As the pandemic fades, schools have to address the sweeping mental health crisis among students.
The challenge, Joan Wasser Gish says in a recent article, is how to do this.
“Schools have added school counselors and mental health staff, brought in partners and programs to provide students with services, secured food and clothing, and provide supportive peer and adult relationships,” Wasser Gish writes. She is the Director of Systemic Impact at Boston College’s Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children.
“But as federal stimulus funds recede, schools are cutting back on recovery programs and are reportedly 100,000 mental health counselors short of the need.”
The need is urgent. According to the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey released earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control, “Nearly all indicators of poor mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors increased from 2011 to 2021.”
Youth mental health is also a priority of the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who issued an advisory. And last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued Take Action for Adolescents: A Call to Action for Adolescent Health and Well-Being, “a new effort to promote collaboration and spur action to improve the health and well-being of adolescents across the U.S.”
Faced with a challenge of this magnitude, Wasser Gish explains, “There is no realistic way for schools to hire or spend their way out of this crisis if they keep doing more of the same. It’s time to look for new ways to address students’ mental health and well-being.”
Fortunately, “One approach that is working well is known as integrated student support — organized efforts to understand and meet students’ strengths and needs.”
Integrated student support programs like City Connects mobilize existing resources and services, many of which are brought into schools, making it easier for students to get help with food insecurity or unaddressed health needs as well as access to mentoring and sports activities.
The approach is summarized in the first National Guidelines for Integrated Student Support, “a roadmap for any school looking to create a more powerful system of support and opportunity for all students,” Wasser Gish writes.
Produced by a working group of researchers and practitioners convened by the Center for Thriving Children, The National Guidelines point to key strategies that make integrated student support programs effective:
• they build on operational infrastructure, deploying counselors, or in the case of City Connects, coordinators, to assess students
• they address the needs of every student, and
• they “use data to align individual plans with school- and community-level decision-making.” In addition, “Schools can also seek data-driven partnerships with community members like a local movie theater for students who want to learn about film, an afterschool program provider or grief counselors for students who have recently lost a caregiver.”
Wasser Gish adds, “These systems organize and amplify the academic and student support schools already provide, extend it and make it more powerful, creating more enriching and responsive environments where children grow and learn.”
The outcomes for students include better attendance and grades as well as reduced dropout rates and a greater likelihood of enrolling in and completing postsecondary programs.
As Wasser Gish concludes, “By taking a new approach — building systems of integrated support — schools can be empowered to meet students’ needs and cultivate their interests so that well-being and learning flourish.”
