With students in turmoil, US teachers train in mental health

Harry Bruell holds a framed photo of his daughter, Taya, while sitting for a photo in his office in Santa Barbara, Calif., Wednesday, March 9, 2022. Taya killed herself when she was 14. Taya killed herself when she was 14. Taya was a bright, precocious student who had started struggling with mental health issues at about 11, according to her father.

In low-income areas, where adverse childhood experiences were high before the pandemic, the crisis is even more acute and compounded by a shortage of school staff and mental health professionals. For children, the issues with distance learning were not just academic, said Sharon Hoover, professor of child psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health.Child abuse and and neglect increased during the pandemic, according to Hoover. For children in troubled homes, with alcoholic or abusive parents, distance learning meant they had no escape.

“I have never seen kids be so mean to each other in my life,” said Terrin Musbach, who trains teachers in mental health awareness and other social-emotional programs at the Del Norte Unified School District, a high-poverty district in rural Northern California. “There’s more school violence, there’s more vaping, there’s more substance abuse, there’s more sexual activity, there’s more suicide ideation, there’s more of every single behavior that we would be worried about in kids.

Since California began offering the Youth Mental Health First Aid course in 2014, more than 8,000 teachers, administrators and school staff have been trained, said Monica Nepomuceno, who oversees mental health programming at the California Department of Education. After noticing something might be wrong, the course teaches the next step is to ask the student without pressuring or casting judgment and letting them know you care and want to help.

The 12-year old told Luna-Herrera she had considered hurting herself. “Is that a recurring thought?” he asked, recalling how his heart started racing as she revealed her suicide plan.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

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