In 2021, well into the pandemic, an alarm rang. The American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. Since then, students’ mental health needs have continued to alarm educators.
A recent National Center for Education Statistics survey found that “About 4 in 10 school leaders said they were ‘moderately’ or ‘extremely’ concerned about their students’ mental health (43 percent) and the mental health of their teachers or staff (41 percent).”
Here at City Connects, our Coordinators are addressing these needs, and as an organization we are reaffirming our longstanding commitment to focusing on students’ physical and mental health — one of the four domains in students’ lives that we look at, along with academics, social-emotional wellbeing, and family.
By focusing on the “whole child,” we take a broad view of how to support healthy child development and positive mental health. We recognize that access to opportunities like physical activities, a chance to learn a new skill, and places to build positive relationships with peers and caring adults create the conditions for students to successfully get through life’s challenges.
Today, City Connects Coordinators are seeing students navigate significant hurdles. Some have lost family members to Covid. Others face hunger, homelessness, and other challenges that come with poverty.
“I have seen more mental health challenges with middle schoolers,” Maggie Longsdorf, the coordinator at Risen Christ Catholic School in Minneapolis, says. “Kids have anxiety about the future and about where they are going to high school because in some of our families, parents haven’t gone to high school. There are a lot of new things.
“And a lot of our families have gone through quite a bit of trauma regarding being new to the country. Or kids have changes in their home lives, parents who are not at home.”
As all Coordinators do, Longsdorf conducts whole class reviews to understand students’ strengths and needs. When students need mental health supports, she works with community partners like the in-school counselors from David Hoy and Associates, a local mental health provider.
Longsdorf also connects students to enrichment opportunities like Girls on the Run, a nonprofit that serves as a community partner to a number of City Connects schools and promotes running and emotional growth in students – and in the adults who serve as coaches.
While helping individual students is a core part of the City Connects model — a research-practice partnership that’s part of Boston College’s Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children — we are also sharing what we’re learning about effective practices with other stakeholders who are working to provide comprehensive “whole child” supports to students.
City Connects served as a key partner in co-developing the first National Guidelines for Integrated Student Support, a report that “brings together the insights and practical know-how of experts in the effective integration of comprehensive supports for students.”
Working under the auspices of the Center for Thriving Children, a working group of leading experts and practitioners identified “the practices that matter most so that more schools and communities can address students’ needs more effectively.”
Among the strategies that the National Guidelines call for that can help families, schools, and communities support student mental health are:
- devising customized plans to respond to individual students’ needs
- identifying school-based and community-based services and enrichment opportunities
- designing solutions for students that are consistent with school and community culture and that honor students’ privacy and dignity, and
- using data to monitor and improve implementation of support programs
As Dr. Pamela Cantor, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, explains in the National Guidelines:
“Researchers have found that social, emotional, and cognitive development is especially important for children and youth who have experienced trauma or adversity. These external influences can place our bodies and minds in a constant state of stress or high alert that interferes with learning and growth. Teaching students the skills and providing settings that build their efficacy and self-control, providing them with supportive adult relationships, and directly addressing their physical, emotional, and mental health needs can buffer against the negative effects of stress. It also gives young people a set of tools that provide on-ramps to learning.”
Now, it’s time to shut off the alarms and foster more national conversations about how addressing the “whole child” through evidence-based integrated student support programs could help improve the mental health of millions of students.
