Sources of Strength spreads its roots

By JUDD WILSON

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — A suicide prevention program that has thrived at Lakes Magnet Middle School is coming to five more schools across the Coeur d’Alene School District.

At its Sept. 10 meeting, the district board of trustees voted to spend $25,000 to bring Sources of Strength to Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools, and Woodland, Lakes and Canfield middle schools.

According to the organization’s website, sourcesofstrength.org, “The program is based on a relational connections model that uses teams of peer leaders mentored by adult advisors to change peer social norms about help seeking and encourages students to individually assess and develop strengths in their life.”

Funds will pay for the national organization to train adult advisors and student peer leaders at each of the five schools. Training should take place this fall, said district spokesman Scott Maben.

The initial training lasts 3-6 months and gives adult advisors approximately 40 hours of training, most of which is with their student peer teams, plus orientation training and monthly teleconference meetings with Sources of Strength staff, explained the organization’s website. Peer leaders identified from the student population each undergo from 15-50 hours of training over a 3-6 month program.

The program is now in its fourth year at Lakes Magnet Middle School, said counselor Jennifer Zaike. She noted that the program is one of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s recommended evidence-based practices for preventing suicide.

“It’s not all about doom and gloom and talking about suicide and the risk of suicide,” she explained.

The program takes a preventive approach to the problem by teaching kids healthy behaviors because that creates protective factors in their life, she said. The program teaches students to look at any of the sources of strength in their lives, such as family support, positive friends, spirituality, healthy activities, mentors, generosity, mental health, and medical access. The program permeates the school, Zaike said.

“They may not even realize they’re doing a Sources of Strength activity,” she said.

Activities throughout the school year such as a thankfulness campaign in November, a positive friends photo booth, a gratitude journal, and more are part of the program.

Twenty-two of Lakes’ approximately 40 peer leaders take part in an eighth-period discovery class led by Lakes Magnet Middle School teacher Kristin Odenthal.

“What has been most encouraging is that I have seen more students reaching out to others they see are alone or seeming down and out,” Odenthal said. She explained that by teaching students at least four sources of strength and how to access them, they will turn to those for support “when they experience anxiety, anger or depression.”

Zaike said the students’ most common go-to sources of strength were positive friends, healthy activities such as sports, music, art, and other hobbies, spirituality, and family support. The least-mentioned is medical access, but Zaike added that from a counselor’s perspective, it was a very important resource during suicidal ideations and crises.

Zaike said that each time one class of students gets trained up in the program, a new incoming class shows up and the process starts all over again. She said the school is “still not where we want to be,” but is working to train students “To rely upon their strengths instead of commiserating as kids together and focusing on a problem, to find their strength and overcome.”

But as Odenthal observed, the program has taken root in the students’ thought processes.

“I think the best thing I heard just the other day was from a student supporting me,” she said. “I was feeling a bit frustrated and overwhelmed just before my last period of the day and I shared with my students that I was feeling a lot of anxiety and stress and a student said, ‘Well it is a good thing we have Sources of Strength!’”