“I do think it would be appropriate … if Congress is willing to provide the legislative or regulatory authority to put that label on, then I’d certainly be willing to partner,” Murthy said in response to questioning from Republican Sen. Roger Marshall during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on youth mental health. 

Murthy’s response was one of many showcasing the urgency of soaring suicidality, addiction, depression and anxiety among young people, particularly those who are LGBTQ, Black and brown. 

One in five high schoolers made a suicide plan in 2021, Murthy said. 

The average young American uses social media for about 3 ½ hours each day, making them  doubly at risk for disrupted sleep and clinical depression or anxiety. 

“This is not just a crisis. It’s an emergency. This is probably the biggest problem we have in this country,” said Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville. “The number one commodity that we have in this country is not gold and silver, it’s our young people. And we’re destroying them.”

Tuberville added in his work with young people as a coach, he has seen prescription drugs take over communities, particularly fentanyl. Several other senators voiced concerns about young people accessing fentanyl-laced counterfeit medications on social media. 

Beyond social media, Murthy identified three other drivers of the youth mental health crisis: loneliness; trauma from loss of loved ones, violence, abuse or incarceration; and declining confidence in the future, due to surging economic inequality, racism, gun violence and climate change. 

The amount of time young people aged 15-24 spent with friends declined by more than 50% even before the pandemic, Murthy said of the loneliness epidemic, urging for community, faith and local organizations to help rebuild social connection and places of belonging. 

Social media age and safety standards should be revamped and in-school programs to teach children tools to manage emotions should be expanded, said Murthy and Katherine Neas, the Department of Education’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services.

“Simply put, schools are a gateway to needed services that otherwise might be inaccessible to many young people,” Neas said. 

Colleges and universities can increase mental health services on-campus, continue public talks on mental health to decrease stigma, and boost support for communities on-campus like clubs, religious organizations, and support networks for marginalized students, the Surgeon General said. 

Murthy added parents should establish safety standards on their children’s devices, a necessity given the “utter lack” of accountability when it comes to social media companies’ impact on young people, though they’ve been around for about 20 years. 

In a comparison between the auto and tech industries, Murthy told senators they would not expect parents to have the expertise to inspect whether tires or a car’s frame would keep their children safe – a government’s responsibility. 

“They rely on us establishing standards and then enforcing those with manufacturers. These are incredibly complex platforms … and parents need help here to interpret and understand their safety.” 

The Senate HELP committee has nine healthcare reauthorizations expiring in September that, if not renewed, may impact future access to mental health support across the country. The Support Act, for instance, supports people with substance abuse disorders and children suffering from trauma, and prohibits children in juvenile incarceration from being denied Medicaid.

Sen. Tim Kaine used his time not for questioning but for a heartfelt address to the nation’s young people. Kaine’s children both attended the Richmond, Virginia high school where two died in a graduation ceremony mass shooting this week. 

He acknowledged the feeling of hopelessness many feel, that they cannot change the social conditions they find depressing, cannot yet vote. 

“Our history shows the opposite. Things get better when young people do engage,” he said. “The therapeutic value of linking arms with colleagues to battle for improvements in climate or reductions in gun violence, that very act … has a positive impact not only on society, but on one’s sense of well being.”

Confronted with that startling reality, the new study from the University of Chicago’s Education Lab has identified a cost-effective, school-based model that can support young girls: group counseling and mentorship. 

Attending weekly in-school counseling for just four months through the Working on Womanhood program decreased PTSD symptoms brought on by witnessing or experiencing violent attacks or or losing a loved one by 22%, depression by 14% and anxiety by about 10%, according to the randomized control trial, considered the gold standard of research.

The program is currently offered to groups of 10 teen girls in about 30 Chicago Public Schools and more in Dallas, Kansas City and Boston.

“[Because of] the violence we see, and there’s violence everywhere, not just in Chicago… they are experiencing a lot of loss,” said Christine Diaz Luna, a senior counselor at Hancock College Prep which serves mostly Latino students on the city’s southwest side. “I’ve seen in my experience that loss, that grief, that longing for connection.” 

The high prevalence of PTSD shocked lead researcher Monica Bhatt, whose team studied over 3,700 9th- through 11th-grade girls across 10 high schools from 2017-19. 

“These are girls who, despite the very, very high levels of trauma that they were experiencing, are coming to school. We see a B average … We don’t see a lot of externalizing behaviors,” Bhatt said. 

“It really adds evidence to this notion … of having a set of latent mental health challenges that do surface later in life, but aren’t apparent early on.” Research has shown that leaving depression and PTSD unchecked can affect girls’ future ability to succeed in their careers and family. 

Earlier this year, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report shed some light into just how pervasive traumatic experiences are for young girls: 1 in 5 nationwide experienced sexual violence in 2021.

The Chicago research is the first large-scale study to look at effective mental health interventions specifically for Black and Latino girls — who are more likely than their peers to experience traumatic childhood experiences and have higher rates of depression and anxiety. 

“Usually, we sort of study program effectiveness on a large sample, and then we try to understand, does this vary for particular student groups?” Bhatt added. “This is a program that was designed particularly with Black and Latino girls in mind … We’re starting to develop a body of evidence where there wasn’t a lot prior.”

Students who are actively suicidal, have learning disabilities or are absent more than 75% of the year were excluded from the Chicago sample. More research is needed to understand how a program like WOW might impact those student groups. 

Researchers believe results would be even greater for girls attending for the designed length, two school years. According to Youth Guidance, the local nonprofit that launched the model in 2011, girls who start within clinical range for PTSD and depression have even more success: decreasing symptoms by 62% and 71%, respectively. 

WOW in Action

After her freshman year, whenever TK Nowlin was overwhelmed by family, school and friend stress, she’d get frustrated, and get into arguments, or stop communicating. 

Now a junior at Fenger Academy High School in her second year of WOW programming, she feels more calm and sure of herself. 

“[WOW] helped me work on my healthy relationships … It’s very important to listen to understand instead of listening to respond, and I know that played a big factor in my life, because it was like I always had a rebuttal to something,” Nowlin said. 

Fellow junior Yazmin Hunter told The 74 she now has a system when she’s reaching the point of frustration: take a break, sit down, breathe, listen to music, take a walk. 

Once a week, TK, Yazmin and peers across Chicago leave their elective or physical education classes to head to their WOW room. They start with a check-in, sharing a rose, bud, thorn from their week or comparing their mood to songs and colors. 

Her counselor facilitates either full group discussions or individual journaling. Surrounded by colorful walls, affirmations and mirrors, they sometimes pull cards from a container: Who is the most important person in your life? What does success or a support system look like to you? What are your views on parenting? 

Informed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the sessions get girls to reframe or question negative thoughts, reflect on how their day-day actions align with their personal values and listen openly to each others’ stories. 

“Our thoughts are powerful. And sometimes we think thoughts that aren’t necessarily true. As an example, you look in the mirror, ‘Oh my God, I’m ugly,’” Diaz Luna explained. “Let’s take that thought and break it down. What’s going on there? Where’s that coming from? Have you been told this before by someone else?”

Having the group offered during the school day is critical to reach students who work or have family commitments after school that would prevent them from attending otherwise. Students are never pulled out of core classes or lunch, only electives or physical education. 

Students can volunteer for the program, pending a parent’s permission. School staff can also refer students to the program if they notice someone struggling. 

Cost and space are typically the biggest barriers for potential school partners, Youth Guidance’s chief program officer Nacole Milbrook told The 74. 

At about $115,000 per school for one counselor, who works with four to five groups of students, WOW is still about $40,000 cheaper to run than the accepted threshold for similar services.

Vanessa’s first two years of high school passed in a haze.

Some days she attended classes at her high school in East El Paso. Other days she ditched school to smoke or vape cannabis with her friends at a park. Then there were days she would arrive at school, walk straight back home and sleep all day after getting high alone in an empty house.

“There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t get high,” Vanessa said. “It made me forget the reason why I was alone. It was just a way to escape from reality, to dissociate.”

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Looking back, Vanessa realizes she was still in mourning from her sexual assault years prior and the rift it caused in her family.

When school counselor Alice Gardea felt concerned about why Vanessa was missing so many classes, she referred her to Project Vida, an El Paso-based nonprofit that offers therapy on campus.

Vanessa, who’s now 17 and heading toward her senior year of high school, described that conversation as the moment that “set everything in place.” Weekly therapy sessions helped her navigate her grief and take back control of her life, she said.

As teenagers struggle with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, organizations in El Paso are partnering with school districts to make mental health care more accessible. Local mental health providers say that cost, scheduling conflicts and lack of reliable transportation are among the barriers that prevent students from accessing therapy, especially if they live in rural areas.

Emergence Health Network, a local agency that provides mental health services, offers on-campus therapy and case management in 10 different schools in El Paso County. This month, the organization added the middle school and high school in Fabens, a community about 30 miles southeast of El Paso along the border.

Project Vida, which introduced its first on-campus therapist in 2017, spans 21 schools across El Paso and Hudspeth counties. In some schools, it’s not uncommon to see students who are raising themselves in non-traditional households, said Pamela Ponce, co-chief of school-based integrated health at Project Vida.

Early intervention can be life changing for not only children and teenagers – but also for the family and community they grow up in, Ponce said.

“Many of these people who are having crises in their adult years, those crises could have been prevented if they started getting services early during school age,” Ponce said. “It gives them the ability to learn coping skills, learn more about themselves, how to care for their mental health, then teach that to their parents and siblings.”

Mental health providers on school campus build trust

Project Vida began seeing the need for mental health services on campus in 2015, while its staff was in schools for the organization’s teenage pregnancy prevention program. Facilitators noticed that students were coming into Project Vida’s school offices to ask about topics besides sexual health, such as how to manage their anxiety, Ponce said.

Since Project Vida team members were visible on campus, showing up to lunch and school events, students began seeing them as trusted adults that they could talk to about any health issue, she said.

In 2017, Project Vida piloted its first on-campus, mental health care team at Eastlake High School, located on the outskirts of El Paso in Socorro Independent School District. The suicides of at least two students, linked to possible bullying, stunned the district that year.

Project Vida has since expanded to Clint, Canutillo and Fort Hancock, concentrating in middle and high schools and seeing about 300 students a year. Each mental health team, which typically rotates between two campuses, includes a licensed professional counselor or licensed clinical social worker. Availability tends to fill up within the first three months of the school year, although clinicians can take new students in the middle of the school year if their clients finish their treatment plan early, Ponce said.

Ponce said they see students who are grieving the loss of loved ones, experiencing panic attacks or struggling with depression. Students also showed signs of social anxiety when they returned to the classroom after back-to-back tragedies: The 2019 mass shooting at Walmart, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 3,600 people in El Paso.

Without on-campus services, students in small and rural communities may have to travel half an hour to an hour into El Paso for mental health care. That means a parent might have to miss work – and lose part of their income – to drive their child to their appointment, while the child may have to miss school.

A shortage of mental health care providers means people can face long wait times for appointments in El Paso to open up, or can only get monthly appointments rather than weekly or biweekly, Ponce said. Parents can also find it challenging to find a provider that takes their health insurance.

Project Vida’s program is funded by a combination of federal and state grants, as well reimbursements from Medicaid, CHIP and private insurance. The organization works with uninsured people on a sliding scale and won’t turn away anyone who can’t pay for services, Ponce said.

Vanessa described the day her counselor referred her to therapy as the day that changed her life. She thinks she’s better at not letting the painful events she couldn’t control, control her, she said. She’s begun catching up on her academics, quit her habitual vaping and looks forward to homecoming, prom and graduation next year – activities that used to not excite her.

It feels good to have the motivation to live again, she said.

“I recently wrote a poem for English class about my sexual assault and the emotions I was experiencing,” Vanessa said. “As I was writing and reading other poems about assault, it helped me feel it’s OK to not be OK.”

Small communities overcome mental health care stigma

When 18-year-old Ariana Bañez told her parents last year she wanted to see a professional mental health care provider, they didn’t believe her at first, she said.

Bañez, now a senior at Fabens High School, said she probably seemed like the typical overachiever. She was on the student council and competing to become the class valedictorian. She was involved with the school theater program and played French horn in the school band.

But Bañez said she had a hard time adjusting to her school load after returning to campus during the pandemic, after more than a year of virtual classes and canceled extracurricular activities. Bañez remembered trying to hide how overwhelmed she felt, but the pressure manifested in physical ways. She would get headaches and stomachaches. Sometimes she forgot to eat.

Searching for a therapist only brought more stress. The clinics in El Paso that Bañez called were booked and couldn’t take on new clients.

It also seemed taboo at the time to admit she needed help, Bañez said. Fabens has a population of less than 8,000 people – and gossip spreads fast, she described. Some of her peers feel they can’t speak up about anxiety, depression or family problems because “everyone will say, well, get over it.”

“We’re a really close-knit community,” Bañez said. “But when it’s like that, when family issues come up, it gets harder to deal with. It’s hard to really express that without everyone judging you.”

Natalie Mendez, a qualified mental health professional from Emergence Health Network, said educating parents and destigmatizing mental health are a major part of her job. Mendez supervises the network’s team at Canutillo ISD. About 6,200 people live in Canutillo, a census-designated place on the northwest side of El Paso County.

If a parent is receiving services for a child, they don’t necessarily want the staff at the school to know because staff might know their friend and then word gets around, Mendez explained.

Sometimes parents are initially open to mental health services, but opposed once a provider explains treatment options, Mendez said. Other times parents mistake services as a quick fix that will immediately change their child’s behavior, grades and attendance. Ultimately, students should have a direct say in their mental health care and forcing them to get treatment before they’re ready can re-open trauma, Mendez said.

“When a child is not on board, we don’t recommend services because the child has to be in charge,” Mendez said. “Regardless of their age, they need to be the one to set their own goal. … The child and parent are equal partners. Our job is to bridge that partnership so we are working together for the benefit of the whole family.”

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission funds Emergence Health Network’s operation, which includes three schools in Canutillo ISD and five schools in El Paso ISD. Emergence Health Network has seen about 350 students for on-campus services since 2020.

Along with therapy, the organization provides case management and informal youth mentorship. A therapist can help a student trace why they feel anxious in crowded hallways while a case manager can help a student develop grounding techniques, like counting tiles on a ceiling, when they’re in a situation that triggers their anxiety, Mendez explained.

“They’re both tackling the same problem,” Mendez said. “One is understanding the reason, the other piece is, ‘OK, what are we going to do about it?’”

This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

“What’s the most important feeling?” a woman in a bedazzled bucket hat calls out to an auditorium of 300 young students.

“LOVE!” the students shout in response.

The word explodes from them, as if yelling it with enough force will transform the word into the feeling itself, and then Miss KK will truly know what she means to the students of Kimberley Park Elementary School in Winston-Salem.

It’s just another Friday at Kimberley Park, where Karen Cuthrell (aka Miss KK) makes regular appearances to read aloud to the students.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

They know the most important feeling is love because they’ve met the “Feeling Friends,” characters created by Cuthrell and featured in the books she reads to them.

Kimberley Park has gone all-in with the Feeling Friends this year, embracing the curriculum Cuthrell built around her characters with the goal of supporting children’s social-emotional health.

The Feeling Friends are 12 animal characters, each associated with an emotion — Lotta Love the LovaRoo, Angie the Angry Tiger, Billy the Bully Goat, and their friends. The Feeling Friends curriculum includes books, songs, puppets, activities, and professional development led by Cuthrell.

Since adopting Cuthrell’s curriculum, Mia Parker, the school’s family engagement coordinator, has noticed a significant improvement in the behavior and mental state of the students and their families.

“She’s like a freakin’ goldmine,” Parker said. “There’s so many things that she does that resonate with our children. And with everybody, not just the kids.”

Miss KK & the Feeling Friends

The shimmering Miss KK persona was forged in a moment of darkness and fear.

