With help from the San Luis Coastal Unified School District and a $30,000 grant from the San Luis Obispo County Friday Night Live Partnership, San Luis Obispo High School now has a new Wellness Center designed to give students access to resources many say they desperately need.
“I think the best ways to reduce kind of barriers to accessing services is if we're able to provide some of that on campus,” said SLO High School SEL counselor Austin Miller.
As a senior who has gone through her own mental health journey in high school, Delaney Hernandez will tell you that her peers are among the most vulnerable and that having a place of their own to work through their issues is necessary.
“Having that perspective of having struggled with that and then coming to a place of stability and seeing all these people that I have met through that, I really did see a need that people really do need this,” Hernandez said.
For senior Tristan Candelas, whose older brother died in a car crash in 2021, using a place like the Wellness Center to not only work through his own grief but help others as well, makes for a positive impact on the healing process.
“I tried helping others and that's helped me because I like helping others," Candelas explained. "It just made those bad thoughts go away."
In addition to it being a safe space to get away from the rigors of being a teenager, the center acts as an area for counselors like Miller to solicit group and individual therapy sessions as well as virtual tele-therapy calls.
“As a district parent who has students and children in the district, knowing that the high school that my kids are going to and this will be existing for them, that feels pretty good,” he said.
Both Nipomo High School and Morro Bay High School received the same grants for their own wellness centers.
