they get exposed to.”
And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the data on young children regarding mental health has only been getting worse over the years as approximately 5.8 million kids ages 3 to 17 were diagnosed with anxiety from 2016 to 2019. For kids diagnosed with depression, that number was approximately 2.7 million.
That’s why Creighton said it’s been nice to see the students, who she knew might have been going through something, trying new coping skills that they learned from Fried and actually seeing results.
During her second session with Creighton’s class on Sept. 8, Fried spoke to the kids as a small group and had them do breathing exercises on the floor, went over mindfulness practices and taught them how to recognize stressful moments in order to let them go.
Despite being an average group of restless fifth graders, the students seemed to be engaged with what Fried was talking about by asking questions and talking about their issues, which mostly revolved around not getting enough sleep — which is something that Fried has noticed with most kids that age.
“We spent like an extra 30 minutes on it that I wasn’t planning on, because they really wanted to talk about it,” Fried said. “Anxiety or depression can keep you from sleeping, or not sleeping can trigger anxiety and depression … so I really, really need to stress to them the importance of getting that sleep.”
She said she has helped the kids brainstorm ideas to help with that, which included wrapping themselves up in blankets or simply minimizing their screen times.
“One of the kids said, ‘My mom always makes me put my phone down an hour before bed and now I know why,'” Fried said.
That statement also worked into her point that her program works best because it’s held in a setting where kids are also interacting with themselves and they are hearing things like that from their own peers.
“There’s research supporting how important health education is in the school setting for that exact reason,” Fried said. “I cannot believe some of the things that students over the years have shared in front of their peers.”
She also said that she is sometimes taken aback by how much mental health has become normalized in that now everyone from a high schooler to a fifth grader has access to school counselors and even therapists of their own.
“It still takes you off guard,” Fried said. “I’m still adjusting because I still have friends who will not go into therapy.”
She said that probably had something to do with the pandemic because of the high demand for mental health resources during that time when a lot of people needed it.
For kids specifically, she said she has also seen how the pandemic did a number on their mental health. But it also opened the doors for schools to start implementing things like wellness rooms, which gives students a space to be around other students in a socially healthy way.
While Fried has already started talking to folks in Danville about possibly setting up some classes there, and even has a class scheduled in Dublin, she said schools continue to tell her that their counselors are taking care of mental health education.
But she said they still need help, mainly because the counselors aren’t enough and the teachers already have enough on their plates.
“Every school district needs to be doing something to fulfill social emotional learning. But what I’m finding is … they might do one mindfulness practice, and check it off,” Fried said. “It’s really important for the districts and the parents to understand that this isn’t really being done.”
She, however, said it isn’t really the district’s or school’s fault because their counselors simply don’t have the time for education and prevention when they are metaphorically having to put out fires.
“They’re literally saving lives because kids are suicidal, they’re coming in with panic attacks,” she said. “The counselors are putting out the fires, I’m trying to prevent the fires,” she said.
She said her work in educating kids at an early age is so important because it could prevent future generations from having to go through those same issues.
“There is a lot that can be done preventatively and I’m just not seeing it being done,” Fried added. “It’s frustrating.”
