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Mental health now priority for schools as students returns

By BELINDA ROBINSON in New York | China Daily Global | Updated: 2021-08-04 11:04
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Students are led onto the bus after the school day ends at Kratzer Elementary School in Allentown, Pennsylvania, US, April 13, 2021. [Photo/Agencies]

US schools are carefully monitoring their students' mental health and will provide counselors when children return to school this fall after a punishing year brought on by the death of more than 600,000 people nationwide and the strain caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The pandemic has been particularly stressful for the nation's schoolchildren, say psychologists, as many have been forced to self-isolate, had to participate in hybrid learning from home and were without the support of their teachers or friends for more than a year.

The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) said on its website: "In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising toll inflicted on communities across the country as a result of police brutality, systemic racism, and structural inequity, meeting the mental and behavioral health needs of our students is more important than ever."

As school districts nationwide prepare for the fall term and the return to in-person learning for many students, they are increasing mental health services, counselors and care for children who may need to talk about how they feel.

Hilliard City Schools in Columbus, Ohio, has added seven new school counselors and 10 more social workers to ensure that their schoolchildren have their full support, ABC News reported.

The school district has nearly 17,000 students. It will use federal relief money allocated to K-12 public schools to pay for the new positions.

In June, Iowa officials announced that the state will launch a new pre-K-12 school mental health center aimed at helping schools increase their resources for mental health.

Iowa Department of Education Director Ann Lebo told ABC News that the education department will put $20 million from federal pandemic relief funds into the center. The center will tackle children's concerns about anything pandemic-related.

In Maryland, starting in the fall Montgomery County Public Schools will allow students to cite mental health problems as a reason for a day off.

In Miami, the Miami-Dade County school district is looking into whether it should use federal relief funds to hire more mental health counselors and psychologists.

It wants to ensure that it has enough help for the 334,000 school children who will return to in-person learning this fall. Many may have been socially distanced from friends for a year and will need to readjust.

Bradley Klontz, an associate professor of financial psychology and behavioral finance at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, warns of the long-term negative impact of the pandemic, including depression.

He told China Daily: "One of the primary risk factors for depression is social isolation. And we actually forced and told people they should socially isolate which is the opposite of what you should be doing if you are trying to avoid being depressed."

More than 43,000 children have lost a parent to COVID-19, researchers from Stony Brook University and a coalition of other universities found in April.

Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also show the difficult time faced by young people amid the pandemic.

Among 12- to 17-year-olds, mental health-related emergency department visits increased 31 percent compared with 2019, a CDC study showed. Visits for suicide attempts by girls 12 to 17 were 50.6 percent higher than in 2019, the CDC said.

NASP said that there is also a shortage of psychologists in schools, and many who are working are overstretched. It recommends that each school psychologist shouldn't see more than 500 students.

But in the 2019-2020 school year, psychologists saw more than double that number. Only one state met NASP's recommendation.

To provide extra help from the government, a House Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations bill, FY2022, was proposed to boost funding that would provide significant mental and behavioral health support to students.

At least $1 billion proposed in the bill is earmarked for the School Safety National Activities program.

At least $100 million would go toward mental health resources for children and youth; $26 million for the Zero Suicide program; and $114 million for the Suicide Lifeline.

It also would fund grants to increase the number of school psychologists and other school mental health professionals.

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