Conversations Across America
Call To Mind is partnering with public radio stations across the country to produce conversations with experts intended to further the understanding and care of mental health issues among young people living in those areas. Call To Mind’s correspondent Alisa Roth will elaborate on the topic discussed at each event.
As school starts, support is a worry
As states prepare to re-open schools, protecting students from COVID-19 is far from the only concern education leaders face. Whether schools select an in-person, remote or hybrid model for teaching, administrators have to figure out how to care for students’ mental health. Left untreated, mental health issues can affect students’ behavior, academic performance and overall well-being. Their issues are not unlike those that afflict adults – anxiety, depression and eating disorders, for example – and in children they can interfere with their lives at home and at school. It’s an especially big challenge for schools, given what many students have been dealing with since the COVID crisis began last spring: from extended isolation to family illness or even death, parents’ job loss, and homelessness. Roth recently listened to a conversation at Georgia Public Broadcasting on the topic. Here are her takeaways:
A child’s mental health is a big deal
There were around 56.5 million children enrolled in primary and secondary schools in the U.S. last year. Even before the pandemic hit, an estimated 1 in 6 school-aged kids had a diagnosed mental health disorder. And rates of mental illness and suicide among young people are on the rise, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Experts aren’t sure what’s causing it, but there have been suggestions about a range of contributing factors, including peer pressure from social media and worries about things like school shootings. Complicating the problem is the severe shortage of mental health care for kids, especially in rural areas and among other under-served populations. More than two-thirds of U.S. counties don’t have a child and adolescent psychiatrist. For patients, that means long wait times. In Wisconsin, for example, people are waiting up to two years for their child to see a psychiatrist.
Schools and school administrators are acutely aware of the problem. Getting more counselors and psychologists in schools was one of the demands teachers made in Chicago and elsewhere when they went on strike last year. In the 2015-2016 school year, the ratio of students to counselors in Chicago’s public schools was 526 to 1, according to the National Association of College Admissions Counseling. The American School Counseling Association recommends a ratio of 250 to 1.
Read more …
On child mental health:
On the shortage of mental health care providers:
On the teacher strikes:
Striking Teachers Demand Counselors and Nurses [The New York Times]
Saint Paul teachers threaten strike over care for students [Minnesota Reformer]
The historic strikes and protests by teachers aren’t over [The Washington Post]
Why we should we be worried about this now
The pandemic is putting a significant strain on the mental health of children. (Let’s be honest, it’s putting a strain on everyone’s mental health, but kids are especially vulnerable. They can’t easily manage it or get help by themselves.) Even the U.N. has called for better mental health care in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
Roy Reese
Clinicians have quickly engaged. “We have seen a significant influx of patients presenting with increased anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms,” said Roy Reese, an associate professor at the Morehouse School of Medicine who was among the experts in the conversation at Georgia Public Broadcasting. He said young patients are showing symptoms that include serious disruptions to their sleeping and eating patterns. It’s not just out of concern for students’ well-being that schools need to pay attention to this. Mental health problems make it hard for students to do well in school.
As Sharon Hoover, who co-directs the National Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland, told me: Natural disasters have real, lasting effects on childrens’ mental health. And, “We know … if we’re not attending to students’ and families’ health and mental health needs, they will not be ready to engage the learning environment.” One study, for example, showed that older teens with depression were twice as likely to drop out of school as their peers who didn’t have depression or who had been treated for it earlier.
Read more …
On the mental health crisis caused by Covid-19:
The pandemic is pushing America into a mental health crisis [The Washington Post]
On natural disasters and behavioral issues:
Schools need to adapt
In May, some states began issuing broad guidance for districts on how to take care of student mental health, including ensuring staff is aware of potential problems and is screening students for depression, suicide risk and other concerns.
Schools have a range of ways to do that. Some are specific to distance learning. When schools in Harrisonburg City, Virginia, went remote in the spring, for example, the school system set up a virtual relaxation room for students and teachers. Other schools are leaving time at the end of online classes when students can connect privately with a guidance counselor or adding a button on the online school platform that lets students contact a school psychologist directly.
Erica Fener Sitkoff
Others are more low-tech, says Erica Fener Sitkoff, a clinical psychologist and executive director of the advocacy organization Voices for Georgia’s Children. She, too, was a participant in the Georgia event. Fener Sitkoff said teachers should be trained to check in and check out with students, asking “how everyone is doing at the beginning [of class], how everyone’s doing at the end, and be able to recognize and flag and do individual follow up directly with children.”
