At Antioch High School in Contra Costa County, Calif., students sign up to become peer advocates and support peers through counseling, mentorship, conflict mediation and brief interventions for substance use and mental health, according to an article in The Hechinger Report.
Antioch High School’s peer support program has 80 peer advocates who provide support to students. Advocates receive about six months of training in their first year, and then are dispatched to mentor, facilitate mediations, provide brief mental health and drug-related interventions and build community with other students.
“A lot of our growth has come by having the students drive the program, because ultimately they know the needs of the community,” says Shira Sweitzer, the peer advocates coordinator and restorative practices facilitator at Antioch High.
Peer-to-peer support has surged in schools since the pandemic as reports indicated a rise in youth isolation, anxiety, depression and trauma exposure. Beginning in 2019, California expanded school-based peer support programs statewide as part of its historic $4.9 billion Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative.
Sweitzer started Antioch’s peer support program a decade ago in response to a persistent shortage of mental health counselors, and she used additional Covid funds to expand its capacity.
She developed a new ninth grade mentoring program matching incoming students and peer advocates who had signed up to guide new freshmen in their transition into high school. Sweitzer also helped train students in Peer Intervention Education, a peer-led alternative to suspension for students who are found using substances such as alcohol and tobacco for the first time.
“Students don’t want to hear an adult lecture them about their substance use. They’ve already heard it many times,” says Justin Escobedo Lopez, a senior and third-year peer advocate. “I think they’re way more comfortable talking to someone their age about it and not having to hear, ‘What you are doing is bad’.”
Peer advocates spend at least three meetings talking to students about their relationship with drug use, exploring why they might use and potential alternatives to use, without applying pressure on the student to quit.
In the five years since Peer Intervention Education began, peer advocates have helped bridge the gap between counselors and students who aren’t willing to speak openly with an adult, Sweitzer says.
Anna Gamble, a senior and third-year peer advocate, recalls being warned by school administrators that a student who had been caught smoking on campus would likely not open up to her. The student had refused to cooperate with a counselor and had already resigned himself to being suspended, she says.
“I ended up meeting up with him almost twice a week for quite a few weeks, and he ended up responding really well,” she says. “He was telling me how he would start cutting back his use each time, and he also opened up in other ways than just about his use.”
Antioch High’s program is also part of a peer-to-peer youth mental health pilot program led by The Children’s Partnership and the California Department of Health Care Services. The pilot evaluated the first of a roughly $8 million three-year grant initiative to strengthen student well-being. Research indicated that 96% of students who accessed peer support across eight schools said they felt better afterward, and about 91% of peer mentors reported that their training was useful for developing communication and leadership skills.
The Hechinger Report