“Almost 29 years ago, my daughter was diagnosed with depression,” Cuthrell told EdNC. “When I heard the word depression, I became scared because back then, depression was such a dirty word.”

In addition to worrying about how the stigma of a mental health diagnosis would impact her young daughter’s life, Cuthrell was at a loss for how to support her.

“She was 6 years old when the doctor said I had to get her to talk about her feelings,” Cuthrell said. “I realized she didn’t have a feelings vocabulary.”

Cuthrell started thinking about ways to help her daughter develop that vocabulary as a starting point on the road to better mental health.

“I knew she liked music, I knew she liked dance, I knew she liked books,” Cuthrell said.

Cuthrell started by hiring a music teacher to help her write songs about emotions. Together, they created 12 characters, each based on an emotion they thought would help her daughter and other students talk about their feelings: fear, anger, shame, disgust, guilt, hostility, meanness, sadness, tenderness, happiness, satisfaction, and love.

Next they hired a Morehouse College student to draw cartoon versions of their characters. His mom sewed stuffed animals inspired by his designs, so children could have something to hold and squeeze while navigating their feelings through songs.

“In a three-month span, we went from an idea to throwing a concert at (a community college) with cassette tapes and coloring books,” Cuthrell said.

Cuthrell took on the persona of Miss KK — a name inspired by the fact that she and the music teacher she worked with were both named Karen — to visit schools, singing and dancing with students as she introduced them to the Feeling Friends.

“And one of the reasons I started doing that is because I realized that my daughter was in a school where they never had any Black performers coming in,” Cuthrell said.

It’s important to Cuthrell that the Feeling Friends were specifically designed with Black children in mind.

“You can’t take some curriculum, just put a brown face on it and say that it’s culturally responsive, because it isn’t,” Cuthrell said.

“Funding needs to be opened up to African Americans to write curriculum,” Cuthrell said. “because if you want to be culturally responsive, we know our children.”

The Feeling Friends curriculum is built on the foundation of the widely used CASEL framework for social-emotional learning. The evidence-based framework focuses on five competencies: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness, and relationship skills.

Cuthrell’s curriculum also incorporates the principles of targeted universalism. According to the Othering & Belonging Institute:

Within a targeted universalism framework, universal goals are established for all groups concerned. The strategies developed to achieve those goals are targeted, based upon how different groups are situated within structures, culture, and across geographies to obtain the universal goal.

As Cuthrell explained, “What we write is for everybody, every kid loves it. But it really resonates with our children.” Children like her now-thriving adult daughter.

Because North Carolina is Cuthrell’s home, the Feeling Friends curriculum is similarly aligned with the state’s Standard Course of Study for elementary schools.

Strong social-emotional health is particularly important for children who live in communities with high rates of violence, crime, poverty, and/or unemployment. It can serve as a protective factor for children who are at risk of exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

That includes the students who attend Kimberley Park Elementary School.

Diamond Cotton & Kimberley Park

Kimberley Park Elementary sits in the heart of the Boston-Thurmond neighborhood in Winston-Salem, a mile-and-a-half north of downtown on Cherry Street.

Like many predominantly Black neighborhoods established during the era of racially restrictive covenants and redlining in the early 20th century, the area was home to middle-class working families and successful small businesses.

And as in other thriving Black neighborhoods, construction of a new highway bisected the community in the mid-20th century. Then Black workers began losing jobs to mechanization and globalization. The neighborhood developed a negative reputation as illegal activity and drug use increased, and some homes fell into disrepair.

There’s little evidence of that visible today as Black parents walk their children down tree-canopied sidewalks to their neighborhood school. A concerted effort from community members in partnership with philanthropic organizations has revitalized the area.

And Principal Diamond Cotton has revitalized Kimberley Park Elementary School.

Cotton took over as principal of Kimberley Park in March 2020. She was the fourth person to hold the position that school year.

“I was asked to come here for a reason… We were in the bottom 10% of the state on test scores, so we had to do some work to try to get out of that hole,” Cotton said. “For me though, I knew that there are lots of pieces that contribute to the academic success of kids.”

Kimberley Park was designated as a Restart School due to its “recurring low performing” status. According to the Department of Public Instruction, Restart Schools are granted “charter-like flexibility” to adopt innovative strategies that can lead to better student outcomes.

Cotton started her work at Kimberley Park by focusing on what she called the “extreme behavior” of the students, caused by the trauma she knew they experienced on a daily basis.

“When I came in, kids didn’t know how to walk in the halls, they didn’t know how to respond to each other. You could tell there were lots of needs,” Cotton said.

Then 10 days after she took the job, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of schools in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools district.

Cotton worried about what her students were dealing with at home, but the closure also presented an opportunity to hit the reset button for the school, its staff, and its students.

The flexibility of being a Restart School gave her the ability to retain staff members who shared her vision for the school, and bring new members on board. She also got support from the superintendent to beautify the school building and grounds, removing bars from the windows, replacing broken doors, painting murals on walls and floors, and planting new flowers and shrubs outside.

She and her staff established new norms for the school, including a weekly Friday morning assembly called “Harambee,” a Swahili word that means “all pull together.”

During Harambee, staff members lead students in singing and dancing, teachers or volunteers read aloud, students receive awards for academic improvement, and Cotton announces which staff member will be receiving a free lunch in recognition of their work (which she pays for from her own pocketbook).

When students began returning to classrooms for the 2020-21 school year, she started with the youngest students, who had no previous experience with the school. She and her staff brought back one grade level at a time, establishing new norms and expectations as they went.

By the time the fifth graders returned, the school’s appearance and culture was nothing like they remembered from their years before, and the new norms had already been accepted by the rest of the school’s students. The KP School (as it’s often called) was reborn.

But despite the changes to the school, students were still bringing the trauma they experienced in their lives off-campus into the hallways and classrooms.

“It’s not unusual for there to be a shooting down the street and our kids to be impacted by it in some way, shape, or form,” Cotton said.

She knew she needed to find a way to help them talk about and process their feelings.

“A big part of it was culture and making sure that we were providing an environment that was supportive of the needs our kids had, even if there were deficits coming from home,” Cotton said. “And so that’s how we landed on the Feeling Friends.”

Cotton had welcomed Miss KK into a school where she had previously worked and knew the Feeling Friends had been visiting Forsyth County classrooms for more than a decade. With the flexibility granted to her as the leader of Restart School, she had the opportunity to adopt Cuthrell’s entire Feeling Friends curriculum schoolwide.

Cotton and Cuthrell started with providing professional development to the staff, training them in social-emotional learning, giving them the “feelings vocabulary” of the Feeling Friends, and giving them the books, music, puppets, or activities appropriate for their classrooms and grade levels.

Parker said that when students get upset now, instead of lashing out or shutting down, they have conversations.

“They can tell you their emotions, and they can tell you why they’re feeling that way,” Parker said. “Because the teachers are teaching that curriculum, so they’re getting that SEL that they wouldn’t normally get if it’s not embedded into instruction.”

“People walk into our building, and then they’re like, ‘It just feels different.’ And that’s what I want,” Cotton said.

“I see the school going in a very positive direction,” Parker said. “So much so that if it were not for the fact that I’ve given the state 32 years, I wouldn’t retire!”

And it’s not just the kids who are learning.

Parker described a powerful moment when a veteran teacher stood up during a recent staff meeting to say that she had seen the Feeling Friends curriculum working for her students, even though she hadn’t initially been on board.

“I think that was what made it so impactful for her to say that,” Parker said. “She validated that she’s learning, too.”

The Feeling Friends curriculum at KP School has also included emotion coaching workshops for parents, which Parker believes is an essential part of the curriculum’s success.

“Miss KK also teaches them how to deal with their emotions, and how their adverse childhood experiences impact how they perceive their children and what they project to their children,” Parker said.

Cuthrell works with people of all ages, from preschoolers, to teen athletes, to parents.

“It’s a holistic program that’s good for everybody, that’s rooted in love, that’s based in love,” Cuthrell said.

She’s replaced Miss KK’s bedazzled bucket hat with a simple black beanie, but Miss KK still shines through. “Because love is the most important feeling.”

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Putting overworked, underpaid and imperiled teachers on yet another front line cannot be the solution. Instead, school communities need a collaborative solution that incorporates administrators, parents, coaches and other education professionals, and that is ultimately led by those most impacted by this crisis: girls, especially girls of color and LGBTQ+ youth.

This won’t be an easy task for most schools. In our role as co-CEOs of Girls Leadership, which works with public and private schools across the U.S., we know that fostering well-being specifically for girls is not a commonly accepted practice. This is because it means accepting that the barriers to safety, mental health and school connection are different for girls than for boys. When we speak to school leaders about bringing in a program designed to support the specific needs of girls and gender-expansive youth, the most common response we hear is, “We can’t do anything for the girls that we aren’t doing for the boys.” 

The shared assumption seems to be that if there is equality of support and opportunity for all students, regardless of gender, there will be equality of experiences and outcomes. That ideal doesn’t take into account how deeply the world is steeped in sexism, misogyny and toxic masculinity. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center reports 56% of girls in grades 7 to 12 have experienced sexual harassment — which is the No. 1 reason that girls in our programs tell us that they don’t feel connected at school — and when they go to teachers and staff for help, they aren’t believed or supported. This is especially true for Black girls, who are confronted not only by the misogyny common in high school culture, but by racism and gender bias in a school system where the teaching force is 80% white. They are victims of peers and adults who see them as older than they actually are; experience adultification or what the girls describe as sexualization; are ignored, disbelieved, blamed, disproportionately suspended and punished for not coming forward in the right way at the right time, or for using the right tone of voice.

These are the girls who need protection the most. When they feel safe in school, all girls, and all other students, will benefit. 

Protection needs to begin with teachers and administrators. This is why our work focuses on teachers, guidance counselors, coaches and after-school program staff — the adults with the power to create a safe space. Teacher training programs almost never address the impact of gender norms on young people, nor do they teach building connections with students, 53% of whom are Black, Indigenous or students of color. Teachers need professional development that places gender and racial identity at the heart of social and emotional learning.

Educators also need standards and curriculum with objectives that are as clear for safety, belonging and well-being as they are for math and reading. Every aspect of social and emotional learning, from identity and belonging to healthy relationships and leadership, can be measured. Imagine being able to look up school scores on connectedness, including reported levels of sexual harrassment and sexual violence. That would allow school communities to truly understand their progress locally and stay accountable for how far they have to go. 

Parents and caregivers can provide support by calling on schools to include gender in social and emotional learning programs, by sharing the CDC study and by forming a gender equity committee to prioritize the needs of girls and gender-expansive youth in school policies and practices. They can also advocate for girls to participate in these committees and/or work in partnership with student-led committees. After all, girls and gender-expansive youth are experts in their own experience, and because they are the most impacted by the current mental health crisis, they should design the policies and practices that affect them. 

Lastly, there need to be accessible state and federal protections. Most of the girls and gender-expansive youth we engage in our programs haven’t even heard of Title IX sexual harassment protections and wouldn’t know how to find a Title IX sex equity officer to report their experiences. The person who fills this federally mandated role usually works out of the district office, making it almost impossible to build a trusting relationship with students who need ongoing emotional support and clear guidance through the reporting process for sexual harassment or violence. Educating students about resources and providing girls with clear access to support provides another layer of safety net.

This CDC report is an opportunity to create an inflection point for this generation, but this won’t happen if girls are treated as a problem needing to be fixed. Instead, schools, parents and policymakers must listen to the most marginalized girls and accept their input in creating systems and environments of belonging. Together, school communities and policymakers can create the foundation of safety girls need to start building the connections that will enable them to truly thrive.

As the co-founder of Robin, an educational technology startup focused on improving the mental health outcomes of school communities, Thadani expanded the coaching and curriculum offered to all frontline members — from bus drivers to cafeteria workers to sanitation staff.

“Part of Robin’s platform is coaching, developing connections, building resilience and really understanding the skillsets you need to deal with life’s challenges,” Thadani told The 74. “So if we’re going to do a great job with students, we have to do an unbelievable job with all the adults in their lives.”

For Thadani, destigmatizing conversations around mental health hits home.

As a young parent, Thadani met a father from Newtown, Connecticut who opened up to him about losing his 7-year-old son in a school shooting.

That father was Mark Barden, the co-founder and CEO of the Sandy Hook Promise Action Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing gun violence in schools.

Touched by Barden’s passion to protect children, Thadani began volunteering for the organization — which later served as the catalyst for co-founding Robin.

“As I learned more about what they’re doing, I took a look at how mental health has affected my own family and close friends,” Thadani said. “I took that as a sign and inspiration to say I’m going to do something about it.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The 74: I understand that your affiliation with Sandy Hook Promise played a large role in the creation of Robin. Walk me through how your volunteer work led to starting an educational technology startup.

I’m so proud and feel very fortunate to the team I met over at Sandy Hook Promise. It was a couple years ago and I just so happened to have a conversation with Mark Barden. I didn’t really know who he was at that very moment, but later found out as he shared his story with me that he’s not only a parent who lost his 7-year-old that day, but also happened to be one of the co-founders of Sandy Hook Promise. 

We took a liking to each other and had a lovely conversation. He shared some of his goals, ambitions, and the story of that day with me. As a young parent at the time, it really shook me to my core. I asked him how I can help and he shared with me some of the things that I could do. So I became a Promise Leader and started helping them in any way I could from volunteering to fundraising.

A lot of people talk about the gun violence prevention policy work they do, which is absolutely incredible, but a bulk of what they do that really makes a large impact is the mental health programs for kids. They have two very well known programs called Start With Hello and Knowing the Signs. When I learned more about these programs, and talked to Mark and Nicole and the rest of the team, I thought wow this is incredible and I wish this was everywhere. We started talking about how much of a challenge it is to reach every school in America and get this program out there. Sandy Hook Promise is a nonprofit doing wonderful things but they only have so much reach. 

As I learned more about what they’re doing, I took a look at how mental health has affected my own family and close friends. I took that as a sign and inspiration to say I’m going to do something about it. What I’ve learned is that there aren’t a lot of preventive and proactive programs out there that are making an impact. So that’s just some of the genesis on why myself and Scott and now a larger team started Robin.

I understand that Robin extends resources to all frontline members of school communities, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers and sanitation staff. Tell me more about this initiative.

As any young company, you can only do so much right out of the gates. We started creating this digital online curriculum for students starting with middle school and high school and then eventually elementary. As we were out there talking to principals and superintendents and counselors, I started learning that not only was there not much for educators but they also weren’t really thinking about it in a more broad frame.

As we started to talk to more people, we realized, wait a minute, it’s not just teachers who are interacting every day with students. It’s the cafeteria worker, it’s the bus driver, it’s the crossing guard. If you think about it, the bus driver is the first person to see our kids and the last person to drop them off. They have the potential to set the tone for the day based on how they’re doing.

With one school in upstate New York, we had the opportunity to talk to their leadership team at a conference. They talked about some of the challenges that their transportation team was facing. It’s tough being a driver and having a group of students screaming or yelling or being rambunctious on the bus. In addition to administrators, unions and parents that can be challenging at times. Who’s supporting and allowing them the space and opportunity to talk to someone? Part of Robin’s platform is coaching, developing connections, building resilience and really understanding the skillsets you need to deal with life’s challenges. So if we’re going to do a great job with students, we have to do an unbelievable job with all the adults in their lives.

So we began this journey to support all frontline members starting with this one school in upstate New York who gave us the opportunity to talk to their transportation team. We did a six part coaching series with all 18 of them and asked them about the challenges they face in day-to-day work. I’m proud to report that after we finished, everybody retained their jobs, came back to school and walked in with their heads held high. This is something we’re doing now all over the country, from upstate New York to South Carolina to our backyard here in New York City. We’re supporting school communities and I think this is really critical in order to create something sustainable and have long-term impact.

