Mentally disturbed children treated

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Until a week ago, the only option for Chinle students with severe mental health problems other than dropping out was a long stay at a residential facility off the reservation.

As of last Monday, they have another option.

It is called the Edventures Therapeutic Day Treatment program at Chinle High School. Local school and hospital officials say it is the only program of its kind on the entire Navajo Nation.

The program, said Peter Stewart, the chief of mental health at the Indian Health Service's Chinle service unit, is designed for what the profession calls "severely emotionally disturbed children." They're the kids who are so aggressive and depressed, sometimes suffering from brain injuries, that they are a risk to not just others, but to themselves. Their schooling often suffers as well.

"They have to be at a level where there is an impairment of functioning," Stewart said.

"If you don't provide them services, (these students) drop out of school, they commit crimes, they commit suicide ... That's the kind of grim reality for most of these kids," Margaret Quell, director of Chinle High's special education department, said.

Off the reservation
Both the school and hospital have been providing mental health services until now. But being so remote, there's only so much they could do with more severe cases.

"Right now, for these kids, the only other treatment you can do is stick them in a facility in Salt Lake City," or some other major metropolitan area, Quell said.

The problem with that is it separates the patient from his or her family and community, two important components of recovery. The Edventures program combines that family and community with a high level of care.

Developed by the Utah-based Edventures Group, the program combines a full day of classes with family, group and individual therapy sessions. The students will also participate in various culturally based "experiential learning" activities, from hiking to equine therapy to traditional ceremonies. Local community leaders will also get involved.

Depending on their needs, Quell added, the students will take part in regular classes or receive one-on-one tutoring. All the while, a team of specialists staff should include a licensed therapist, a behavioral health professional, and a special education teacher and para-professional will be working with them.

"It creates a community within the school district where they can be safe," Quell said. "It creates a protected environment."

Room in the program will be limited, at least at first. The school will be able to handle only a dozen students at once, and up to 36 over the course of a year. Everyone involved hopes to see the program grow over time, and maybe even spread to other schools on the reservation.</sub>Supply and demandThe program's limited capacity is not for a lack of need.

Neither the hospital nor the school could provide a figure for how many "severely emotionally disturbed children" the community has. Even so, Stewart said, "I think we're not going to have trouble keeping a dozen or so kids in the program."

Steward could not say for sure if the number of such children has been on the rise, either.

"One of the problems when I came out here in '93 is that we simply weren't looking for them," he said, "so it's hard to say exactly how much (of a problem) there was out there."

One thing Stewart does know is that kids back then did not have to cope with the level of outside influences that kids today do. The reach of hip-hop and heavy metal into even the most remote reservation communities through dish and cable television, for example, separates those kids from the cultural teachings that have sustained them for generations, Stewart said.

One of the more troubling examples of that influence has been "cutting," the practice of cutting one's self with a razor blade or some other sharp object.

"That's not a Navajo thing," said Stewart.

Five or six years ago, he said, "we never saw that ... but once it gets started, it's kind of contagious."</sub>A second chanceWhile this kind of program may be the only one of its kind on the reservation right now, it's not the first. Chinle Junior High School tried a similar program about five years ago, but it was shut down after two or three years due to lack of funding. According to Quell, the company that ran that program failed to follow through on the tribal paperwork it needed to continue receiving Medicaid reimbursements.

Maintaining the qualified staff the program needed was not easy, either. Replacing specialty personnel in such a rural locale, Stewart said, is never easy.

Incidentally, the chief executive officer of the Edventures Group, Siamak Khadjenoury, was an employee of the company that brought the aborted program to the junior high. According to Quell, Khadjenoury left that company before founding Edventures.

And just because the first attempt at the program ran out of money does not mean it was not a success. Quell said that students who participated at the junior high have called her about enrolling at the high school.

But that is not to say this latest attempt is a sure bet. Replacing specialty staff, should they end up leaving, will not be much easier now than it was the first time. As for the prospects of losing federal funding again, Stewart said, "there's always that danger, because this is not something that is funded up front."

Stewart likes the program and hopes it lasts. But he's quick to point out that it is no panacea for the community's troubled youth. At best, he said, it's one more piece in a "continuum of care" that has been lacking for too long.

"We've got a lot of work to do," he said.