High School Suspensions – The Need for Responsive Services
Karen Corcoran
Lynn University; EDU 708; Fall I – 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c_RuJ2JHBo
The root cause for behaviors of high school students who are suspended for drug related incidents is overlooked. Quite often, drug use is a self-medicating behavior, induced by life experiences for which an adolescent is unprepared to process. School suspension or an alternative to school suspension is merely a means to issue consequences for drug-related behaviors without assessing the needs of the student, so as to prevent reoccurring behaviors, continued school suspensions, and the possibility of a student dropping out of school.
There is a vast array of issues occurring in any student’s life. Yet the more obvious issue is seldom considered. Commonly, a parent, sibling or a close family member is struggling with addiction. A child’s friend or group of friends could be using or experimenting with drugs. The emotional turmoil surrounding either family or friends behaviors with drug use may cause drastic reactions or behaviors to manage emotions characterized as drug use. Grief and trauma present as behaviors in individuals attempting to understand and survive addictive behaviors of loved ones.
When hearing the term or word “grief,” one may instinctively connect it to the act of feeling a deep emotional sorrow, connected to a specific loss in one’s life most notably death. Yet, grief and the grieving process occurs in life and the living as well. The stages of grief for adolescents surrounded by behaviors associated with drug use or addiction is a form of grief not often discussed. Similarly, an adolescent who has experienced the death of a loved one due to drug-overdose transitions through stages of grief. Typically, grieving for a loved one begins long before a drug related death occurs. An adolescent will typically experience some or all of the five stages of grief described in the Kübler-Ross model. The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The stages are known to be a part of the cycle that makes up the grieving process. Children and families experience grief over the loss of the relationship and the loss of life as they once knew it. For a child, the grieving process is often overlooked in the therapeutic cycle and in addressing behavioral concerns that arise in school.
Grieving also occurs simultaneously as trauma. Children experiencing addiction within a family or with a friend, will endure trauma for which children are unprepared and unequipped to handle. Trauma associated with the uncertainty and fear surrounding addictive behaviors of loved ones, has a profound impact on daily behaviors and academic achievement. Traumatic events begin to have a negative impact on one’s day-to-day activities, such as missing school, isolating, detaching emotionally and physically, or even experiencing physical changes such as weight loss and other notable deterioration. Coping mechanisms are required to intervene on this cause-and-effect relationship.
High school students are among the adolescents most likely to participate in illicit drug use Drug Abuse Diverging Paths according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). Statistically, in 2002, the National Institutes of Health has the number of overdose deaths at under 25,000, but by 2015, that number doubled to over 50,000. Drug overdose deaths in 2016 exceeded 59,000, the largest annual jump ever recorded in the United States, according to preliminary data compiled by The New York Times (McCall Jones, Baldwin, & Compton, 2017). Given this data, it is quite apparent that our national drug problem is an epidemic.
Examining high school student suspensions, focusing on drug-related suspensions with the intention of creating a responsive service for students such as an assessment, counseling, and mentoring, will provide additional support, protective, and preventive measures for reducing continued maladaptive behaviors. Maladaptive behaviors can include anger and other emotionally destructive behaviors, drug use as a self-medicating behavior or a response to grief and trauma, a reaction to peer pressure, or a reaction to a loved one’s addiction. High school suspensions need responsive services to assist in the well-being of students.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016, June 10). Youth risk behavior surveillance, United States, 2015. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/2015/ss6506_updated.pdf
Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. New York: Scribner.
Morrisey, B. (2017, September 25). How grief affects relationships. Retrieved September 29, 2017, from http://www.facingbereavement.co.uk/griefandrelationships.html