Oftentimes these frontline members of school communities come from diverse and low-income backgrounds. How does Robin ensure the coaching and resources provided to them are not only accessible but also culturally relevant?

It starts with where the content and curriculum comes from. Robin comes from a diverse set of coaches, teachers, counselors and social workers that are not only mental health experts but are also from those communities and have worked in those schools we serve. The largest community we serve is in our backyard in New York City — the Bronx. A lot of students and families in the Bronx come from lower income communities. They also happen to be from Black and Brown communities where a lot of them don’t speak English. So starting with some of the basics, we have all of our content up in Spanish with closed captions available. Especially for our older students, we make sure that when they see our content not only do they see someone that looks like them or has been through similar challenges, but also in a language they can understand. 

The other thing that Robin does is really listen to the school communities we serve. No school is, of course, the same, even within New York City. The school down the street might have a separate set of challenges, opportunities and needs then the next. I think part of the reason schools are not only coming to us but coming back to us is because we are a reflection of who they are. And again, while we can’t be everything to everyone, we are pulling from a lot of different types of communities and trying to really understand what those communities are asking for. In turn, we can address them with the right sets of curriculum or coaches that they not only want to hear from, but based on the data and some of our surveys and some of our processes, is the right fit for their particular community. So it’s a little bit of a combination of using technology and data and good old fashioned listening skills to really understand the communities we serve and what they’re particularly going through.

In the wake of the Nashville school shooting, what is something about gun violence prevention more school communities need to talk about?

I happened to be in Tennessee about an hour southeast of Nashville visiting one of the schools we work with when this occurred. So I’m with the superintendent of this district and we, of course, talked about it. There are signs out there for these particular students, whether they were posting on social media or showing signs that they were stressed or angry. These students or graduates had no outlet or connection and felt an element of loneliness. And again, these are all studies that have been proven and shown out there in terms of who decides to do these horrific things. 

I think one thing schools all ought to do is understand what those things are so they could be on the lookout. How can we all be armed with information and knowledge on how to notice these signs and then know what to do? How do we get involved sooner and understand what the challenges or issues that a particular student or set of students are facing right now? I think all schools want to do that but they don’t know how to do that. They’re not trained, for example, to know the science. They’re not trained in mental health first aid. 

You bring up a valuable point in regards to mental health training. Tell me more about why it’s important for school communities to destigmatize conversations around mental health.

When we heard back from schools, they’re looking for this training. Not specifically training tailored to know how to identify a school shooter. That is very targeted and there are things out there for that. But how to better understand when you see a student of yours that might be going through a mental health challenge and how to help that student in the moment — from a simple panic attack to an anxiety attack. We do a course around test anxiety. March was SATs and ACTs in a large part of the country, and many students, and parents frankly, get really anxious and nervous. 

There are things we could do to support them in advance of that. That’s sort of the preventative nature of what we’re talking about at Robin. How do we get ahead of these things because we don’t know what life’s challenges or what mental health challenges a student may or may not face. We do know that there are skill sets to put in place today at a young age, even starting in elementary school, that will give them the ability to use those skills if and when a challenge large or small arises.

How have conversations today around gun violence prevention and mental health shaped your own views on the matter?

I look at this from the lens of a parent first and foremost. That’s my number one job and my number one responsibility. It’s made me hyper aware of the possibility that this could happen anywhere and anytime. So what does that mean for young kids growing up? It means we need to make sure they’re okay talking about it. My daughter came home, she’s in second grade, and she had her first formal active shooter drill. For me, I’m 43 and I grew up in the 80s and 90s. We had fire drills and “stop, drop and roll” and how to evacuate the building and things of that nature. But our kids are only going to know this world. Having an open conversation with them as a parent so they can understand why we do these things is important. Whether I like to or want to, this is what we have to do. 

It’s also made me want to change this. Whether it’s through Robin or through supporting Sandy Hook or through just me as an individual doing interviews and podcasts and having these conversations. I know people turn it into a political and divided commentary, but it shouldn’t be. We don’t have all the answers. I don’t have the magic answer in my pocket right now. I have elements of the answer that I think will help, but we need a lot of people to come to the table from all walks of life to solve this. Because you can’t tell me one person who doesn’t want to solve it. We need to come to the table and realize that our kids are literally dying through suicide, gun violence and other medical and mental health issues that lead to some scary things. 

Again, as a parent of young kids going through school for the next decade, this is something I always think about. I don’t necessarily think about it daily or act like this is the last time I’ll see my kids. But for the parents who lost their child, that’s what happened to them. 

For now, I’m so proud of this generation of students and leaders that are bringing this to the forefront of their schools, principals, superintendents and mental health clubs. I do believe this is changing because of the students in this generation that are raising their hands and saying we need to solve this problem.

Surgeon general Vivek Murthy warned Tuesday in a 19-page advisory that social media poses a profound risk to children, with excessive use impacting sleep, relationships and depression that can lead to thoughts of suicide. The report may also shape national policy as legislators and courts take on algorithms, privacy and age policies, and access to platforms. 

“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address,” Murthy said in a statement.

According to Murthy’s report, even as 95% of teens and 40% of 8-12 year olds use social media, there is no evidence platforms are “sufficiently safe.” Spending more than three hours daily doubles their risk of poor mental health, including depression and anxiety symptoms, the report states. The average daily use for teens is three and a half hours, research shows.

The surgeon general also noted push notifications, infinite scrolls, and public like lists are particularly enticing and concerning for youth in early adolescence who frequently compare themselves to peers.

Citing many of the same concerns Murthy identified, more than 100 school districts nationwide have sued companies including TikTok, Snap, YouTube and Meta for their allegedly addictive algorithms that they say harm students.

Lawyers at the forefront of district litigation said the surgeon general’s report strengthens their claims.

“I think you’re going to see even more file as a result of this advisory,” said Dean Kawamoto, counsel with Keller Rohrback, the leading Seattle-based law firm representing several districts who hope to make platforms less harmful. 

But some lawyers not involved in the case remain skeptical, believing that while the report will inform the national conversation, it does not carry enough weight to make waves in court.

“It is tentative and ambiguous and not really definitive in the way that most courts are going to want when ruling on something being dangerous,” said Rebecca Tushnet, First Amendment expert and Harvard Law professor.

In contrast to the definitive stance on, for example, smoking, the surgeon general acknowledged social media also holds benefits. Platforms can help create a community for marginalized young people.

Active Minds, one of the nation’s leading mental health advocacy nonprofits, urged families and policy makers curbing social media access in the wake of the advisory to consider what may be lost. 

Bans could cut off access to critical sex education or communities where isolated LGBTQ, Black and Brown youth feel they belong — similar reasons other organizations publicly oppose the Kids Online Safety Act.

“While the harmful impacts of social media usage on youth mental health certainly exist, are well documented, and require additional research…we’ve also heard from many youth and young adults, particularly from vulnerable communities, who credit social media with saving their lives,” Active Minds told The 74.

Among the practical recommendations for families and tech companies: set limits in the house around meals or bedtime; reach out for help; share data that could further research on health impacts; enforce age minimums; develop safety standards by age; and increase funding for research. 

“Our children and adolescents don’t have the luxury of waiting years until we know the full extent of social media’s impact. Their childhoods and development are happening now,” the report states.

About two thirds of adolescents are “often” or “sometimes” exposed to hate-based content. Six in 10 girls have been contacted by a stranger on social media in ways that make them uncomfortable. Young girls and LGBTQ youth are more likely than their peers to experience cyberbullying or harassment, which about 75% of adolescents believe is poorly managed by social media sites. 

At the same time, in a recent survey of young TikTok users, 64% said they would rather give up their right to vote for one year than give up their social media accounts.

Meta and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment. 

“As a messaging service for real friends, we applaud the Surgeon General’s principled approach to protecting teens from the ills of traditional social media platforms,” a spokesperson for Snap Inc, owner of SnapChat, told The 74.

Southern Illinois can be a mental health care desert, with residents forced to drive hours to seek care for mental health and substance abuse issues. 

But that is changing thanks in part to state funding for a “just transition” from fossil fuels in places where coal plants and coal mines have closed.

The first round of funding under the state’s Energy Transition Community Grant program is helping communities add mental health care services, expand workforce training opportunities, and restore local budgets battered by the decline of fossil fuels. The grants were created by Illinois’s 2021 Climate & Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA).

Coal has deep roots around Randolph County, and like most Illinois coalfield communities it has suffered as coal mining jobs diminished and became non-union, and coal plants closed. Peabody’s local Gateway Mine closed (though its Gateway North is still operating), and Vistra Energy’s Baldwin coal plant has slashed generation and will close entirely by 2025.

“I come from a long family of coal miners — a grandfather who was a mule skinner and a coal miner, my brothers were both coal miners,” said county commissioner Marc Kiehna. “I’m the youngest of three boys, by the time I was out there on the market for jobs, coal mining was kind of on the decline.”

Randolph County is slated to receive $1.6 million that, along with federal Covid relief dollars, will allow it to transform a wing of an underutilized nursing home into a behavioral health center with 16 in-patient beds and space for group therapy and other programming.

“This will really provide some care for an underserved population,” said Kiehna. “We struggle here in the rural area with meth, fentanyl, opioid abuse, all that goes along with that. This gives us an opportunity to try to make families healthier and have a positive impact.”

All Illinois fossil fuel plants must close by 2045, unless they can capture and sequester emissions, under CEJA. And most coal plants will close much sooner, thanks to market forces. Since 2007, 23 coal plants have partially or entirely shut down in Illinois, according to Energy Information Administration data.

CEJA allocates $40 million per year through 2045 to provide grants to communities within 30 miles of coal plants or mines that have closed within the past six years, or are slated to close within six years. (A separate provision addresses nuclear plants.)

State officials recently released a list of more than 50 agencies that will receive the grants, provided they complete a phase two application detailing their spending plans and required stakeholder engagement efforts.

Agencies were urged to apply late last year for the inaugural round of funding, in a process some described as rushed to make sure that communities with already-closed plants and mines could benefit for the maximum number of years. The $40 million was divided among the applicants, with amounts based on estimated impact of coal closures.

“The 2023 grants were a pleasant surprise for many of the eligible entities,” said Prairie Rivers Network energy campaign coordinator Amanda Pankau. “I worked with several school districts who applied thinking they may get the minimum $50,000, and they all ended up with more than $500,000. While it was a welcome surprise, we do want communities to have more time to plan and involve community stakeholders in the future.”

The first round of grants went to school districts, park districts, and city and county governments in many of the state’s best-known coal mining communities: Harrisburg, Carbondale, Marion, Mount Olive, Galatia, Hillsboro. John A. Logan Community College in the heart of coal country got a grant, as did the Lake of Egypt Fire Protection District.

A $1 million grant went to Waukegan, the northern Illinois city where an NRG coal plant closed last summer, and where residents have long demanded a voice and funding for just transition plans.

Learning in Harrisburg

In decades past in Southern Illinois, Harrisburg Unit 3 schools superintendent Amy Dixon remembers, students “could go off in the mines making more money than we do, and take care of their family.”

But many coal mines closed or reduced their workforces, and now “we need to equip our students with skills they can utilize here in our community,” said Dixon. 

Often that means jobs requiring Career Technical Education (CTE) — in carpentry, contracting and electrical work, including in the burgeoning solar economy. The Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council recently featured Harrisburg High on its Built to Last TV show, and students have gotten work with the trade union.  

“We have more students wanting to take CTE classes, and we also have a workforce that’s needing more electricians and plumbers and carpenters,” said Dixon. “We would love to give more students that skill set. But we have one building where we are trying to teach our welding and automotive and electricity and building trades all together. It is maxed out, we’re needing some more physical space so we can expand our CTE offerings.”

Now the school district can build a new pole-barn-style CTE training center, thanks to a $539,000 Energy Transition Community Grant. The district qualified based on three nearby coal mines that closed between 2017 and 2019: Galatia, Wildcat Hills and New Future. More than 50 people came to community meetings to talk about the plans. 

“This grant will be invaluable in helping us expand opportunities for our students,” said Dixon. “We wouldn’t have the money to do it otherwise. The community partners, the parents, businesses, education partners, students, staff — it’s just an outstanding example of how Harrisburg comes together to support our schools and each other.”

Pankau noted that while coal plants must inform grid operators in advance of plans to close, mines have no such mandate. Mines often ramp staffing down based on coal demand, and rely on contractors, meaning even the federal WARN Act about impending mass layoffs might not apply. 

“Unfortunately, we do not have information or advanced planning when it comes to the future of Illinois’ coal mines,” said Pankau. “We would like to see [the Illinois Department of Natural Resources] work with communities and industry to help plan for upcoming coal mine closures, so that those communities may apply for grants and begin to plan for the anticipated impacts of closure.”

Hope in Havana

Havana, a town on the Illinois River in central Illinois, saw its tax base decimated when the local coal plant closed in 2019, soon after energy company Vistra acquired Dynegy’s Illinois fleet. Grace Mott had just started her job as director of parks and recreation at the time, and within a month her workforce plummeted from 15 to three employees.

“My budget was cut by a full third when [the plant] stopped paying their taxes,” Mott said. “I had to cut everyone except maintenance — the recreation director, all my office staff, because we have 13 parks and nine buildings to take care of. Honestly I didn’t know if we would survive this. I spent the first year cutting costs every single place I could find.”

Mott made it her mission to keep the town’s popular parks running despite the funding drought, and she cobbled together grants for projects like renovating the historic pool and century-old gymnasium. 

“I was so new to the job, and so stubborn, I’ve just been working hard to make it happen,” she said. 

But finding grants for operations — including staff — is extremely difficult, and she found herself having to forego opportunities for new investments since she wouldn’t have the people to run them. That’s changing thanks to a $157,000 Energy Transition Community grant, which will be used to hire more staff.

“If not for the energy transition community grant, I’m still not sure we’d be sustainable in the long run,” Mott said.

The new investment in staff and operations will dovetail with infrastructure projects funded by a separate state grant — putting a roof on the riverside open-air stage that hosts a popular bluegrass festival, installing fitness equipment and launching e-bike rentals in the park, and building three teepees for scouting camps and visitors. Together, the investments will help build Havana’s burgeoning reputation as a tourist destination. The community energy grant can also pay for marketing to visitors.

“I wanted to go somewhere I could make a difference,” said Mott, who moved with her husband from DeKalb, Illinois, where she had started a successful online newspaper. “We’re certainly doing that here in this town — it’s been just wonderful.

Havana’s local school district, meanwhile, is getting a $757,000 energy transition grant, and the city of Havana was awarded $55,000. Schools superintendent Matt Plater said the schools’ grant replaces a similar amount that the district has lost through the coal plant’s taxes, although federal Covid relief funds — which the park district did not receive — helped tide the schools over. 

The energy transition funds will go towards a plan that Plater already had underway to replace the elaborate shingle roof on the town’s middle school, along with roofs on a transportation building and the ballfield restrooms and concession stand.

While just transition efforts often focus on job training for displaced fossil fuel workers, Plater noted that not many locals were actually employed in the coal plant. The tax base and opportunities for the younger generation are the bigger issues for the town, where almost two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

“Ideally, sure, they’re thinking you could do job training, help employ displaced workers” with just transition funds, Plater said. “But these plants didn’t hire that many people. We didn’t feel a lot of that job impact in our community, it was the tax base, the assessed valuation that impacted us the most.” 

The energy transition grant will allow the district to pay for the roofing overhaul without taking out bonds, as a district would normally do.

“We’re not putting money in anyone’s pockets or giving a job to someone who lost one, but this allows us to do a project without bonds and keep our property taxes low as a result,” Plater said. “We’re not paying interest on a bond 15 years out. It’s a win-win-win for the community.”

Back in Randolph County

When the Baldwin plant was operating at full force, Randolph County received about $2 million a year in taxes from it, Kiehna said. Now they get about $300,000, and that amount will continue declining.