Hoover says it’s important to keep an eye on the bigger picture, as the coronavirus – and kids’ response to it – evolves. “We encourage schools to … think about how they can screen or monitor over time the general well-being or levels of distress and put supports in place.” Hoover says that could be a check-in with a classroom teacher, a meeting with a school counselor, or something more involved.
Shortly after schools closed in March, the Los Angeles Unified School District set up a special hotline staffed by school counselors that parents, students, and community members could call with mental health concerns. “Really our priority was to ensure that the community had access to connect with someone from the school district,” said Joel Cisneros, who directs school mental health for the district. But it’s also worth noting that student needs go beyond mental health. Of the 2,500 or so calls that have come into the hotline since it opened, the majority have been about basic needs like food and shelter.
Read more …
On the hotline:
Don’t forget the teachers
Teachers are in a tough spot. If schools re-open for in-person classes, teachers risk contracting COVID-19. Some are talking about quitting – or retiring early – if told to go back to the classrooms, a decision that would potentially affect their economic well-being. And the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers’ union in the country, said it would support a “safety strike” if states don’t come up with plans to keep schools safe. But even if school is remote, teachers have to deal with all the stresses the rest of us do, in addition to supporting their students.
Sarah Y. Vinson
Teachers teach, “But they’re also human beings,” said Sarah Y. Vinson, a physician who specializes in adult, child, adolescent and forensic psychiatry and was part of the event in Georgia. And people “cannot give what they do not have … so if [teachers] don’t feel a sense of power or a sense of agency, it’s going to be really hard for them to reinforce that [for their students.]”
Schools are aware of that and are talking about creative ways to support teachers, says Hoover of the National Center for School Mental Health. Researchers from the schools of social work and nursing at Indiana University are working with educators at several schools in the state to help prevent secondary trauma. The concern is how their mental health could affect students.
Read more …
This teacher and mother of 3 says she may quit [The Washington Post]
Texas Teachers Consider Leaving The Classroom [Houston Public Media]
Teachers are leaving the classroom because of COVID-19 [WTHR]
Inequality is powerful
We know that the coronavirus has hit Black and Hispanic communities much harder than it has hit white communities. And many of those communities also have less access to technology and high-speed Internet access, which makes distance learning – and distance mental health care – hard to do. When schools closed in the spring, thousands of students in Philadelphia were left to do distance learning without adequate WiFi. (The school district initially suggested students could use WiFi from the parking lots of libraries and other public buildings, a suggestion the superintendent later backed off from following serious backlash.)
For kids with chaotic home lives, school is a refuge, says Vinson. Not having school “really is a significant loss for them.” She says it’s important to take a less punitive approach to students now, whether talking about behavior or attendance. In Los Angeles, just under 75 percent of Latino high school students regularly participated in distance learning, and just over 70 percent Black students did, according to a Los Angeles Unified School District analysis. Among white high school students, 85 percent did.
With more resources and fewer students, private schools are putting changes in place – from hallway temperature scanners to classrooms that allow for social distancing. These changes will allow more students to come back to school, in many cases, full-time, but will further exacerbate the inequities of the education system.
Read more …
In D.C., Some Families Are Looking At Private Education [WAMU]
Private Schools Are Reopening While Public Schools Are Not [The New York Times]
The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequity of Coronavirus [The New York Times]
Teenager Who Didn’t Do Schoolwork Sent to Juvenile Detention [ProPublica]
Parents, already overwhelmed, need to persevere
The pandemic has put significant strain on parents. They are trying to maintain – or find – a job while acting as teachers and being – well, parents. Even so, there are important things they can do to help support their kids’ mental health.
Simply encouraging basic healthy behaviors is important, says Vinson, like getting enough sleep, eating right and exercising. She also suggests limiting screen time (as much as possible, given the demands of distance learning) and finding ways to safely socialize.
For kids who have anxieties directly connected to coronavirus, Roy Reese says it’s important for parents to acknowledge the fear, talk about their anxiety and how the family is going to cope. He says parents should also acknowledge what they don’t know, telling children, “We’ll figure out who to talk to, and we’re going to figure out what we can do.”
Read more …
Alisa Roth is a correspondent for American Public Media's Call to Mind project and a 2020-2021 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow.