Adolescent mental health has been in steady decline for years. In 2019, right around 10% of kids and adolescents in the US had a diagnosable mental health issue but 80% of them weren’t getting the help they needed.

Flash forward to 2020 - the world shut down. We canceled school, ball games, recitals, banquettes, proms, and even graduation.

So, during a time when friends and socialization are paramount, family takes a backseat to everything and experiencing new things and learning independence is critical, all adolescents were forced to stay at home 24-hours a day with their family, couldn’t see friends, didn’t go to school, couldn’t really go anywhere – but when they did, they were told to wear a mask, wash their hands constantly, and oh, by the way, you or any of your family members could still catch this disease and die.

Yes, adults had a tough time during the pandemic, without a doubt. But adolescents/teenagers missed a significant chunk of developmentally necessary life experience. And you don’t need me to tell you that it held them back and took an enormous tole on their mental health.

And those who were already suffering, suffered even more. Over the last 2 years, visits to the ER for mental health reasons, increased by 24% for kids ages 5 - 11 and 31% for those 12 – 15.

And by 2021 more than 25% of parents in the US had taken their adolescent to a mental health specialist – almost 60% of those, within the past year!

During the pandemic, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association jointly declared a National State of Emergency in Children’s Mental Health. They called on policymakers to make sweeping changes to ensure all kids receive help for their mental health needs. Unfortunately, it appears it’s going to take a lot more than a declaration from alarmed physicians to make the necessary changes to help our nation’s children. It’s going to take some very motivated parents!

Experts agree that early intervention is the key to improving adolescent mental health, and that schools are in the best position to identify and help struggling teens.

So, stick around while we examine the changes that need to occur in our country’s schools to get this crisis under control and learn what you can do to help push these changes through in your area.

 

You’re listening to Speaking of Teens, a weekly show to help you better understand and parent your teen or tween.

I’m Ann Coleman, and after surviving a couple of difficult years with my teenage son, I decided to make the leap from practicing law into the science of parenting teens and tweens. I want to make sure you have the skills I was sorely lacking.

 

When kids returned to school in person this 2021-22 school this year, they’d been cooped up, locked down, falling behind. They’d lived 24/7 on social media, experienced social and political unrest, some were grieving a relative lost to COVID, dealing with ongoing learning differences, ADHD, trauma.

Surveys show that teachers, counselors, and staff are really worried about their students mental and emotional health. They’ve been described as being literally frozen at the point they were the last time they had a normal school year – they’re basically 2 years behind in their social and emotional development. They say students are now more depressed and anxious and showing the effects of trauma.

There’s also been an enormous increase in negative behaviors like conflicts with friends, fighting and other violent behavior. Students are crying in bathrooms, being disrespectful and defiant to teachers, harassing each other.

Everyone can agree they need help now more than ever before and that schools are, as studies show, the best place to screen for mental health conditions and get kids and teens the help they need.

Schools can improve teens’ mental health by integrating the right programs and services to help identify a problem early, increase access to care, decrease stigma, improve the chances that kids will adhere to treatment and even improve academic outcomes.

But here are the problems: many schools do not provide these programs and services and even if they do, they are now so completely overwhelmed with kids who need help that they can’t get to everyone. And statistically, if these kids don’t get help in school, they’re not going to get it outside of school – especially if they’re poor, have no insurance or belong to a minority group.

So, their mental health issues go untreated. Negative behavior continues, worsens. Students are labeled as trouble makers. Their behavior, which is a symptom of the underlying issue, becomes the main focus. They’re punished, suspended, expelled, sent to alternative schools, arrested and often delt with through the juvenile justice system.

 

This is the very definition of a mental health crisis and if we – and I mean you and me – don’t make it our business to do something, this will have a long-term impact on our country.

So, let’s talk about what your kids’ middle and high schools should be doing to help and then we’ll talk about how to get it done.

A government survey released just last month shows that since the pandemic, 7 out of 10 schools have documented an increase in the number of kids seeking help for mental health issues. But only about half of schools reported they were able to meet these students needs through school services. And that’s dreadful news for our kids and teenagers.

The number one roadblock to getting our kids mentally healthy and on track at school is the lack of mental health professionals employed by their schools. Studies show that students are 21 times more likely to visit a school-based mental health professional than someone in the community.

It’s also documented that the more providers employed by the school, the higher the chance for students to succeed academically and behaviorally. There are fewer absences, suspensions, expulsions and other punishments and improved graduation rates. School safety also increases.