“It affected us in a lot of ways,” Kiehna said. “We probably lost 100 good-paying jobs, and with the tax issues, we’re trying to make sure we have funds to provide public safety, the sheriff, all the things we do. It’s been a struggle. We laid off staff, we’ve cut here and there to make sure we balance our budget.”

County leaders decided the behavioral health center was a priority, and the nursing home where only about one-third of beds were occupied seemed the ideal place to create it. The effort is also funded with federal Covid relief dollars.

“We said to ourselves, ‘What can we do to provide for a long-lasting benefit?’” Kiehna said. “If we can make our families healthier, guess what, our kids will do better in school and have better lives.”

Kiehna is hoping that efforts to develop a four-lane highway connecting St. Louis and Southern Illinois towns and the Shawnee National Forest could also boost tourism and economic opportunity in the region.

“I’d like to have some jobs here for my grandkids, let people live a good life down here. It’s a beautiful area.”

This article was originally published on Energy News Network

NC Child released their 2023 child health report card on April 4, which grades North Carolina on 15 indicators of child health in the state.

This year the report card’s focus issue was children’s mental health. North Carolina scored an “F” in mental health, showing a serious decline for students in the wake of the pandemic.

“Homicide and suicide are the only causes of child death that are increasing in North Carolina,” the report states.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Post pandemic, 10.2% of high school students who attempted suicide were reported, according to NC Child, a 23.2% increase from baseline. Adolescents ages 12-17 with major depressive episodes similarly increased by 25.8%.

The report says the trends are “deeply troubling.”

Erica Palmer Smith, the executive director of NC child, called the mental health data, “especially concerning,” in an accompanying press release.

For the past 20 years, NC Child has partnered with the North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) to release a report card every one to two years. By continually tracking data, they’ve been able to document the changes to children’s health through the pandemic.

The 15 tracked indicators are grouped into four categories: secure homes and neighborhoods, access to care, healthy births, and health risk factors. Scores are calculated by comparing the state’s yearly performance, disparities by race and ethnicity, and aspiration standards.

Mental health findings

“Long before pandemic school closures across the nation, clinicians were already seeing alarming trends across many indicators of child and adolescent mental health,” the report states. “More than one in 10 children ages 3-17 in North Carolina had a diagnosis of depression or anxiety in 2020 – a 49% increase from 2016.”

The report finds that children who experience discrimination are disproportionately impacted, reporting worse mental health than their counterparts.

“LGBTQ+ students are more than three times more likely to consider or attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers,” the report says.

Students of different races experience disparity as well – Hispanic or Latinx high school students reported the highest rates of attempted suicide within the past year, at 13.3%. That number was 12.5% for white high school students and 11.8% for African American or Black students.

Health trends

When the mental health risks to students during the pandemic became apparent in 2020, the NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI) updated their school mental health policy to include mental health training and a suicide risk protocol.

Despite this, NC Child’s 2023 report mirrors many of their findings in 2021. Mental health, birth outcomes, and housing and economic security all received “F” grades in both years.

This year’s report contains other worrying trends, including an 18.3% decrease in literacy rate among third grade students and a 9.12% increase in children between ages 10-17 who are overweight or obese. Again, massive disparities exist between ethnic and racial groups.

“Nationally and in North Carolina, the data show a marked impact from the first two years of the pandemic, as students from low-income communities often had reduced access to online learning and enrichment activities during school closures and the shift to virtual classrooms,” the report states.

But the report contained sparse positive trends as well. Insurance coverage for children in N.C. remains high at 94.5%, and children who live in high-poverty neighborhoods has decreased 11.1%.

Talking about the issues is part of the solution. “Increased attention can also mean decreased stigma, allowing our children and families to seek out the help they need with far less fear of retribution,” the report states.

The document advocates for expanding mental health care access and making guns and prescription drugs more difficult to access as pathways towards healthier students.

“All of our children deserve the chance to thrive, regardless of whether they live in a rural or urban area, their race, gender, or how much money their parents make,” said Smith in the press release.

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

“We cannot overstate the profound impact that the past few years have had on our kids,” he said. 

But his state is among 40 that haven’t begun to distribute their share of nearly $1 billion in federal funding for school safety and mental health services approved last year as part of a bipartisan gun safety law. President Joe Biden signed the legislation in the aftermath of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting that left 19 students and two adults dead. 

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona pressed state chiefs last month on why most of them hadn’t even launched competitions for districts to apply for funds, calling it “unacceptable” during a “mental health crisis.”

Parents who saw the pandemic’s impact on their children’s well-being agree.

“We have to address the real trauma,” said Ericka Thompson, an Atlanta-area parent. She said it’s important for students to have access to therapists — not just guidance counselors — especially at the high school level.

After months of remote learning, her oldest son, a senior at Westlake High School, said he was feeling apathetic and had “zero drive to do anything.” She found him a private therapist who recently finished his master’s degree.  Her ninth grader Matthew said it’s “baffling” that their school doesn’t have therapists because teens face more “real-world pressure” than younger students.

State leaders attribute the delay to their offices and district staff still trying to get billions of pandemic relief funds out the door with fast-approaching spending deadlines.

“They are working hard to invest historic amounts of federal funds effectively in a short amount of time,” said Marc Seigel, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Education, which received $8.2 million from the safety program, known as Strong Connections. The state is one of 23, plus the District of Columbia, that plans to open up an application period this spring. “We want to ensure that the timing of these grant dollars [comes] at a time where districts can meaningfully direct the funding.”

Another 10 states are now accepting or reviewing applications for the program, and 17 haven’t said when they plan to open up for applications. 

Only one — Oklahoma — has already distributed the money. Former state Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, who recently lost her race for governor to incumbent Republican Kevin Stitt, prioritized the expansion of mental health services before she left office because she wanted to “ensure that this didn’t get lost” when she left office.

The federal government awarded the funds, including $11.7 million to Oklahoma, on Sept. 15, 2022. By November, the state’s application was open and districts had about six weeks to apply.  Thirty-eight districts, out of over 120 that applied, received funding, Hofmeister said. 

The new grants will allow districts to keep funding positions for counselors and other mental health professionals that they hired with federal relief funds.

Even though most students have been back in the classroom for almost two full school years, educators say many are still relearning social skills that got neglected during the pandemic.

“It’s  amazing how many of these kids don’t know how to address you in the hallway,” said Virginia DeLong, a counselor at Norwich Technical High School in Connecticut. “They are at a loss.”

Because many students at her school go straight into the workforce after graduation, DeLong spends a lot of her time teaching them skills such as how to prepare for an interview or follow-up on an application. For individual needs, the school has a therapist who meets with students three days a week.

“It’s great, but it’s not enough,” she said. “Honestly, we could have that five days a week and add another person.”

‘A drop in the ocean’

In addition to the $1 billion grant to states, which districts can use for efforts like anti-bullying programs and staff training, districts competed for an additional $500 million over five years directly from the Education Department to add mental health professionals. Another $500 million is available to expand university training programs. 

The Guilford County Schools in North Carolina has so far received $2.9 million of the $14 million it was awarded, which Superintendent Whitney Oakley said will allow the district to add more counselors, social workers and psychologists.

“It’s kind of like a drop in the ocean,” said Oakley. “We just have so much work to do.”

In November, she met with at least 100 students for a safety “summit,” and again last month for a similar discussion on mental health. She said they told her they want someone they can talk to if they’re “having a panic attack” and that they “want mental health to be part of the fabric of public education.”

She attributed last year’s 30% chronic absenteeism rate among students in part to psychological issues. 

“It doesn’t matter how strong an instructional program is, or how great the teacher, if students don’t come,” she said.

The district, she said, plans to add 16 full-time clinicians. And building off its experience recruiting tutors from local universities, the district will hire graduate students preparing to work in school mental health to provide additional services. 

Medicaid guidance

Cardona said recently that he wants the funds for mental health “drawn down quicker.” 

But Kayla Tawa, youth policy analyst at the left-leaning Center for Law and Social Policy, said there’s a reason some states might be taking their time. That’s because they’re waiting for instructions from Washington on how to bill Medicaid for mental health services for low-income students who qualify.  That would free up grant dollars for other programs that benefit all students.  Guidance on that provision in the law is expected this spring.

“Advocates have been asking for this for a long time,” she said. “For schools that have high low-income populations, it’s very worthwhile for them.”

But some mental health providers and advocates would like to see a more direct, permanent solution that relieves districts from having to patch together multiple sources of funding. 

“This is a defining education and public health issue,” said Duncan Young, CEO of New Jersey-based Effective School Solutions. The company works in nine states to provide psychological services to schools with students at-risk of being placed in a mental health facility.

He pointed to a new $100 million proposal from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro for school-based mental health services as one example of the sustainable approach school officials want. 

“Grants — both state and federal — have expiration dates,” he said. “Unfortunately, for the mental health challenges that our young people are experiencing, we don’t see an expiration date.”

Every day, adults are tasked with supporting young people showing behavioral changes or experiencing a mental health crisis. The problem? Many are unprepared to do so. 

It’s a challenge Deborah Offner came up against so often, as a consulting psychologist for schools in and around Boston, she decided to write a guide. Urgency is only growing: a recent CDC report shows about a third of teen girls contemplate suicide, the second-leading cause of death for children.

Educators as First Responders: A Teacher’s Guide to Adolescent Development and Mental Health, Grades 6-12, published this winter by Routledge, delves into the adolescent brain. Offner pairs the science of what’s happening, at a given age or for those with a particular mental illness, with school-based examples she and educators have had over decades. 

Through it all, she invites readers to take off their adult hats and to see youth behavior in the context of development. How are requests for nudes, for example, registering in a 14-year old’s brain? What are they seeing as the risk and rewards? What other information do you need to know to decide whether to pull a counselor or parent in? 

“Teachers really are playing these significant roles, to help kids develop and manage their emotional lives. They should be a little more equipped and supported to be able to do that in a way that they feel confident about because they’re doing it anyway,” said Offner, who also treats children and young adults in her private practice.

In discussion with The 74, Offner reveals the best practices adults can keep in mind and how schools can meet some of students’ emotional needs beyond referral to talk therapy. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Please be advised that some responses reference self-harm and suicide. 

The 74: As somebody who’s done this work for decades, is thinking of educators as first responders in this way a new paradigm or shift? Why write this now?

When I tell teachers, and other mental health professionals who work in schools, it seems very intuitive. Of course, kids go to their teacher when they’re upset. But it’s not recognized or acknowledged as being such a central part of the role. 

In part I wrote the book to call attention to the fact that teachers really are playing these significant roles, to help kids develop and manage their emotional lives. They should be a little more equipped and supported to be able to do that in a way that they feel confident about because they’re doing it anyway. What are some things I can do and say? I understand these kids as learners, but how do I understand them as people?

You spend the first good chunk of the book with the social contexts that shape adolescence and the psychology behind kids’ actions. Why is that understanding critical and how might educators’ actions change as a result? What’s the danger of what you call an “adult-centric lens”?

One of the things I like to do when I work with schools is to help build empathy in adults for what kids and also parents go through. When teachers understand what’s behind the behavior, there’s a couple of things that change. You don’t take it personally when a kid isn’t paying attention, can’t remember to do something, or has a certain attitude. You recognize that it’s not something you’re necessarily doing wrong, or something that if you just were different would change. It’s what they’re going through, and also, it’s normal.

There’s great benefit to the increased awareness of mental health issues in kids, but at the same time, there’s a lot of things that all kids do that can look a little crazy if you don’t recognize why it is. They don’t have the same controls, the same ways of thinking or organizing themselves and behavior that adults do. So it normalizes some of the funny things that can be perplexing or frustrating; it helps you to have perspective on them.

I’m curious if you have an example from talking to a teacher about this. Any light-bulb moments to share, from when you explained the underpinning of a behavior?

There’s an example I use in the book about a boy who looked really indifferent, kind of lazy, like he didn’t care about his work or about his teachers expectations of him. Teachers would ask him to meet after class and he would just disappear, slink out of the room. He was getting behind and seemed really disengaged. 

As the school counselor, I got an opportunity to speak with a therapist he was working with outside of school and learned from her that he had the worst case of social anxiety she’d ever seen. And once I understood, oh, that’s why he’s avoiding his teachers. That’s why he seems shut down. It’s actually called social phobia, a specific disorder. It’s not being shy or not wanting to talk to people exactly. It’s about worrying that other people are gonna think something critical of you, or bad. He was actually so exquisitely sensitive to feeling like he was letting his teachers down that he was avoiding them. 

Once they knew that, rather than just being angry and taking it personally, they were more sympathetic and could put some plans into place. I helped him to agree to what would work for him so that he could connect with them and do better. It wasn’t a magic solution, but the energy in the room changes when you explain to faculty why a kid is struggling, right?

It’s funny you bring up that example because it’s one I wanted to ask you about. What would you have done if there wasn’t yet a therapist to consult in that case? How would you have gone about finding or meeting his needs without the context?

That’s a great question because in so many cases, kids don’t have one, let alone one that knows them so well that they can offer you that kind of input. What I recommend to anyone who’s in a counseling role, or even like a Dean or administrative role, is to try to sit down with a student and hear their point of view about what’s going on. Often, kids will tell a counselor things that they might not share with a teacher. With the kids permission, you can, in some ways, act as a liaison. Even if the kid doesn’t want you to share everything they’ve told you, if you come to a better understanding of what’s going on, you can share that.

What factors adults can look out for to keep a pulse on a student’s well being while maintaining their boundaries?

Every student has different boundaries. There’s some kids, as we all know, that will tell you everything from what they ate for breakfast to a fight they had with their best friend whether you want to know or not. And there’s other kids that keep their cards really close to their chest. You have to — this is the beauty of teachers — get to know your students. Sometimes it can be as simple as asking, how are you doing? Kids can be almost surprised and even kind of touched that a teacher is interested. That is always a starting point. It doesn’t mean that a kid is going to tell you in the moment about a serious problem they’re having, but showing that you want to know it’s an important step in the direction of kids feeling they could open up to you if they wanted to. 

Obviously if you notice any change in behavior — like a kid who’s usually alert who suddenly seems sleepy — it’s okay to say, are you feeling okay? You seem a little different or not quite yourself today, or you’re quieter than usual.

You mentioned earlier that sometimes teachers are unsure of when to not fly solo and involve a professional clinician or let the family know. What are some considerations that a teacher can think through?

The bright lines that I draw have to do with any physical or potential harm to the student. If a kid is talking about suicide, cutting themselves, or other things that have to do with concrete harm, it’s really important that you not be the only one who knows that, especially when you’re not trained to assess the seriousness, gravity or reality of such a situation. Sometimes kids cut themselves and it doesn’t mean anything other than that they’re trying to manage their distress. It’s not a good sign, but it doesn’t mean that they’re going to necessarily attempt suicide. 

In situations where there’s the possibility of self harm, whether it’s happened or might happen, it’s really important to let the student know that you need to let their parents know or let the school counselor know. You can give them a choice about how you tell their parents, whether they want to tell them and then have them loop back to you, there’s different ways to negotiate the process, but that’s again the bright line. 

Otherwise, I think if a kid tells you something and you find yourself thinking about it after you go home, it’s always great to run it by a mental health professional at the school, even without a name if you want to protect the kids privacy, just to get someone else’s take on it. Someone who’s trained and knows maybe a little more about the specifics of what’s worrisome. 

What are some best practices to keep in mind when a young person discloses something traumatic or difficult for them?

One of the first things that you always want to say if a kid confides in you about something traumatic is to thank them for letting you know, that you’re so glad that they were able to tell you, that you wouldn’t want them to be alone with this experience. Ask, have they told anybody else? Oftentimes kids will confide in a teacher, and it will be the first person they’ve told about something like this. Find out so you’re aware if you’re the only person holding this fact, or if in fact the parents already know. That’s a really different scenario, if you know that another adult is kind of taking responsibility. 

