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help for students. He talked to mental and behavioral health
experts in the state and researched what other schools
across the country were doing.

He decided the school needed mental health counselors,
but he struggled with how to shift resources and staffing
to accommodate them. Then another reality hit: “The
numbers just weren’t there for mental health counselors.
There’s not enough of them out there to hire, even if you
could,” Culler laments.
But he found a great resource while attending a mental
health training sponsored by Prisma Health, a major health
care provider in South Carolina. There, Culler learned about
the availability of mental health first aid training and a mental
health curriculum for students.
Mental Health Training for Students and Staff
In the 2019-20 school year, Prisma Health and Easley
High School collaborated and trained about 150 students
and staff in mental health first aid and equipped them with
helpful resources. Culler notes that the six-hour training
had three goals:
1. Teach young people and adults what a mental health crisis looks like. How do you tell the difference between a mental health
crisis and someone who’s having a bad day? The key lies in the questions you ask them, says Culler.
2. Know the right thing to say if someone is going through a mental health crisis. Culler says this is tough, but the best strategy is
to be direct and ask: “Are you thinking about hurting yourself?”
“I always believed you don’t want to bring up that idea or plant that seed,” Culler notes. “But it’s not planting a seed, it’s finding out the
facts,” he adds.
3. Follow up with helpful resources. Students who are going through a mental health crisis or thinking about hurting themselves may
receive dozens of resources, including the suicide hotline number, lists of places they can go to receive therapy and other county and
state resources. “We cannot have our students take on the role of counselor, but we can have them take on the role of resource provider,”
maintains Culler.

Community Involvement in Mental Health Training
Easley High School also sought to build alliances in the community and train business and government officials in identifying individuals
who are going through a mental health crisis. Culler says they try to align groups of children with community members who may have the
same interests. For example, when student council leaders went through the mental health training, the school also invited Pickens County
officials, school board members, city council members and the mayor to the sessions as well. “We need a common language, a common
vocabulary that we use throughout Easley and the county of Pickens,” insists Culler.
Mental Health Curriculum
This school year, for the first time, Easley is offering a
course called Positive Psychology and Mental Health
First Aid. The course is taught by Prisma Health
personnel. Closely involved with the course is Easley
teacher Emily Matthews.

Matthews says the purpose of the course is to
understand, optimize and maintain mental health
wellness and “decrease stigmas and increase
health speaking.”
The approach is working. Matthews points out that
the school has experienced more self-reporting of
mental problems and a growing awareness that
mental illness is not a weakness — everybody has
moments of mental stress. Students are also learning
that it’s okay to use the phrase mental illness. “It used
to be taboo,” says Matthews.

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