A report from earlier this year by The Hopeful Futures Campaign entitled “America’s School Mental Health Report Card” is a very comprehensive look at each state and how it’s doing with the ratio of mental health professionals to students in schools, along with several other data points. (You can find the report in the show notes and see exactly how your state did in each of these categories.)

Let me give you glimpse into the report’s findings for just one of those categories: the ratio of school mental health professionals to students. According to national minimum professional standards, a school should have one social worker and one school counselor for every 250 students, and one school psychologist for every 500 students.

Just so you know, a school psychologist is a PhD, licensed by the state to provide evaluations of behavioral, social, and educational issues. A school social worker usually has a master’s in social work, and they generally provide a link between the school, home, and community resources - but can also provide counseling and assessments, work on things like IEPs and 504 plans for students with learning differences. A school counselor has a master’s degree in school counseling and depending on the state and district, may have a certification or a license – they usually are the first point of contact with a student who may be having difficulties and may provide short-term counseling but refer the student to outside help for long-term. In some schools they focus more or only on academics and getting into college.

But this Mental Health Report Card found that only Idaho and Washington DC met the standard of 1 school psychologist for every 500 students – and they actually exceeded it by several students. All other 49 states failed to meet that standard. As a matter of fact, Georgia has only 1 school psychologist for every 6,390 students! The majority of states has only 1 school psychologist for well over 1,000 students. I’m not even sure what role a psychologist could possibly play when they serve that many students. Do parents even know they exist?

Let’s look at social workers. Not one state nor DC met the ratio of one school social worker for every 250 students. As a matter of fact, 3 of the worst states (Texas, Washington, and West Virginia) has only 1 social worker for an average of around 14,000 students. What could that person’s job even entail???

Several states came in at 1 social worker to around 8,000 students and many more were 1 to between around 3,000 and 6,000 students. I just don’t see how a school social worker could be anything but an administrator to that many students. They are supposed to have responsibility for no more than 250 students! The numbers were actually a lot better for school counselors.

Keep in mind the recommended ratio for counselors to students is the same as social workers - 1 for every 250 students. So, 2 states (Vermont and New Hampshire) exceeded that ratio at 1 counselor for around 200 students. Most of the remaining states were 1 to between 300 and 700 students.

But just because the overall state ratios may not look horrible, doesn’t actually mean there’s a counselor in every school. For example, in Alabama the ratio is 1 to 418 (for once we weren’t dead last in something regarding schools) but I know for a fact neither the high school nor the middle school in my home town in Alabama have a school counselor.

As a matter of fact, the American School Counselors Association says only 1 in 5 high school students in the US attends a school with the recommended number of counselors (which could mean they attend a school without a counselor - period.)

And of course, the need for all school mental health professionals has been steadily increasing for years and then increased exponentially this past year. Every single one of them is, as you can imagine, being pulled in all directions. Many high school counselors spend a ton of time on college guidance and many counselors and social workers also work with IEP and 504 students. And lots of them find themselves being tasked with administrative duties not in their job description.

These are our frontline workers in the fight for our kids’ mental health and they cannot possibly help everyone who needs it. Without more school mental health professionals, our kids are suffering and so many are going to fall through the cracks, their signs and symptoms are going to go unnoticed; they’ll end up expelled, arrested, dropping out of school or worse.

States, districts, individual schools, have got to make hiring more school counselors, social workers, and psychologists a priority. Funding is often the issue. Money being appropriated elsewhere – they’ve got to figure out what can go on the backburner so mental health can scoot to the front.

Another problem, however, is that even if the money’s there, many schools – especially those in rural areas – are dealing with a lack of qualified candidates. Apparently, there aren’t enough training programs in colleges and universities across the country. According to the government about half the country lives in a “designated mental health worker shortage area” and we need over 7,500 new mental health professionals to change that. So, although generally, school mental health services are augmented by mental healthcare providers in the community, those referrals aren’t even impossible if there are no providers in the community or so few that they can’t take any more referrals (and this is also a major problem across the country)!

So, what else can be done to help students other than or in addition to putting more mental health professionals in our schools?

Well, I almost hate to say it because I know how much teachers already have on their plate, but our middle and high school teachers are in a perfect position to fill the gap. They are the people who are with your teen the most during the school week. They witness student behavior up close; they see how they interact with other students and in class, they even read their essays and other writings that are often very revealing.

I know full well that since the pandemic, many teachers themselves are dealing with major stress and poor mental health - and yet they’re right there every day all day long dealing directly with the students who’s mental health and behavior has taken a nose dive. So, this might not be an easy sell. But ultimately, they know that if kids are not mentally healthy, they can’t learn – so if that’s their goal, their students’ mental health needs to come first. And surveys and research tell us that the overwhelming majority of teachers want to help address their students’ social, emotional, and mental health needs. The problem is, they just don’t feel confident in their ability to help.

This lack of confidence – lack of skill,  can be remedied fairly easily. So, providing mental health and related training to these teachers – is critical. Exactly what kind of training? Well, one of the most well-known courses is from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing – it’s called Mental Health First Aid and it’s totally donation-based. It can be taken by individual teachers – it doesn’t require that the whole school or district agree. The course is custom tailored for different groups - adults, teens, youth, first responders, older adults. It can be taken in person, on line or blended and it teaches you how to spot common signs of mental health and substance use issues, how to talk to the person and get them help and it even covers trauma and self-care.

Another course is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration - it’s called Classroom Wise. It’s free, self-guided and online. The course is for teachers and staff only and focuses on creating safe and supportive classrooms, mental health literacy, social and emotional competencies, supporting students in distress and how trauma impacts learning. I’ll link to these courses and a couple of others in the show notes. And I’ll talk to you about how to try and get these solutions into your school later in the show – just hang with me.

……………………..

Another type of training for teachers that would greatly benefit both them and their students, is emotion coaching – which is actually a type of parenting method that has been scientifically shown to increase kids and adolescents’ emotional intelligence.

For an overview of emotional intelligence, you can listen to Speaking of Teens Episode 6.

Emotion coaching specifically focuses on increasing a kid’s emotional awareness and emotional regulation. Teachers who learn a bit about it, will be better able to help their students understand their own emotions and manage them better (2 things the adolescent brain has a really hard time doing). Just by changing the way they listen and respond to students; teachers can help them raise their emotional intelligence. And the science tells us that higher levels of emotional intelligence, equate to higher levels of overall life satisfaction, better physical health, stronger relationships, higher grades, and lower rates of depression and anxiety.

And a big plus for teachers is that emotion coaching leads to better classroom management as well. It’s a win for everyone and easy to learn to utilize with students. If teachers are well versed in why emotional intelligence matters and how emotion coaching works, it could make an enormous difference in the classroom dynamic. Honestly, it’s kind of shocking this isn’t taught in college.

Emotion coaching in schools has been much more widely accepted and studied in England and has been shown to improve the student-teacher relationship, both student and teacher wellbeing and the student’s ability to regulate their emotions. Again – see the show notes for resources.

But it’s not only the teachers that need more training and education. We also need to take every opportunity to train and educate students in their own mental and emotional health. Mental Health America conducted a survey of nearly 2,000 adolescents in 2020 and found that 47% wanted to learn more about their own mental health and many also wanted training in how to support their peers’ mental health.

There are plenty of programs, courses and curricula that can be implemented for students. Both Mental Health First Aid and another one called Kognito, that I linked to in the show notes.

Emotion coaching, if their teachers embrace it, of course helps the student learn to better regulate their emotions. Additionally, and this is super important, using a social and emotional learning (or SEL) curriculum, will further reinforce emotional awareness and regulation and also incorporates social skills and responsible decision-making. Social and emotional learning is really just what the education sector calls teaching emotional intelligence.

The whole SEL movement in education started back in the late 60s by a professor of child psychology at Yale. It was based on the premise that (and I’m quoting here) “children benefit from consistent empathetic relationships”. The point is to educate the whole child.

CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, was formed in the early 90s to help advance SEL across the country. They just published a new report this month showing that around half the teachers in the US said their schools used a social and emotional learning curriculum in the 2021-22 school year. But, currently, only 27 states require SEL to be taught from kindergarten all the way through 12^th grade. You can take a look at CASEL’s interactive map and see what your state is doing (link in show notes).

The research in this area is vast – there is no room for doubt that teaching kids and adolescents social and emotional skills is paramount to their mental health and wellbeing. CASEL has a directory of SEL programs they’ve evaluated that can be accessed on their website.

Again, we’ll talk in a minute about what to do with all this information

So, train the teachers in mental health issues and suicide awareness and emotion coaching and teach the teens about their own mental health, how to help their friends and teach them social and emotional skills through emotion coaching and an SEL curriculum and even if they don’t have full access to mental health professionals at their school, you’ve filled in a lot of the gaps.

 

Something else that’s gaining traction in many middle and high schools is giving kids mental health days off or a mental health day as an “excused absence”. At least a handful of states have passed legislation in this area.

In 2020, Mental Health America surveyed close to 2,000 14–24-year-olds to gain their perspectives on their mental health and mental health in their communities. The top 2 things they felt would help them support their own mental health were mental health days off from school or work and better access to mental health professionals.

I’m not going to go into much detail here because there are so many ways different states and schools are approaching these days off. The important thing to understand about this is that it’s not to be used as an avoidance tool – not for a kid who’s anxious about a test or going to school in general or wants to just sleep in. This is for those times when a kid has been going 90 miles an hour for weeks or months on end and is just toast. They just can’t go.

Now, I’ll say this: I don’t think our kids should be in that position in the first place. Too much pressure, too many AP classes, too much volunteering and sports and extra curriculars in the name of building that college resume - it will come crashing down at some point.

So, for those kids who need to go see there therapist or need to catch their breath, a mental health day or 2 off, might be a good thing.

Something else that many educators, parents, and community leaders are calling for, which will inevitably lead to better mental health and a better school culture altogether, is the banishing of zero tolerance policies.

If you’re not familiar, these are the kinds of policies that call for immediate action like in school or out of school suspension or even expulsion when a specific rule is broken. You break the rule, this thing happens. Period – end of discussion. Some states have actual laws on the books – usually regarding weapons or other serious infractions. But school districts can set their own rules as well.

Research has shown that these policies not only fail to make students and teachers feel safer, they lead to higher rates of unnecessary out-of-school suspensions and expulsions and disproportionately affect students of color. All “exclusionary discipline” practices (like suspensions and expulsions) have been shown over and over in the research to do nothing to improve student behavior, teach them skills for regulating themselves, cooperating with others, taking responsibility, or resolving conflict and it doesn’t improve school safety, or make the environment more conducive to learning - and in fact, it’s simply part of the school to prison pipeline. It forces kids out of school – to do what? Hang out with other kids who’ve been expelled or suspended? They not only get off track in school but are more likely to get in trouble out of school. These kids are then more likely to just go ahead and drop out and more likely to become involved in the juvenile justice system. They need help, they need compassion, empathy, emotional and social skills, and an education - they do not need to be sent home.

Instead of these zero tolerance policies schools would better serve their students and the community if they adopted, restorative practices and more positive behavioral interventions. Both the National Education Association and the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Violence against Educators supports reducing exclusionary and zero-tolerance policies and adopting restorative practices instead.

What are “restorative practices” (or as some people call it, “restorative justice”)? Well, it’s a different approach to address discipline problems – using prevention and intervention models. It promotes cooperation and attempts to proactively prevent violence, bullying and other issues in school. It promotes inclusivity, equity, empathy, problem-solving and emphasizes relationships, respect, conflict resolution and helps students repair the harm they’ve done to someone else. Where traditional discipline practices in schools look at the rule that was broken and how to punish the student for breaking it – a restorative practice would look at the harm that was done to the relationship (perhaps between students or between a student and a teacher or administrator) and what needs to happen because of that harm done.

Along these same lines – let’s talk about police in schools. The practice has been around for years, and back in 2000, Columbine spurred the federal government to pour $68 million into communities across the country to hire School Resource Officers. But there’s actually no scientific data showing that Resource Officers in schools improve the mental or physical wellbeing of our kids in school.

Generally, these officers are called upon to attend to disciplinary and behavior issues that would normally fall to teachers or administrators. Often this leads to arrests that would have never been made if a police officer were not present – kids wind up in the juvenile justice system for having a fight at school, where they used to just be sent to the principal’s office and get in trouble with mom and dad.

Studies show schools with Resource Officers have an increase in the number of misdemeanor charges for things like school fights, disorderly conduct, and disruptive behavior – again, things that would not have resulted in contact with the justice system had the Resource Officers not been in place and these issues delt with by the school alone.

Check out these headlines:

How kicking a trashcan became criminal for a 6th grader

South Carolina high school student faces jail time over paper airplane incident

Teen faces assault charges for throwing baby carrot at middle school teacher

School district arrests kids for throwing skittles

All I can say is I’m glad there were no cops around when I decided to wear my headgear to 7^th grade English just to piss my teacher off. I mean what are we doing criminalizing things like throwing skittles and paper airplanes?