Certainly in that first conversation, do not jump to issues of reporting or filing charges are anything administrative or procedural, but focus more on how they’re doing and to maybe ask for a little bit more detail. Say something like, if you feel comfortable telling me, could you let me know a little more about what happened, is there anyone else who would like to know, or anything else that I can do to be helpful? 

Of course, if someone under 18 tells you they’ve been sexually assaulted, you’re a mandated reporter. There are those requirements, legally. But again, I wouldn’t bring that up in the first meeting. Generally speaking, you should go to your school administration and potentially the school counselor to talk about how the school wants to make the report and certainly not to do it without involving the student and potentially their family. In the moment, it’s just important to be there and sit with the kid and absorb whatever they’re feeling.

Another issue you raise in the book is this idea of compassion fatigue that some educators face. Can you share how that might show up in school and what educators can do to best avoid it or manage it when it comes?

This is a huge theme right now in schools, as we as a culture and country recognize the prevalence of trauma, of being sexually assaulted. So for example, a kid tells you they were sexually assaulted, there’s sort of a vicarious traumatization that happens when you hear a story like that, but it could also be more subtle things like their parent mistreating them or them going through a difficult depression. 

As we bring an empathic response to supporting that child, and the more we do that, it can take a toll on us. The ways to address it have to do with building a network or community, finding a mentor or supervisor or someone that you can share some of the weight. It’s sharing it with another adult or a small group and also taking care of yourself in all the ways that we’ve been told to throughout the pandemic, whether it’s exercise, sleep, making time for yourself, to prevent the kind of fatigue that can happen.

When you saw the latest findings from the CDC about the frequency of sexual assault and suicidal ideation, what was your reaction personally?

On the one hand, as a human as a parent, I was horrified. As a psychologist who works with many girls in high school and college, I wasn’t surprised at all. I would say, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating, that virtually every girl in my practice over the age of 18 has been either sexually assaulted or coerced into sex at least once. Now, I have a small practice but these are girls from all different backgrounds and different schools. It’s really pervasive in a way that continues to shock me, even though I also know it’s reality.

You’ve also worked with youth interfacing with the foster care system and underserved youth in Boston more generally. For educators whose student populations are disproportionately impacted by poverty, homelessness, or adverse childhood experiences, are there specific things you recommend keeping in mind when they take on this first-responder approach?

There are ways to be sensitive and thoughtful if you’re a person who doesn’t come from a background of poverty and you’re not familiar with some of the sort of coping strategies that families may have to use. It’s important to be sensitive, both to the economic strain on families and also to cultural preferences for ways of talking about and dealing with mental health. 

A common thing for our families from Beacon Academy — who are all students of color and low-income, some have parents who have immigrated fairly recently — is that older kids will take care of younger kids on a regular basis. They may spend many, many hours caring for their siblings in a way that more privileged families may not, and often that could interfere with following through on a commitment to an extracurricular activity or something at school. It’s important, if you find a kid who is having trouble meeting a certain expectation, to gently explore and understand. Are there family commitments that are taking up their time? That’s really different than if someone doesn’t feel like getting up in the morning. Maybe their mom had to go to work and they couldn’t afford a babysitter.

That goes back to the idea of building empathy you mentioned earlier. We also know that suicidal ideation, depression and anxiety symptoms are more common in particular marginalized student groups — girls, students of color, queer students. Are there particular supports to keep in mind for them? 

The thing to keep in mind about these identities is that they may make kids more vulnerable, or more worried about sharing information for fear of people judging or criticizing them or not being accepting. What I always have in mind for myself is the kid’s identity, as I understand it and as they claim it, and also my own identity — what the differences are in those. Then I can see and mind the gap. 

How can schools be more affirming right now outside of offering traditional talk therapy, particularly because a lot of students might have family contexts that still stigmatize care or can’t access it? 

I think mental health awareness days are always helpful. I was in a school last week that had a wellness day for the middle and high school. Kids could go to all kinds of workshops; I did one on perfectionism for high school students. They had a dance group come and other speakers to talk about things like body image and dieting. That was a very popular talk because a lot of kids have concerns about that. I think it started off as kids being skeptical and now it’s like a day that nobody wants to miss. They have therapy pets come, someone doing caricatures, but it celebrates that wellness is important for kids. It’s not just about being high achieving academically or athletically. 

There’s other ways to offer support in-school that aren’t therapy, per se. For younger kids, and this could even go through middle school, lunch groups may be held with either a school counselor or someone savvy about kids. They can talk about mental health, relationships; kids could come together and be able to chat with each other and with a teacher for no particular reason. It doesn’t have to be only kids that are having trouble. 

At the school where I am, we had someone come in — he’s not a therapist, more of a coach, who’s going to do some art projects with the kids and provide a safe space for kids to chat with him if they wish. It’s activity-based, but it’s a time for them to just be there for themselves and not have any expectations on them. Doing things that show that you value their well being can be really important and parents never have to pay or give permission for it.

Lastly, are there particular storylines, or aspects of youth mental health that you feel are being misrepresented, over- or underrepresented?

What I feel is probably not addressed enough is family life and the importance of supporting parents so that they can effectively support their kids. You see a lot about either the sort of fetishization of motherhood — maternal love as this kind of ideal, special, gendered state — or parents who are abusive. The extremes of parents. Most parents are obviously somewhere in the middle, either themselves struggling with mental health issues or ambivalent about the pressures that parent parenthood puts on them. 

For today’s kids, there’s so much about social media and the effects of that in terms of mental health, but in my experience, a lot of what determines how kids feel about themselves and how well they do is their relationship with their parents. I wish there was more attention to helping parents be more present in better ways for their kids.

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Additional resources are available at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources. For LGBTQ mental health support, you can contact The Trevor Project’s toll-free support line at 866-488-7386.

A critical aspect of addressing this youth mental health crisis is ensuring that young people feel a sense of belonging in the places where they spend their time. According to the CDC, when young people feel connected to adults and peers at school, they are significantly less likely to report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness or to consider or attempt suicide. 

But with school staffers already stretched thin, it’s not feasible to simply ask them to solve yet another crisis alone. Education leaders and policymakers need to invest in programs that strengthen students’ connection to school without adding more to educators’ plates.

Mentorship and expanded capacity of schools to provide it are critical pieces to this puzzle. Young people want and need mentors to support them as they navigate mental well-being. In fact, today’s 18- to 21-year-olds express unmet mentoring needs around depression, anxiety and suicidality at more than double the rates for millennials, according to a new national survey from Mentor. They are also significantly more likely than 22- to- 24-year-olds to cite mental health challenges as the main area where a mentor could help.

Unfortunately, these relationships are in decline. While today’s young people are much more likely than their parents to have had a mentor growing up, according to the survey, members of Gen Z , those roughly 18 to 24 years old, are less likely (60%) than millennials (70%) to report having had such a supportive relationship.

Congress has the opportunity to help strengthen students’ connections to school by expanding school-based mentoring programs. The Mentoring to Succeed Act is just one example of a bill that would provide school districts with funding to match middle and high school students with mentors. 

The bill would establish a five-year, competitive grant program, open to districts, local governments and community-based organizations, that provides federal funding to establish, expand or support school-based mentoring programs. Funds could be used to screen, match and train mentors; hire staff to support school-based programs; facilitate activities like field trips and career exploration and conduct program evaluations. The bill prioritizes funding for school districts that serve young people with the greatest needs — those living in high-poverty, high crime or rural areas. 

While many schools have used federal COVID relief funds to increase mental health supports, this funding will run out within the next couple years. The Mentoring to Succeed Act would help schools sustain efforts to ensure students feel connected and supported by providing additional resources to support new programs and community partnerships, so educators and school administrators aren’t left to bear the weight of this work alone. 

This type of investment has broad public support. Nearly 9 in 10 adults feel more mentoring is needed in this country, with more than 8 in 10 supporting the use of government funds to expand these opportunities.

While mentors cannot take the place of professional mental health providers, they can have meaningful positive impacts on young people’s well-being. For instance, a study that examined the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program model found that mentored youth reported significantly fewer behavioral problems and fewer symptoms of depression and social anxiety than those without mentors. The national survey conducted by Mentor also showed a correlation between mentorship and a stronger sense of belonging, in both childhood and adulthood.

Short of advocating for legislation, everyone can take steps to ensure more young people have meaningful adult connections. Many programs around the country need volunteers to serve as mentors — and many people already act as mentors without even realizing it. Those everyday mentors play a huge role in making sure young people have support. 

The fact that mentoring is declining when young people need it most should concern all of us. At a time when many young people are struggling to find their footing, a healthy, supportive relationship with a mentor could go a long way toward helping them reach firmer ground.

They’d just watched a three minute, wordless animation — 5,618 frames hand-drawn by Red Mountain High School senior Mariana Myers.

A genderless, ageless figure downloads apps. Dopamine fires in their brain; they appear to float. They seek the feeling out more often, foregoing stretching for a morning scroll, isolating from friends to stay connected online. A chain appears on their wrist. They adopt risky behaviors like using their phone while driving. 

When they realize and break the chain, they fall into an abyss.

The black and white video essay illustrates in painful simplicity how social media addiction and fear of being disconnected, termed nomophobia, can impact young people. 

Researched and produced for her English class, Myers’s work found its way into a 111-page lawsuit in which her home district, the largest in Arizona, is suing TikTok, Meta, YouTube, Snap and Google for allegedly targeting and addicting young people through harmful product design. They are one of dozens. 

“You’ve got 250 people in a room and you could not hear a word and there were tears in people’s eyes,” said Mesa Public Schools superintendent Andi Fourlis. “That begs, let’s do something differently about this. So I have to answer that call.”

Myers told The 74 she drew inspiration from independent research, documentaries and real-life observations, of bullying, hate speech, addiction, eating disorders, and friends basing their worth off of likes.

She knew immediately that she wanted to attempt an animation, what she sees as the most powerful art form. 

“You can take any type of idea that you have in your head. It not only conveys an idea, but it can also convey things like movement, emotion, expression.”

A gymnastics coach for kids three through fourteen, Myers has witnessed youth of many ages grow dependent on their phones. Every water break, phones come out, and in-person interaction stops. 

They implemented a new rule: lock your phone in a box as you walk in for the three-hour practice. But some still found a way to keep their connection, hiding their phones in their lockers or deep in backpacks. 

“They just constantly needed… to check their social media in particular,” Myers said. “I would see them on Snapchat or Instagram, messaging friends and I’m like, you’re here to do gymnastics — you can go home and do that. But it was almost as if they couldn’t change that pattern.”  

The phenomenon is one of many she illustrated for the video essay, showing how the urge to connect online can drive isolation with peers in person. 

Particularly in the throes of a youth mental health crisis, experts suggest schools familiarize themselves with warning signs of youth behavior and make schools as affirming as possible. 

While Myers has not struggled with severe addiction, she knows the impact access to professional help can have. Long before she ever downloaded a social media app, she struggled with disordered eating and Tourettes.  

She attended a group for young people in recovery, many of whom pointed to social media as the cause or a contributor to their disordered relationship to food or body image. 

“No matter how subtle, or how purposeful it is, any type of subliminal messaging like that can end up being extremely impactful.”

Though some of her mental health struggles predated her use of social media, she faced the fear of missing out that many children experience as they see their peers’ lives played out online. 

She could see every time her former teammates, who she’d been very close with before getting a concussion, would hang out.

“I was very sad that I had been excluded from a lot… Because that was my team.” The posts became “a reminder that I wasn’t there anymore.” 

She decided at the time to take a break from social media, something she now does often.

Today, she is a self-described mom-friend and therapist for teammates, friends, sometimes family. She’s the sarcastic person many turn to when they’re in pain, mentally or physically. She has a locker full of braces for any body part, “because I’m amazing at getting hurt.”

Professional mental healthcare is a resource she wishes more of her peers had access to.

“Having somebody to talk to that was trained was very helpful,” said Myers. “I wish that was something more people could have, something that had less of a stigma around it… Addictions can be a scary thing.” 

At least eleven school districts, one county, and one California county system that oversees 23 smaller districts have filed suits this year, representing roughly 469,000 students. 

Two others in Arizona are considering their own complaints, one superintendent told The 74. Eleven districts in Kentucky voted to pursue similar litigation, as did Pittsburgh Public Schools. Many others across the country are on the verge of doing the same, according to a lawyer representing a New Jersey district.

“Schools, states, and Americans across the country are rightly pushing back against Big Tech putting profits over kids’ safety online,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, co-sponsor of the contested, bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, told The 74. “These efforts, proliferated by harrowing stories from families amid a worsening youth mental health crisis, underscore the urgency for Congress to act.” 

Algorithms and platform design have “exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms,” Seattle Public Schools claimed in the first suit filed this January.

Districts in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, New Jersey, California and Florida, Alabama, as well as one Pennsylvania county say tech companies intentionally target young users, exacerbating depression, anxiety, tech addiction and self-harm, straining learning and district finances. 

But the legal fight, whether tried or settled, will not be easy, outside counsel and at least one district leader said. 

“We don’t think that this is a slam dunk case. We think it’s going to be an uphill battle. But our board and I believe that this is in the best interest of our students to do this,” said Andi Fourlis, superintendent of Arizona’s largest district, Mesa Public Schools. “It’s about making the case that we need to do better for our kids.” 

Just how badly Mesa’s teens are hurting is laid out in detail in court filings: More than a third are chronically absent, 3,500 more were involved in disciplinary incidents in 2021-22 than in 2019-20 and the district has seen a “surge” in suicidal ideation and anxiety. 

Buried in the 111-page lawsuit, a high school senior’s video essay illustrates the painful impacts of social media addiction: risky or self-destructive behavior, disconnection from friends.

Simultaneously, state and federal lawmakers are proposing bills to make platforms safer. Senate hearings are underway, featuring parents whose children died by suicide. TikTok’s CEO testified before Congress this month to address concerns about exposure to harmful content. President Joe Biden flagged “the experiment [social media companies] are running on our children for profit,” in his last State of the Union Address.

Both legislative and legal efforts are after similar goals: changing the algorithms and product design believed to be hurting and addicting kids. Through lawsuits, districts also seek financial compensation for the increased mental health services and training they’ve “been forced” to establish. 

“The harms caused by social media companies have impacted the districts’ ability to carry out their core mission of providing education. The expenditures are not sustainable and divert resources from classroom instruction and other programs,” said Michael Innes, partner with Carella Byrne, Cecchi, Olstein, Brody & Agnello, a firm representing New Jersey schools.

Previous complaints against opioid and e-cigarette companies, which levied public nuisance and negligence claims as districts’ social media filings do, resulted in multimillion dollar settlements. 

But some legal experts say there’s a key distinction in this case: Big Tech companies aren’t the ones producing content on these platforms, individuals are. Companies have some hefty legal shields for online content posted by third parties — for now. 

“School districts are not in the business of suing people … the threshold for initiating litigation is very high,” said Dean Kawamoto, a lawyer for Keller Rohrback, the Seattle-based firm representing four districts, and thousands of others in Juul litigation. 

“I do think it says something that you’ve got a group of schools that have filed now, and I think more are going to join them,” Kawamoto added. 

Some outside counsel are skeptical. 

“I think there are questions about whether the litigation system is even a coherent way to go about this,” First Amendment scholar and Harvard Law professor Rebecca Tushnet told The 74. “It’s very hard to use individual litigation to get systemic change, excepting in particular circumstances.” 

The exceptions, she added, have clear visions and specific outcomes, like requiring a doctor on-call for safer prison conditions. Those kinds of metrics are difficult to name when it comes to algorithms and mental health. 

What precedent (or lack thereof) tells us

Social media companies’ lawyers are likely to assert free speech protections early and often, including in initial motions to dismiss.

“The conventional wisdom is that if motions to dismiss are denied in cases like this, [companies] are much more likely to settle … reality is actually a little more mixed,” Tushnet said, adding if the claims come after business models, companies fight harder. 

