Los Altos School District

Mental Health Counseling
The LASD Mental Health Counseling Program, funded in part by the El Camino Healthcare District Community Benefits Grant, provides for short-term mental health counseling to all middle school students with a need, as well as to promote mental health wellness to the larger school community. We aim to provide dedicated mental health professionals to work directly with our students and families. In addition to providing individual and group sessions, our team members at each middle school influences positive change by:

• promoting support, advocacy and tolerance for a diverse student body: LGBTQ+ students, neurodivergent youth, those living with disability, and unsheltered and foster youth;
• providing crisis support to address acute situations seen in the educational setting: school refusal, self-harm and suicide ideation, and behavioral episodes related to anxiety/depression;
• making available trauma-based care for student refugees; 
• implementing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) classroom interventions; and
• reframing provision of mental health supports with an equity lens to specifically address the needs of a diverse student body. This includes staff training to increase multicultural awareness and learning ways to be culturally responsive. 

The focus of the program is school-based health and wellness and is not meant to be a substitute for psychological and/or psychiatric care available through public and private health insurance programs.