Now, obviously, if kids do something illegal like bringing drugs or a gun to school…that’s a different story. My son was suspended, nearly expelled, and went to alternative school for 45 days for having a thimble full of weed in the bottom of his backpack – a simple possession “arrest”, a juvenile diversion program. Trust me, it can happen to any of our kids.

And did you know there are no national standards or federal laws regarding police officers in our school? There are no evidence-based programs and only a handful of states have any training requirements at all for these people policing your kids. There’s also no evidence that adolescents or children feel safer with Resource Officers at school and many kids - like those with IEPs and 504s and especially African American kids - feel less safe with these officers around.

Nevertheless, as more gun violence erupts in our nation’s schools, even more Officers are deployed and yet there is no evidence that they prevent gun violence or make schools any safer. Some school shootings have happened where there were no Resource Officers and others occurred where there were.

And guess what? 14 million kids in this country attend schools that have Resource Officers…but not one mental health professional on site. Remember those ratios I mentioned earlier about the school psychologists, social workers, and counselors – There are many of those states that have up to 2 and 3 times as many cops in schools than social workers.

I’m just asking the question here – should those funds being used for all those Resource Officers maybe be better spent on mental health training, SEL curriculum or an extra school counselor? Quite possibly.

It’s certainly worth looking at what’s going on at your child’s school.

So, what can you do, as a mom of a middle or high schooler? Well first, you get in there and find out what you need to know. You can find your state’s ratio and more in the Mental Health Report Card in the show notes.

But more specifically, find out if your kid’s school has a full-time school counselor, and what their role is. What about a social worker and a psychologist? Do parents even know what services are available through the school? Would your child know who to talk to if they needed help and didn’t want to come to you? Does the school provide SEL or mental health training for the kids? What about teacher training in mental health issues or emotional intelligence, SEL or emotion coaching? Look through the student handbook, what does it say about exclusionary or restorative practices, zero tolerance? What’s the school culture like? Is it warm and friendly and inclusive or does it feel more like jail? Talk to your kids about their school and these particular issues, how do they feel?

Hopeful Futures Campaign does have a link you can go to (again, it’s all in the show notes) – you can click on your state, sign a petition, call your senator, etc. but you can do this in a bigger and more organized way. After you’ve done your research, if you see things, you think should change, then make up your mind to do something about it. Don’t leave it to someone else. You don’t have to be an officer in the Parent Association or Parent Teacher Association or Parent Advisory Council – whatever it’s called at your child’s school.

Form your own dang counsel or organization! It can be an organization of one or two or however many other parents you can get involved. Find out who the decision makers are before wasting a lot of time. Do you need to go to the state house, the school board or the principal for the changes you want? After finding that out, who can you recruit who has clout with any of those forces? Get everyone you know to ask around – do not be shy!

Then organize your argument. You’ve got lots of information right here that I’ve given you and you can get more specific about your child’s school. Show the facts, the science, the statistics, and surveys and what does it all mean to the students - put it all together in a nice package. It could be a video, a letter, a presentation, whatever you can do that paints the picture in a persuasive and concise manner for your particular audience that ends in a call to action – what exactly do you want them to do?

Now, get it front of them, in person, a face to face meeting, to show them what you have and wrap it up with a nice impassioned 5-minute closing. Repeat your call to action, give everyone there something to hold on to physically; a bullet list and the call to action, your name, everybody’s name and phone number.

Tell them you’ll be happy to present this to anyone else they’d like you do – over and over until they do what’s needed. Let them know you’re not going away – that every student at that school matters and they need to feel safe, they need help learning about their emotions and mental health, they need to know they can get help if they need it, they need to feel supported and not discarded and forgotten when they need help the most.

 

Speaking of Teens is the official podcast of neurogility.com, an organization I started to educate other moms and adolescents about emotional intelligence.

You can go to neurogility.com/9 for this episode’s show notes.

Thank you SO much for listening – I hope you got something out of it.

If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and be sure to come back every Tuesday for new episodes at the website at neurogility.com/podcast or on Apple, Spotify, Amazon - all the usual players.

And if you have an idea for a future show or suggestions for how to improve the podcast, please reach out to me at acoleman@neurogility.com

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See you next week.