An added challenge is proving causal harm — that social media companies have caused student depression, anxiety, eating disorders or self-harm. The link is one that neuroscientists and researchers are still unearthing, though experts say there’s an urgent need. 

“This is a watershed moment where schools can really roll up their sleeves and do something because — not that they haven’t been in the past — but because it’s so obvious. It’s right in front of them. It’s impacting students’ education,” said Jerry Barone, chief clinical officer at Effective School Solutions, which brings mental health care interventions to schools. 

About 13.5% of teen girls say Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse; 17% of teen girls say it makes eating disorders worse, according to Meta’s leaked internal research, first revealed in a Wall Street Journal investigation via whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Even if districts are able to provide proof, they may not ever see a judgment made. 

Public nuisance claims in tobacco and opioid mass torts were more successful in “inducing settlements, rather than in courthouse outcomes,” according to Robert Rabin, tort expert and professor at Stanford University. 

While he’s not “dismissive” of districts’ efforts, “the precedents don’t supply clear-cut support for the claims here.”’

The interim

As lawyers work out the details, students are left in the balance. Some are skeptical the suits will amount to anything at all, at least in their adolescence. 

“Why do you guys waste so much time on these useless things that you know get nowhere, when you can do it with things that you know will get somewhere?” said Angela Ituarte, a sophomore at a Seattle high school. 

Many young people interviewed by The 74 described their social media use like a double-edged sword: affirming, a place where they learned about mental health or found community, particularly for queer students of color; and simultaneously dangerous, a place where they connected with adults when they were 14 and saw dangerous diets promoted.

Social media, Ituarte said, makes it seem like self-harm and disordered eating, “are the solution to everything. And it’s hard to get that out of those algorithms — even if you block the accounts or say you’re not interested it still keeps popping up. Usually it’s when things are bad, too.”

In a late February letter to senators, Meta touted a promising initiative to nudge teens toward new topics if they’ve been dwelling on one for extended periods. Only 1 in 5 teens actually moved to a new topic during a weeklong trial. 

To curb cyberbullying, users now get warnings for potentially offensive comments. People only edit or delete their message 50% of the time, according to the company’s responses to Senate inquiries. 

Meta, YouTube and Google did not respond to requests for comment. TikTok told The 74 they cannot comment on ongoing litigation. The company has just started requiring users who say they are under 18 to enter a password after scrolling for an hour.

In a statement to The 74, Snap said they “are constantly evaluating how we continue to make our platform safer.” Snap has partnered with mental health organizations to launch an in-app support system for users who may be experiencing a crisis, and acknowledged that the work may never be done. 

The process has only just begun. If the suits move to trial, some districts will be chosen as bellwethers to represent the many plaintiffs, tasked with regularly contributing to a lengthy trial. 

Still, there’s no doubt in Fourlis’s mind. 

“Sometimes you have to be the first to step forward to take a bold leap so that others can follow,” she said. “Being the superintendent of the largest school district in Arizona, what we do often sets precedents, and I have to be very strategic about that responsibility.”

Disclosure: Campbell Brown, Meta’s vice president of media partnerships, is a co-founder and member of the board of directors of The 74. She played no role in the editing of this article.

These districts’ reactions to ChatGPT have led to a debate among policymakers and parents, teachers and technologists about the utility of this new chatbot. This deliberation magnifies a troubling truth: Superintendents, principals and teachers are making decisions about the adoption of emerging technology without the answers to fundamental questions about the benefits and risks. 

Technology has the potential to modernize education and help prepare students for an increasingly complex future. But the risks to children are just beginning to be uncovered. Creating a policy and regulatory framework focused on building a deeper understanding of the benefits and risks of emerging technologies, and protecting children where the evidence is incomplete, is not alarmist, but a responsible course of action. 

Why act now? 

First, recent history has demonstrated that emerging technology can pose real risks to children. Evidence suggests a correlation between time spent on social media and adolescent anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide. These impacts seem particularly significant for GenZ teenage girls. While there is debate among researchers about the size of these effects, the state of adolescent mental health has deteriorated to the extent that it was declared a national emergency in 2021 by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association. Social media seems to be a contributing factor. 

Second, immersive technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and brain-computer interfaces, may intensify the benefits and risks to children. Immersive technologies have the potential to fundamentally remake teaching and learning. But the impact on childhood development of exposure to multisensory experiences replicating the physical world in digital spaces is just beginning to be understood — and there is cause for concern based on limited research. For example, a 2021 study concluded that immersive virtual reality can interfere with the development of coordination that allows children to maintain balance. And a 2021 review of 85 studies on the impact of virtual reality on children revealed evidence of cognition issues, difficulty navigating real and virtual worlds, and addiction. The most significant risk may be how frequent and prolonged exposure to virtual environments impact mental health. 

Third, the digital divide has narrowed considerably. Government and the private sector have driven improvements in internet access at schools, expanded cellular networks and made mobile and computing devices significantly more affordable. Since 2014-15, the percentage of teens who have a smartphone has increased from 73% to 95%. Paired with money from COVID-19 legislation that allowed schools to invest in hardware, more children will have opportunities to use emerging technologies than ever had access to older innovations — including apps and the internet — at home and in school. 

Based on emerging evidence on these impacts on children, and in the face of significant unknowns, a policy and regulatory framework focused on mitigating risks — while still allowing children to access the benefits of these technologies — is warranted. At the federal level, Congress should consider:

• Compelling all emerging technology companies, including those producing immersive reality products that are utilized by children, to provide academic researchers access to their data.
  
• Compelling all immersive reality companies to assess the privacy and protection of children in the design of any product or service that they offer.
  
• Compelling all immersive reality companies to provide child development training to staff working on products intended for use by children.
  
• Requiring hardware manufacturers of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and brain-computer interface devices targeted to children to prominently display on their packaging warning labels about unknown physical and mental health risks.
  
• Establishing guidance, via the Department of Education, for district and school leaders to prepare their communities for the adoption of immersive technologies.
  
• Requiring all immersive technology companies to inform users of product placement within the platform.
  
• Compelling relevant federal regulatory agencies to provide clarification on the ways existing laws, such as the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, Individuals with Disabilities Act and Americans with Disabilities Act, apply to immersive technologies.
  
• Compelling all immersive technology companies to acquire parental consent for data sharing, particularly biometric information, including eye scans, fingerprints, handprints, face geometry and voiceprints.
  
• Providing guidelines around minimum age for the use of immersive technology platforms and products.
  

At the state level, every governor should carefully assess the action Utah took last week to regulate children’s use of social media and consider the following actions: 

• Creating child well-being requirements for state procurement of any immersive technology.
  
• Offering research and development grants to in-state immersive technology companies to focus on safety and well-being impacts on children.
  
• Establishing protocols for reviewing districts’ use of emerging technologies to determine compliance with federal and state law.

Finally, at the local level, school boards, superintendents and school leaders should consider regulations and guidance for the selection, adoption and use of immersive technologies:

• Assessing opportunities for integration with current teaching and learning methods and curriculum.
  
• Investing in and planning for professional development around these technologies.
  
• Ensuring accessibility for students with disabilities and English learners when planning around use of emerging technologies.
  
• Ensuring that any planned use of emerging technologies in the classroom is compliant with state and federal special education laws.
  
• Evaluating the costs of immersive technology procurement and necessary infrastructure upgrades and making the results transparent to the community.
  
• Creating opportunities for educator, parent and student involvement in the purchasing process for technology.

If emerging technology can have detrimental impacts on children — and evidence points to that being the case — responsibly mitigating the risks associated with these technologies is prudent. Why chance it? This is the best opportunity to allow children to reap the benefits.

The pandemic accelerated a yearslong decline in the mental health of the nation’s children and teens. The number of young people experiencing sadness, hopelessness and thoughts of suicide has increased dramatically, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In response, states, cities and school districts are using COVID-19 relief dollars and their own money to launch programs to help students and teachers recognize the symptoms of mental illness and suicide risk and build support services to help students who are struggling.

Flush with federal pandemic relief grants, some schools also are creating programs they hope will foster emotional well-being for students and increase their sense of connection to their schools and communities, said Sharon Hoover, co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health.

Typically, federal education money is allocated to states based on their school-age population. But 90% of the money is then sent to school districts, which typically have wide leeway to decide how to use it.

Some states and cities also are adding their own money to fund youth mental health projects.

This month, for example, New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams announced a broad mental health agenda that includes a youth suicide prevention program.

In February, North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper declared that the state would spend $7.7 million to provide suicide prevention training for university and community college personnel, create a mental health hotline for students and develop resiliency training for faculty, staff and students.

In January, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy unveiled a $14 million mental health grant program that targets K-12 schools with the greatest need.

And Rhode Island Democratic Gov. Daniel McKee introduced a $7.2 million program to train K-12 school employees to detect mental illness and suicide risk, respond to it and connect students and families to community social services.

Last year, Illinois, Iowa and Maryland launched programs to provide mental health training for school personnel.

And Arizona, California and South Carolina raised Medicaid reimbursement rates to incentivize behavioral health providers to provide services in schools, according to a February report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

February data from the CDC shows that “mental health challenges, experiences of violence, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors” rose sharply during the pandemic among all teens, but particularly among girls.  

More than two-thirds of public schools reported an increase in the number of students seeking mental health services, according to an April survey by the Institute of Education Sciences, the data analysis arm of the U.S. Department of Education. And only a little more than half of the schools said they felt their school could effectively provide the mental health services students needed.

Even before the pandemic, a fifth of children ages 3 to 17 had a mental, emotional, behavioral or developmental disorder, according to a December 2021 report from the U.S. Surgeon General. Globally, symptoms of depression and anxiety among children and youth doubled during the pandemic, according to the report.

This year, data collected by nonprofit mental health advocates Mental Health America indicates that nearly 60% of youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment.

To address the crisis, the Biden administration this month proposed a budget that includes $428 million in education and mental health grants states could use to help students who already are struggling with mental illness and to create programs aimed at improving the emotional well-being of all students. Congress would need to approve the money.

At the same time, K-12 schools are slated to receive $1 billion in grants over the next five years to stem rising mental illness and violence in schools, under a bipartisan bill Congress passed in the wake of the June 2022 elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

In addition to new funding, state and local officials have until Sept. 30 to decide how to use their share of the remaining $54.3 billion in education relief funds, part of pandemic aid Congress approved in 2020. And they have until Sept. 30, 2024, to decide how much of the remaining $122.8 billion in education grants under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to spend on mental health.

Mental health advocates have long rued the lack of federal and state funding to support school mental health programs. Federal relief dollars to combat the learning loss and emotional distress caused by the pandemic, they say, present an unprecedented opportunity for states to bolster school mental health resources that have been vastly underfunded for decades. 

“There never has been sufficient funding to meet the mental health needs of our communities, and certainly not our children,” said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a grassroots nonprofit organization that advocates for people affected by mental illness.

“Now that we have this confluence of factors affecting kids’ mental health — including the pandemic, social media and a wave of state legislation that’s harmful to LGBTQ youth — we don’t have a solid system to fall back on,” she said.

To build and sustain such a system, Hoover said, states, schools and communities will need to better balance their investments in academics with their investments in mental health.

Ultimately, Hoover said, “the hope is that we take a public health approach — like seatbelts in cars — to emotional well-being supports in schools for all students, not just those who are suffering the most. We need supports for everybody.

“If there’s anything COVID taught us, it’s that the mental health of our children and their ability to learn are inextricably linked.”

This article originally appeared at Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

For 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s free help line at 800-662-4357. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio sat before a crowd on Thursday at the Austin Convention Center, hands tightly clasped to tell a story about the darkest day of her life, when she knew her daughter was one of the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

The crowd intently listened as she described the scenes of chaos and confusion that surrounded that day when 19 students, including her 10-year-old daughter, and two teachers were killed by a gunman in the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“The days after were just filled with questions. How did this happen to her? How did this happen to me? How did this happen to us?” Mata-Rubio said while her voice quivered with emotion.

Mata-Rubio was one of three keynote speakers for a SXSW EDU school safety panel, held in partnership with The Texas Tribune, that raised questions about gun policy, social media and mental health using the backdrop of the tragic May 24 school shooting.

Nine months ago, she found herself part of an ever-growing community of parents who have lost their children to school shootings.

“It was comforting to meet them in a way. There is no judgment and they share this pain and they understand,” Mata-Rubio said about meeting other parents whose children died in school shootings. “It’s also terrifying because they are a mirror of what my future is and there is so much pain still. That you never get better. That you will walk around with this pain until your time is over and you are reunited with your loved one again.”

Odis Johnson Jr., executive director of the Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, and Nick Allen, a professor at the University of Oregon and director of the Center for Digital Mental Health, both spoke about the need for gun policy changes before trying to address mental health.

“Very often mental health is used as an alternative to gun safety policy, but these things must work together,” Allen said.

In the past six decades, the state has experienced at least 19 mass shootings that have killed a total of nearly 200 people and wounded more than 230 others.

Yet state leaders have repeatedly voted against measures that would limit access to guns, opting instead to ease restrictions on publicly carrying them while making it harder for local governments to regulate them.

“There are thousands of laws on the books across the country that limit the owning or using of firearms, laws that have not stopped madmen from carrying out evil acts on innocent people,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a prerecorded speech to the National Rifle Association just three days after the Uvalde shooting.

But on Wednesday, senators passed its first bill of this legislative session — one that would close a loophole in state law that had allowed gun sales to people who were involuntarily hospitalized for mental illness between the ages of 16 and 18. The gunman responsible for the Uvalde mass shooting had not been previously hospitalized but did have a history of mental illness.

The term “aggrieved entitlement” was used multiple times during Thursday’s discussion to describe the mindset of certain school shooters.

“Often the person has a sense they were owed or deserved something from life that they haven’t received,” Allen explained.

Allen said many men who fit this description do not seek mental health assistance in the first place because they view it as a weakness or a challenge to their manhood.

“Different kinds of programs that help identify these particular young men who are isolated and disassociated might help. It would also be very good if they didn’t have access to guns,” Allen said.

The state’s Republican leaders have focused on mental health and school safety as the policy response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, mostly resisting gun-control measures.

Texas leaders agreed last year to dedicate more than $100 million in state funds to boost school safety and mental health services following the Uvalde massacre. Nearly half the money — $50 million — is going toward bullet-resistant shields for school police officers, while an additional $17.1 million will go to school districts to buy silent panic alert technology.

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan announced his support this week for several bills addressing gaps in school safety, one of which would require school districts to adopt active-shooter preparedness plans. The bill would require districts to send maps of each campus to the Texas Education Agency, provide opportunities for law enforcement to conduct walk-throughs of all buildings and lay out the costs necessary to meet the state’s established safety standards.

“Schools in the top third of the nation for their use of cameras, school resource officers and other security measures had lower mathematical scores and college-going rates than the [schools] in the lower third for security measures,” Johnson said. “The primary mission of schools is to educate and equip kids to be successful, healthy and happy, and what we have done is double down on surveillance technology that undermines that mission. Students shouldn’t feel like suspects.”

All three speakers agreed that in order for there to be real change, the gun reform issue will have to be taken on in the political realm.

Last year, President Joe Biden signed into law the first major gun safety legislation passed by Congress in nearly 30 years. The legislation includes incentives for states to pass so-called red flag laws that allow groups to petition courts to remove weapons from people deemed a threat to themselves or others.

“Legislation was a breaking point. It’s not where we need to be, but the framework is there. The essential components are now there,” Johnson said as the crowd cheered. “The problem has been that for a long time, we have lacked the political will to do this and the only solution to this is a political solution.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Charlene Wong, a pediatrician in adolescent medicine, continues to see patients while she serves as assistant secretary for children and families in the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). She remembers a recent experience seeing a transgender student in a clinic.

