ST. GEORGE — A text-based program designed to promote positive well-being and be on the watch for youth in need of help has made its way into the hands of many rural students.
Thanks to a partnership with Southwest Behavioral Health Center and the Prevention Coalition, this text-based program can be found in junior high and high schools in Southern Utah and the Arizona Strip that have signed up for the program.
SchoolPulse CEO Colby Jenkins said the text-based software company delivers social, emotional and positive psychology strategies to students, parents and faculty via text meant to help students feel more connected and positive.
“We have rural areas that have very limited mental health resources, and there is now the demand in those communities,” Jenkins said. “Our service provides mental health support anywhere as long as there’s a cell signal and they have a smartphone, they have access to support through SchoolPulse.”
SchoolPulse is backed by a team of licensed professionals and paraprofessionals to provide live and enthusiastic support, Jenkins said. Schools enrolled in the program include those in Hildale and Colorado City, specifically El Capitan, Water Canyon, Masada Charter and Centennial Academy, he added.
The coordinator of the Prevention Coalition, Rowdy Reeve, said the SchoolPulse program aligned with its action plan and can use some of its grant funding so the program will be free to the students and schools.
“This program helps students to overcome the fear of a stigma that sometimes attaches to mental health,” Reeve said. “It can be scary for a student to admit they may have a mental health crisis and even scarier to walk in to see a counselor. I believe the SchoolPulse program can help eliminate this fear by reaching out to the student first.”
The program also is designed to meet students’ level of comfort with technology, he added.
Students in grades six through 12 who are signed up will receive texts three times a week with positive messages and opportunities to respond via text. To interact with SchoolPulse, the student scans a QR code unique to their school that enrolls them into the text system. Jenkins said students don’t need to download anything, and SchoolPulse is not an app that requires students to remember login information.
“They don’t have a username, and there are no barriers because of the QR code,” Jenkins said. “They receive their first text, and it welcomes them to SchoolPulse. And part of the welcome information tells them they can respond anonymously to the texts from mental health experts. And we know the school the student is from because they’re accessing that unique QR code.”
The company provides schools with posters with a custom QR code that students can take photos of with their cell phones. The schools also introduced the program with the code at their assemblies and welcome information to the students.
“Our mental health experts are responding to the students in real-time,” Jenkins said. “We are not automated bots. The students communicate with us anonymously. Once they opt-in, students want to share what they’re struggling with and want a warm, gentle, kind, loving response.”
SchoolPulse allows school administration to check the pulse of its student body while protecting privacy. And schools will each have a dashboard for analytics. According to the company’s website, schools will get actionable data that eliminates the guesswork about their students’ well-being. Those schools will get data that can be used to see patterns, evaluate current efforts and inform future interventions.
“So we know the school the student is from because they’re accessing that unique QR code,” Jenkins said. “But we don’t know who they are.”
The company has found that most students want to be heard and express their feelings. In a case where a student represents an immediate threat, the program asks the student to reveal who they are so they can get help. Jenkins said if the student shares their identity, then SchoolPulse stays on the phone with them until they are at a professional’s door where the student can talk in person.
“Our ultimate goal is to build a connection with the students and nurture them and steer them to a trusted adult they can meet with,” Jenkins said. “And hopefully that’s a parent or a school counselor, someone they can meet and have that in-person connection.”
The mental health experts send follow-up texts as well. SchoolPulse is a Response-to-Intervention, Social and Emotional Learning, and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports platform, Jenkins said.
“We want to lighten that mental health burden for the schools and help slow the spiral of students who may be suffering in silence,” he said. “We provide proactive, positive knowledge to the educator so they can adjust their engagement based on the trends that they’re seeing.”
Already student response has been strong at Water Canyon High School, Wendee Wilkinson, the school’s lead counselor, told St. George News in an email.
“We just launched SchoolPulse in our school, and about one-third of the students have signed up so far,” she wrote. “I think this will be a great, positive resource for our students. I love that they check in with the students periodically. It will be interesting to see how our students like and utilize it!”
Presently, schools across the country in 18 states and more than 100,000 students have signed up for SchoolPulse. The St. George company was co-founded by licensed therapist Iuri Melo and software engineer Trent Staheli in 2017.
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