Children & Mental Health
Kids in Common.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to provide my perspective. When it comes to children’s issues around education, nutrition, fitness, and housing, I am in the mainstream of progressive thinking and support free early education and daycare fees based on need. And we certainly have issues close by with unhoused SJSU students.
Where my perspective differs, I believe, is on mental health for children.
As you know I worked at a psychiatric hospital for children with severe mental illness. I also worked at the Institute for Children with Autism and worked with children age 5 and 6 as well as young teenagers; both age groups’ needs are radically different. In addition my sister who has Down Syndrome has been a big part of my life starting with volunteering in her early education classrooms.
My education in marriage, family, children counseling — masters and counseling psychology — doctorate, put me in a unique position to offer solutions and insights that other policy makers cannot.
We are in the middle of mental health crisis for our young people in the state and D3, and much of it is attributed to government failure.
California’s children are struggling. Unprecedented levels of stress stemming from the pandemic have exacerbated a pre-existing crisis in children’s mental health.
Consider the facts: rates of adolescent suicide and self-harm are on the rise.
As many children returned to in-person learning last year, school districts reported soaring rates of absenteeism and surges in student misbehavior. Even worse, in early 2021 emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts were almost 51% higher among adolescent girls and 4% higher among adolescent boys compared to the same time period in 2019.
To fix this, govt must name an accountable leader, set clear goals, encourage coordination and employ schools as key sites to help kids. This will ensure the govt uses funds dedicated to children’s mental and emotional well-being efficiently and in a way that has the most impact, both short and long term. Newsom’s Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative — a $4.4 billion investment in developing a comprehensive system of mental health care for Californians from birth to 25 years of age — is a good start.
So what can we do locally, especially in light of the shortage of mental health professionals? We can bridge the gap with a mental health curriculum in our schools and part of our after-school programs and offered at libraries as a continuum of the programs which will include families. If we had had a standardized curriculum we could have mitigated issues that were exacerbated during the pandemic. We need to integrate social and emotional learning into the classroom directly and involve parents as much as possible into the process.
First we can train teachers in basic simple therapy techniques and mental health identification. Techniques will primarily focus on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and teachers will will be given options to refer students and families to trained counselors if noted issues rise to the level of professional counseling requirements. As part of the curriculum students will be given participation grades and parents and children will work together on homework assignments. Not passing the class will mean the student or the parents did not participate and the child will be referred for professionally counseling. The curriculum will include workbooks, group discussions for support, and mental health phone apps for those students with cell phones.
Two reviews that each included over 30 studies found that self-help treatment significantly reduced both anxiety and depression, especially when the treatments used CBT techniques. Teachers can be excellent guides.
Second we can offer after-school programs that integrate mental health self care and include the family to enhance the support of children while also addressing the impact family systems have on children. These programs can direclty compliment the curriculum being offered in the local school.
And third, we can offer mental health self-health groups lead by professionals at libraries so that adults, children and families have access to the basics of good mental health and have a resource center that can aid them through the County services labyrinth.
What a difference it would have made to our students if mental health was part of their schooling while doing classes on zoom during covid. This would have been life changing for all the students.
One thing that has not been mentioned is the disparate impact on public school students vs private school students as the pandemic progressed. Privates school students were back in the classroom much sooner than public school children and this has caused a widening gap that we must acknowledge. One of the first things we need to do is commit to families and to students that they will not be left out of classrooms longer than is absolutely necessary and that our city will prioritize the health, well being and education of our students.
San Jose’s public schools were closed for a longer time period than most other cities, which caused a massive rise in mental health problems for children. And they stayed closed over the protestations of our governor and mayor.
Dr. Jeanne Noble, associate professor of emergency medicine and director of the UCSF emergency department’s COVID-19 response, said “The medical evidence is clear that keeping public schools closed is catalyzing a mental health crisis among school-aged children.”
Everybody knows that the power of the teachers’ union prolonged school closures unnecessarily, and we can’t let that happen again going forward.
Because now we’re playing catch up, and it will take us years to get back to where we were.
I agree with CA Parent Power founder Megan Bacigalupi on Newsom’s mental health plan: “School closures didn’t cause our student mental health crisis but it was like lighter fluid on a fire. To have zero acknowledgement today about how much harm that caused many CA students is denial.”