That student’s experience tracks with data from the state’s latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which found LGBTQ+ students experiencing greater mental health challenges than their peers.

“School is where I feel safest,” Wong remembers the student telling her.

“So this is work that is really important to me,” said Wong, who co-chairs the Whole Child NC advisory committee.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The committee met last week as it continues to reboot after the pandemic forced a pause in regular meetings. The committee, established in 2015 by Judge Howard Manning Jr. as part of the Leandro trial, advises the State Board of Education on best strategies and practices for supporting students’ non-academic needs.

When it was established, the committee worked to educate the Board on challenges and potential solutions. More recently, the committee has become interested in influencing policy. As such, it asked the Board for flexibility in filling out its membership, specifically so it could adjust its membership over the years as policy foci shift. The Board voted to approve that request on Thursday.

The committee expects to provide the Board with its second set of recommendations in June. Its first set of recommendations came more than two years ago, just before the pandemic.

The committee grounds its recommendations in the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. It’s also finding direction from a DHHS action plan.

That plan, the Unified School Behavioral Health Action Plan, was released last year to address the urgent crisis of children with complex behavioral health needs.

It lists these challenges to getting kids mental health support:

• No centralized repository of partners, programs, funding, services, and outcomes.
• Several overlapping policies addressing youth behavioral health.
• Limited behavioral health workforce capacity.
• Funding challenges.
• A need for more flexible options to address inequities in access.
• Partners working in silos.

The action plan seeks to address these challenges, among others. Some of its strategies overlap with mandates in the Leandro plan, which was most recently upheld by the state Supreme Court in November.

As Wong spoke to the committee about the DHHS plan, she made the connection between supporting non-academic needs and achieving academic outcomes. But strategies for non-academic supports need to be focused, she said.

“This is really a plan of specific strategies,” Wong said of the DHHS action plan. “We came together and said: We have a real crisis. What do we think is really going to make a difference for kids and families, and … what do we think are the most important things to be doing in schools now, to really support the behavioral health of students?”

Here are some of those strategies:

Statewide Electronic Health Record System

Provide funding to maintain a school electronic health records (EHR) system that is being built with one-time COVID-19 funding to enable all North Carolina schools to document student health records and to allow health information to follow students if they change schools. The plan estimates $1.7 million in funding would be needed to implement this.

School-based Telehealth Pilot for Behavioral Health

Fund telehealth pilots and technical assistance via contractor(s) to expand access to about 10,000 students in districts without programs and create a sustainability plan. An estimated $4.2 million in funding would be required to implement this.

Project AWARE/ACTIVATE

Sustain Project AWARE/ACTIVATE for two additional years in pilot districts whose federal funding ends in June 2023. Work would focus on a path to sustainability and replication of key programs components that have been effective in North Carolina. You can read more about the pilot here. The plan estimates an additional $4 million in funding would be needed.

School Linkages to Community Resource Networks

Expand supports provided to schools with COVID-19 funding to connect schools with behavioral health resources in their communities and to train schools on how to effectively coordinate with these partners to support student behavioral health. The plan estimates an additional $300,000 in funding would be needed.

School Health Advisory Council (SHAC) Support

107 out of 115 school districts have local SHACs that met last year. This strategy is to build on COVID-19 investments to provide sustainable funding to locally run SHACs so that coalitions of school staff, parents, and community members can invest in behavioral health resources based on local needs. This would require an estimated $7 million in funding.

Mental Health First Aid

Facilitate Mental Health First Aid and Youth Mental Health First Aid trainings for school staff and students and evaluate the benefits of this program as a long-term investment in the mental of North Carolina’s youth.

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Teens, mental health care professionals and crisis-line volunteers told state and federal leaders that youth need access to more culturally relevant mental health care and better communication about what services exist.

Addressing these two issues would go a long way toward combating a youth mental health crisis that has grown in the wake of the pandemic, they told Gov. Tina Kotek and Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The group convened at Faubion School in northeast Portland on Monday afternoon to discuss mental health issues facing students and resources available through state and federal dollars. Also present at the K-8 school were representatives of Portland Public Schools and the University of Oregon’s new Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health. The institute was set up to address the lack of mental health care professionals by placing its first class of 200 undergraduates into Portland Public Schools as interns in the fall of 2023.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

A survey of about one-third of Oregon students conducted in 2020 by the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Education found nearly half felt sad or hopeless for more than a two-week period. And a report released in August by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that the number of Oregon children struggling with mental health issues grew from 11% in 2016 to 16% in 2020.

Jaiyana Jones, an eighth grader at Faubion, said during a roundtable discussion that COVID and social media have increased mental health suffering among students over the last few years. She said some who don’t feel comfortable talking with counselors and school staff turn instead to abusing substances. Tanvi Vemulapalli, a volunteer for the nonprofit crisis hotline Lines for Life, said a lack of supportive adults is the number one reason young people say they call the hotline.

“It’s one of the biggest things, the lack of comfort reaching out to someone,” Vemulapalli said.

As a Black student, Jones said it would be helpful to have more Black counselors and mental health staff. “People who share some of what you experience,” she said.

Jeida Dezurny, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and a youth representative of the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board, said there is a generational and cultural disconnect among many Native American youth to mental health care services. In the absence of more Native mental health care providers, Dezurnby said she and her colleagues have focused on training Native adults from all walks of life to talk with young people about suicide, opioids, mental health, sex and other topics that can feel uncomfortable to discuss.

“We start teaching the caring adults, the educators, the guardians, the community members,” she said, asking them: “How do you address mental health? We know that you probably have never addressed it in your life, and that’s OK, we’re gonna get past it, we’re going to educate you.”

To combat nationwide shortages of school counselors, psychologists and social workers, Becerra said the federal human services department is planning to launch a scholarship program that would help pay for graduate studies for people hoping to become mental health care professionals. In exchange, they would need to commit to three to four years of work in the field.

Becerra also touted the federal government’s investment in the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline launched in July, which connects callers and texters to counselors trained in helping people in a crisis. Becerra said the Biden administration is investing $500 million over two years to get the line established nationwide, but states will need to provide their own funding to sustain the service.

“I think it’d be a great challenge for the youth who are in this space to convince the leaders in your state – because there are only a few states today that actually provide a steady stream of money – to keep the 988 lifeline going,” he said.

In Oregon, Lines for Life oversees the service except in Marion and Polk counties, where Northwest Human Services is in charge. Kotek’s proposed budget includes adding a fee of 40 cents per cell line to sustain the 988 Lifeline into the future.

The Legislature is considering several bills to target the mental health care workforce shortage and improve access to mental health care in schools.

Two bills, House Bill 2485 and House Bill 3274, would require Portland State University and Southern Oregon University to educate and graduate more public mental health and addiction treatment providers over the next five years. House Bill 2636 would require every school district to ensure every school has a mental health professional and nurse.

In 2019, the state allocated more than $1 billion to the Student Success Act, which helped pay for mental health care in schools. Additionally, Oregon received millions from the American Rescue Plan during the pandemic, with directives to use some of it for mental health staff and programs.

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

The COVID pandemic — the topic that has dominated education conversations for the past three years — is largely missing from the State of the State addresses that governors are delivering to their legislatures this winter. 

Instead, state leaders are using their bully pulpits to call for bigger investments in early learning and in the transition into the workforce and college. They are supporting better pay for public school teachers while pushing for public money to flow to private schools, which could ultimately make it more difficult to fund public school pay increases. 

FutureEd analyzed 44 governors’ speeches and partnered with The 74 to convert our analysis into a series of interactive maps. We found that despite the academic gaps exposed in last year’s National Assessment for Educational Progress scores, there was surprisingly little talk of learning loss and efforts to catch students up. There was also little explicit “culture war” rhetoric around teaching racial history or banning books — and more lofty talk about the value of education.

“Education is a great equalizer in our society,” said Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in her Feb. 14 address to the Maine legislature. “Every child, regardless of where they live, deserves a world-class education that will prepare them for a successful adulthood.”

Here are some of the topics trending among the nation’s governors this year:

(Click here if you are having trouble viewing maps)

Teaching Profession

The teaching profession was a top priority across party lines, with 24 governors discussing ways to improve pay and support educators. Most of those governors proposed raising salaries, largely in response to shortages in their states but also as a way to recognize the important role teachers play. 

In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andrew Beshear is supporting an across-the-board 5% pay hike, which he called “both vital and necessary to address Kentucky’s shortage of nearly 11,000 public school teachers.” Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little also pledged to increase salaries — both for starting teachers and for all instructors — by an average of $6,300 annually because “students and their families deserve quality teachers who are respected and compensated competitively.”

South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster took a different approach, offering both salary increases and one-time $2,500 retention bonuses, paid out in two installments. Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin wants to provide retention bonuses as well as $50 million in performance-based compensations. Republican state leaders began supporting teacher pay hikes in response to widespread teacher protests against low pay in red states in the years before the pandemic — perhaps realizing that many rank-and-file teachers in their states are Republicans, even though teacher unions, favorite Republican political foils, lean left.

Governors also pitched additional strategies to address recruitment and retention challenges. Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore is pushing legislation to strengthen the teacher pipeline with loan forgiveness, fellowships and grow-your-own programs. Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is proposing grants to help paraprofessionals become teachers. Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo is adding $30 million to provide stipends and tuition for student teachers. And in Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers announced plans to invest more than $20 million in recruiting, developing, and retaining teachers and student teachers.

School Choice

Unlike the bipartisan support for teacher compensation, the school choice proposals in 15 State of the State addresses nearly all came from Republican governors. The only Democratic governor to broach the subject, Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, pledged to provide more accountability for a broad expansion of education savings accounts that her predecessor pushed through the legislature. “Any school that accepts taxpayer dollars should have to abide by the same accountability standards that all district schools do,” she said. 

Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds proposed, and has since signed, a measure that would provide nearly $8,000 in state funding to each family who sends their child to a private school — the same amount the state provides for each public school student. “Every parent should have a choice of where to send their child — and that choice shouldn’t be limited to families who can afford it,” she said. Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine proposed expanding eligibility for the state’s voucher program to include middle-class families. He also proposed increasing funding for charter schools.

Some governors emphasized the importance of parents in making educational decisions for their children, including Idaho’s Little, who plans to make permanent a grant program that helps families pay for such educational expenses as computers, instructional materials and tutoring.

While school choice programs open to all students, like those in Iowa and Arizona, are drawing much of the attention — and criticism — this year, governors in Nebraska and South Dakota have focused specifically on children in need, including those in foster care or living in poverty.

Curriculum and Instruction

With support for the “science of reading” sweeping the country, governors are responding with calls for explicit, evidence-based reading instruction. “The evidence is clear. The verdict is in. There is a great deal of research about how we learn to read. And today, we understand the great value and importance of phonics,” said Ohio’s DeWine, one of 11 governors who mentioned literacy in their speeches; altogether, 19 proposed some sort of curriculum initiatives or restrictions.

Some governors, such as Iowa’s Reynolds, are focusing on training teachers to implement reading initiatives. Youngkin called for extending the use of reading specialists under the Virginia Literacy Act to fifth grade.

In Wisconsin, Evers announced a $20 million investment to increase literacy programming and implement evidence-based reading practices. He, along with Youngkin and Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, also proposed investments in high-quality math curricula, training and support. 

In Nevada, Lombardo wants to reinstate a rule holding back students who aren’t reading proficiently, and Indiana Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb is proposing to reward schools that improve their third-grade reading results. 

This focus on literacy and academic initiatives marks a big shift from last year, when culture wars and critical race theory were prominent in the State of the State addresses. Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves is one of the exceptions, with comments on gender and sexuality. “There is no room in our schools for policies that attempt to undercut parents and require the usage of pronouns or names that fail to correspond with reality,” he said in proposing a Parents’ Bill of Rights requiring schools to “adhere to the will of the parents” on such matters.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott framed his push for education savings accounts as a way to empower parents and to fight “woke agendas” and “indoctrination.” Likewise, West Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Justice voiced support for “parents’ rights” by directing school districts to make all curricula available online, “where we can see every single thing that’s being put into our little kids’ heads.”

In Illinois, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker spoke out against restricting what’s taught in schools, saying it undermines historic investments in education. “It’s all meaningless if we become a nation that bans books from school libraries about racism suffered by Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, and tells kids they can’t talk about being gay, and signals to Black and brown people and Asian Americans and Jews and Muslims that our authentic stories can’t be told,” he said.

Higher Education

College affordability emerged as a top priority among the 23 governors who mentioned higher education, but their proposed solutions differed across party lines. Governors from both parties called for expanded scholarship programs, but only Republicans — from South Carolina, Utah and Virginia — called for tuition freezes. GOP governors were also the only ones to mention repairing aging campus buildings, with proposed investments ranging from $65 million in Nevada to $275 million in Missouri. 

New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham touted her state’s program that provides free public higher education to all state residents, and Illinois’s Pritzker pledged another $100 million for scholarships helping to make community college free for eligible students. Others pushed for expanded scholarship programs: Arizona’s Hobbs is allocating $40 million to create the Promise for DREAMers Scholarship Program, while North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum is doubling his state’s investment in the Native American Scholarship program. Governors in other states, including Montana, Georgia and Hawaii, emphasized the need for expanded scholarships and programs to encourage students to become health care providers. 

Several governors proposed using these investments to encourage students to stay in their state for college and ideally, for their careers. Indiana’s Holcomb pitched a $184 million increase in higher education funding to reward universities “for keeping their graduates in careers in our state. After all, Indiana’s college campuses need to be the epicenters of brain gain — not brain drain!” Nebraska Republican Gov. Jim Pillen offered $39.4 million to fund over 4,200 scholarships for Nebraska students attending school in state.

Workforce Development

At least 29 governors across the political spectrum voiced support for improving students’ career readiness, including through apprenticeships and dual-enrollment programs. 

Virginia’s Youngkin hopes to accelerate dual-enrollment partnerships between high schools and community colleges so that eventually, “every child graduates with an industry recognized credential.” Kentucky’s Beshear announced a $245 million investment to renovate and rebuild career and technical centers in high schools. And Colorado’s Polis argued for career-connected learning in high school. 

Apprenticeships were a large focus, with Iowa’s Reynolds increasing funding for health care apprenticeships, Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson expanding apprenticeships in areas such as information technology and public safety, and Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte doubling the Trades Education Credit. Wisconsin’s Evers is connecting apprenticeships to other initiatives, including through a $10 million investment in clean energy job training and reemployment.

Early Education

Even as Congress failed to fund early care and early education in recent spending packages, 20 governors from both parties made the early years a priority in their speeches. 

Pritzker announced a broad Smart Start Illinois plan to expand access to pre-K and child care, help build new facilities and ramp up home visiting programs for young families. While only Democratic governors — including those in Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and New Mexico — discussed the need for universal pre-K, several Republican governors also advocated for expanding early learning and child care options, particularly better access for kids from low-income families. For example, Missouri’s Parson is planning to invest $56 million to expand pre-K options for low-income children, and Nevada’s Lombardo is providing $60 million for similar efforts. 

Governors are also calling for bureaucratic changes: New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to make it easier for eligible parents to access child care assistance, saying, “Less than 10% of families who are eligible … are actually enrolled. This is the legacy of a system that is difficult to navigate — by design. That has to change.” Similarly, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem said her state would work with providers to overhaul rules and regulations. 

Mental Health

Sixteen governors acknowledged the rise in mental health challenges post-pandemic and the need to expand access to services, particularly for children and teens. Some focused specifically on school-based services, while others supported community-based approaches.

Several Democratic governors called for increasing the number of school counselors, psychologists and social workers, including Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who is proposing to expand Mental Health Intervention Teams in schools. In Wisconsin, Evers announced he is investing more than $270 million to allow every district to expand school-based mental health services.

Though largely a priority among Democrats, mental health also came up in a few Republican speeches: Missouri’s Parson proposed an additional $3.5 million for more youth behavioral-health liaisons, and Ohio’s DeWine hopes to address the shortage of pediatric behavioral-health professionals and facilities. 

While the culture wars and other divisive political issues continue to play out in schools and colleges, it is perhaps encouraging to see significant numbers of state leaders from both parties proposing pragmatic policy responses to teacher shortages, student mental health needs, low reading scores and other systemic challenges facing the nation’s educators.

Maps by The 74’s Meghan Gallagher

This problem predates the pandemic, and conditions have only worsened. The national student-to-counselor ratio last year was 408 to 1, significantly higher than the American School Counselor Association’s recommendation of 250 to 1. These counselors are being asked to serve as class schedulers, test administrators, career coaches, social workers and even lunch monitors. All the while, students’ needs are not being met. Adolescents’ suspected suicide attempts have risen dramatically, teenage girls are reporting record levels of sadness, and the child and adolescent mental health crisis has been declared a national emergency.

What can be done?

Districts are often told the fix lies in simply hiring more counselors, but getting to a real solution requires a more nuanced understanding of the problem. The work my colleagues and I have done with more than 100 school districts and state agencies has led to a three-pronged approach to supporting students’ mental health.

First, it’s critical for districts to understand what services they need from a counselor. Hiring someone to support emotional crises is different from hiring someone to help students find the right college or career pathway, for example. Schools might need a behavioral specialist, or a college access coach, or a psychologist. Getting clear on staffing levels and students’ needs is essential before hiring anyone.

Districts should then establish firm guidelines to ensure mental health staff spend their time working on tasks that require their expertise, rather than the hodgepodge of activities they are often pulled into. One district leader we work with contacts principals whenever counselors are assigned ad hoc responsibilities, reminding the school leaders to prioritize their counselors. Another district encourages the hiring of part-time specialists to coordinate tests or schedule classes and free counselors from the unrelated work that often eats away at their time. 

Once districts disentangle their support staff, they may realize they already have what they need — or, at the very least, will be clear about the hole they need to fill.

Second, districts need to engage in community partnerships. With just 8% of districts meeting the 500-students-per-counselor ratio recommended by the National Association of School Psychologists, there’s no way to hire enough mental health professionals outright. Creating partnerships with local mental health professionals can provide much-needed capacity, and by including local organizations attuned to a community, schools can better meet students’ needs. That said, working with third-party providers creates logistical challenges. These services often need to be marketed to students and families, schedules need to be coordinated and meeting space needs to be provided. There also need to be pre-established back-up plans for when a counselor can’t make it, or the student is sick, or the school is operating on an early-release or delayed schedule. Checklists can help with this.

Third, districts should consider telehealth services. It’s rare for one or even several community partners to be able to meet the mental health services needs of an entire district. We recently worked with a large district that hired additional counselors, embraced community partnerships and still found it wasn’t enough to meet the increased demand post-pandemic. Implementing a telehealth option enabled them to scale up quickly to better meet students’ needs. 

The key was prioritizing family communication, in multiple languages, to help parents better understand teletherapy. We helped the district create email, text message and robocall templates for school leaders and counselors to use to publicize the new services, drew up infographics to demonstrate the signup and scheduling process and prepared answers to frequently asked questions about data security and insurance. This all demonstrated to parents and caregivers that when students have access to mental health services at school, test scores, attendance, grade-point averages and graduation rates all increase, disciplinary infractions decrease and students are more likely to plan for college and careers.

The district can now serve additional students during and after school hours, and without the need for families to drive their children across town for an appointment.This moment calls for comprehensive planning across academics and wellness, shifts in allocation of time and priorities, and stronger coordination of out-of-school-time providers. A new round of grants from the U.S. Department of Education specifically for school-based mental health services will greatly aid these efforts. By identifying their needs, establishing community partnerships and looking at creative telehealth options, districts can develop innovative ways to ensure students receive the support they deserve.

When Susannah High heard in 2021 that public funds would pay for one person at each community college to receive mental health training, she jumped at the opportunity.

High, director of student wellness and success at Haywood Community College, was familiar with the training, called Mental Health First Aid, a national program that teaches people how to spot and navigate the signs of mental health challenges.

The goal, she said, is to “train as many people as you can, give skillsets to as many people as you can, so that we can better support ourselves as a society.”

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

High has done just that, but says the college needs sustainable funding for training going forward to meet the needs of its community.

Gov. Roy Cooper announced this week a $7.7 million investment to launch new mental health programs and sustain existing ones like Mental Health First Aid. These funds come from the federal Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools program and have since reverted to the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief fund, a press release says. The money will fund suicide prevention training for faculty and staff across community colleges, UNC system schools, and independent colleges and universities, as well as a mental health hotline and resiliency program at UNC system schools.

“Identifying their mental distress and getting them access to quality treatment is more critical for our students than ever,” Cooper said. “This investment will help our state’s colleges and universities better support their students so they can thrive.”

The UNC system has created an initiative around Mental Health First Aid at 116 colleges and universities across the state with a $5 million investment from the same funding source last year.

“It’s always been something I knew existed,” said High, who is also a clinical social worker. “I’ve always been interested in it. It’s incredibly expensive. It was always out of our budget.”

High got trained with that original funding from the community college system in March 2021. The college has since used federal pandemic relief funding to pay for the costs of running classes. High immediately prioritized training faculty and staff, including president Shelley White.

After that, her main goal was reaching students. With a dedicated funding source, she would ultimately like to be a resource for agencies and organizations in the community as well.

High has taught five classes and 36 people on Haywood’s campus, plus another five, she estimated, in partnership with Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College.

“The whole purpose is to put instructors out in the world, who can go and continue to share skills with more and more people, so that eventually, the average everyday person can just be better equipped to recognize problematic signs and symptoms,” High said. “… It’s geared to be accessible for any person and not intimidating, so that you can learn how to recognize and respond.”

She has a sixth class planned for this month, which will include a combination of faculty, staff, and students. It’s the last one that she has funding for, she said.

“I want to see a line item for this, so that we know every fiscal year, we are contributing a set amount of dollars toward giving back to the community in terms of mental health,” High said.

This is particularly important in light of recent heightened mental health struggles, she said. Though she’s been seeing reports of higher rates of concerning behaviors, she hasn’t heard from students as she thought she might.

“They’re not reaching out,” she said. “And so that means problems still exist, but they’re trying to deal with them themselves, or relying on the friend or family member … That means we need to be equipping those friends and those families, those community members, with the skills that could potentially help encourage that person who’s struggling to reach out.”

This summer, High said, she’ll be looking for opportunities for extended funding.

“Any new and additional attention and focus that we can put on this is so very important,” High said. “We just we have so many folks struggling.”

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

As new data show a troubling increase in poor mental health and risk of suicide in teens, the U.S. Department of Education has announced millions in grants for seven Florida school districts as part of a five-year plan to invest $1 billion into mental health services.

With a turbulent education environment left over from the COVID-19 pandemic among other stresses, kids have struggled and federal, state and local school officials are trying to respond.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report called the Youth Risk Behavior Survey that shows an increase in poor mental health and suicide risk among the nation’s youth from 2011 to 2021.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The report is released every two years and relays data collected through a survey of public, Roman Catholic, and other non-public high schools. In 2021, 17,232 questionnaires from 152 schools were used to compile the most recent data.

According to the CDC, 42 percent of students in 2021 reported experiencing “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” up from 37 percent in 2019, before the COVID pandemic.

Seventy-eight percent of LGBQ+ students felt “so sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row that they stopped doing their usual activities,” compared to 50 percent of heterosexual students who answered the same. The report does not explicitly provide data on the experiences of transgender students.

While the DeSantis administration bills itself as supportive of mental health initiatives, many LGBTQ+ students and parents in Florida fear that the state is becoming a hostile environment for their families. They cite legislation limiting discussions on LGBTQ+ topics in K-12 classroom plus administrative policies attempting to end gender- affirming care for transgender youth in the state.

Another worrying data point from the CDC study looks at the percent of students who considered suicide in 2021. That data found that 22 percent of students seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021, an increase from 19 percent in 2019.

When broken down by sex, 30 percent of female students answered that they seriously considered attempting suicide, compared to 14 percent of male students who answered the same.

Attempts at suicide increased from 9 percent of students in 2019 to 10 percent in 2021. In 2021, 13 percent of the female respondents and 7 percent of male respondents said that they had attempted suicide during the past year.

Safer Communities Act

According to a Thursday press release, the grant money is part the federal Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which President Joe Biden signed in June. Local or state education agencies had to apply for the grant funds.

For Florida, seven counties will receive between $500,000 and $3 million towards hiring mental health professionals from what’s called the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant.

According to a Thursday press release from the Department of Education:

“These funds increase the number of school psychologists, counselors, and other mental health professionals serving our students through recruitment and retention efforts, the promotion of re-specialization and professional retraining of existing mental health providers, and through efforts to increase the diversity and cultural and linguistic competency of school-based mental health services providers.”

In addition, three Florida state universities will receive federal grants to “train school-based mental health services providers for employment in schools and local educational agencies,” the press release reports — $1.2 million for Florida International University, $868,338 for the University of Florida, and $446,308 for University of South Florida.

Just this week, some Florida representatives discussed the effects of technology and social media on students and whether they play a part in the decline of mental health during a House Education and Employment committee meeting.

In addition, First Lady Casey DeSantis has led an initiative to help boost the mental health of students, through a program called Hope Ambassadors. These are clubs that aim to create a kind and compassionate learning environment at schools through student-led mentorship and community service.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.

All 80 districts within the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s jurisdiction will have the authority to opt-in to services with Hazel Health, a telehealth provider that has partnered with districts nationwide to connect families with licensed care quickly and at no cost.

Their virtual therapy model removes some key barriers to accessing care from the equation, including insurance coverage, provider shortages or waitlists and transportation. Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second largest district, and Compton Unified have already opted in.

In California, nearly 70% of youth who’ve experienced a major depressive episode did not receive any treatment — 10% above national averages. 

However, the new partnership is not designed to support students long-term.

“Each student can typically expect an intake visit plus six weeks to two months of weekly sessions before being discharged from the Hazel program,” a spokesperson for Hazel Health told The 74 by email. “The program is short-term—if your child needs long-term mental health support, we will help identify and connect you with options in your community.”

The $24 million dollar partnership with L.A. Care Health Plan, Health Net, and the L.A. County Department of Mental Health is part of the state’s urgent push to address the youth mental health crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic and social media. In addition, racial unrest and discrimination is particularly taxing students of color, who make up 86% of Los Angeles county schools. 

Los Angeles Unified has not yet finalized their implementation plan. It may take up to twelve weeks before sessions begin, according to a spokesperson from the county’s education office.

In December, some Compton Unified students began to access at-home services, and as of last week, two district schools began offering telehealth visits onsite. By March, the district plans to offer space for students to use at every campus.

Half of mental illnesses start by age 14, and suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for children. Other school districts already partnered with Hazel include Clark County, Nevada’s largest, and Duval County Public Schools in Florida. 

While a similar teletherapy offering in Colorado enables youth 12 and up to confidentially sign up and meet with therapists on their own, Los Angeles’s partnership with Hazel will require students to be referred by a parent, guardian or school staff member. 

Over half of Hazel Health’s mental health providers are people of color and over 40% are bilingual. When necessary, clinicians use Language Line to facilitate sessions in students’ preferred language.  

“Hazel Health aligns the hiring of therapists to the demographics of its partner districts,” said Van Nguyen, Public Information Officer for the LA County Office of Education. 

The company launched its first mental health visits in the fall of 2021, which range coping mechanisms and tools for general anxiety disorder, depression, academic stress and bullying. Presently, about 22 clinical mental health positions are vacant.

“Hazel’s hiring practices involve looking for trauma-trained clinicians with deep expertise in children and teens, as well as specific passion areas and specialties (such as LGBTQ). Getting the match right is critical,” Drew Mathias, vice president of marketing, told The 74. 

Their clinicians most often use cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing and dialectical behavior therapy approaches. 

Founded in 2015 by a pediatric emergency room doctor, K-12 educator, and former Apple software engineer, Hazel Health offers physical and mental health care visits to children at over 3,000 public schools.

Now, new national data unveil one factor that could be exacerbating the crisis: a record increase in sexual violence.

Nearly 1 in 5 teen girls experienced sexual violence in 2021, forced to kiss or touch someone in their life, according to the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey released Monday.

A startling 14%, more than 1 in 10, were forced to have sex against their will, according to the report which compiled responses from 17,000 young people surveyed in the fall of 2021. The violence is up 20% since 2017. 

The CDC conducts the survey every other year, though Monday’s report is the first to capture pandemic-era trends. And while there are bright spots — bullying and use of illicit drugs are down overall — the recent findings are grim.

In 2021, at least 18% of girls experienced some form of sexual violence — forced to touch or kiss someone in their life. And while the rate of girls forced to have sex in particular had remained pretty constant for the last 10 years, in the two year period from 2019 to 2021, it jumped from 11% to 14%. 

“This is truly alarming,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC’s division of adolescent and school health. “For every 10 teenage girls you know, at least one of them, and probably more, has been raped. This tragedy cannot continue.”

Nearly 1 in 3 girls also seriously considered suicide. One quarter of girls and 37% of lesbian, gay or queer youth made suicide plans. Thirteen percent of girls attempted it, the highest numbers in a decade, roughly double the rate for boys. 

While increases in suicidal ideation can be seen across many demographics, Black and Native or Indigenous students remain significantly more likely to attempt and are the students most impacted by housing insecurity.

“America’s teen girls are engulfed in a growing wave of sadness, violence and trauma,” said Debra Houry, chief medical officer for the CDC, during a press briefing Monday. 

“These data are hard to hear and should result in action,” Houry said. “As a parent to a teenage girl, I am heartbroken.”

Research confirms adolescents who are forced to kiss, touch or have sex with people against their will are more likely to develop symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. In children, this can manifest in a number of ways, including withdrawal from friends or social activities, difficulty sleeping, poor attendance and academic performance, self-harm, substance abuse and suicidal ideation.

Houry said while this report did not look at the connections between sexual violence and the increase in depression and suicidality, prior research has shown “sexual violence is associated with mental health issues, substance use and also long-term health consequences.” 

Girls are also 5% more likely than boys to misuse prescription opioids and more likely to have tried illicit drugs like cocaine, inhalants, heroin, methamphetamines, hallucinogens, or ecstasy, according to the report 

Nearly half of all high schoolers are “persistently sad or hopeless,” the report found, symptoms used as a proxy to measure depression. Numbers are notably higher for girls, queer youth and students of color. 

The feelings, particularly when they are the result of sexual violence, hold the power to have lifelong impacts: “young people who feel hopeless about their future are more likely to engage in behaviors that put them at risk for HIV, STDs, and unintended pregnancy,” the report states. 

Only about half of teens, according to the 2021 findings, used a condom the last time they had sex. And only 5% were screened for STIs within the last year.

Yet many of the challenges facing young people today, Houry added, are in fact “preventable.”

Schools can revamp health curricula to educate young people about sexual consent and managing emotions; encourage school-based clubs like Gay Straight Alliances; and increase mental health training for teachers, peers and staff. 

Healthy relationship and bystander training programs like Green Dot can reduce harm and stigma in talking about sexual or romantic violence, CDC officials said. 

The CDC and advocates also encouraged families to look for warning signs associated with suicide and regularly ask young people about their feelings or concerns. 

“I wish my family knew these resources and what to look for earlier,” national PTA President Anna King tearfully said during the media briefing. King lost a niece to suicide nearly five years ago. 

“These conversations will help parents learn how to help their child and figure out what’s going on emotionally, building their ability to cope with life’s stressors and show them their feelings matter,” King said. “It also helps them to understand that they’re not alone.”

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Additional resources are available at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources. For LGBTQ mental health support, you can contact The Trevor Project’s toll-free support line at 866-488-7386.