LEXINGTON, Ky.- Student mental health concerns are ever-present among educators, but during COVID-19, addressing such issues has become much harder. Without in-person contact on a regular basis, many school workers are already seeing – or at least anticipating – a spike in mental health issues, especially anxiety and depression.
“The uncertainty has created so much anxiety, even our young kids that might not totally understand the virus and the economic impact and the health impact, I think they’re picking up on the anxiety in their home,” said Raine Minichan, Fayette County District Coordinator for ESS Guidance and Mental Health Resources. “Anxiety is probably the biggest thing that we’re seeing … and then second to that would be depression. Those were probably the most common before, anxiety in particular, but it’s just at a much higher rate now.”
Lansdowne Elementary School Guidance Counselor Brenda Adams said the pandemic is now presenting challenges even for students who have never faced mental health struggles before.
“I think they are really missing true human interaction, as much as they love to get on video games and TikTok or whatever for entertainment, even the best of the best of our students who have tons of support and have always been what you call a ‘good student’ are having a hard time,” Adams said.
The district is attempting to meet the mental health needs of students by implementing a new social-emotional learning curriculum in all schools. Through morning meetings, students are learning the language to discuss and confront every day issues, problem solve conflicts, and enhance general coping skills. Additionally, to combat this rise in mental health issues, schools are implementing new technologies to recognize signs that a student may be at risk.
“One thing that’s changing is we do safety relays through the Chromebooks. Every student’s Chromebook, because it’s a Fayette County device, is connected to a safety relay and they catch an alert word being typed,” Minichan said. “An example is ‘die’, ‘death’,’ ‘kill’, ‘suicide’, ‘hurt’, we receive an email. Initially it was me, and it’s grown to a team of five because there’s so many relays coming through … then I’m the conduit between that alert and the school district mental health specialist who will go and do an assessment to ensure that kiddo’s safe.”
Even with these new technologies, there are still many barriers to addressing the root causes of children’s mental health struggles. One of these barriers is that students may be less likely to fill out a counseling pass virtually.
“They’re home and most of their problems are probably home problems, and they don’t tend to reach out to you on their own as much for those problems,” Adams said. “They usually come with a school problem and then it gets to the real problem, which is really coming from home. Rarely do they mark ‘I’ve got a problem at home,’ and certainly if they’re at home where their parents have access and are there when they’re doing it, they’re gonna be less likely to mark that.”
District Mental Health Specialist Laura Magness has similar concerns.
“A lot of what I do is trauma work and a lot of my families, a perpetrator may be in the home, so the kids can’t necessarily get the therapeutic support that they need,” Magness said.
While schools contemplate the potential switch from fully virtual to hybrid or in-person learning, some school workers are questioning the impacts this would have on students’ mental health.
“I don’t think there’s a perfect solution and I’m so glad I don’t have to decide,” Minichan said. “I think currently, we’re at least able to provide some level of consistency with all virtual. Do I think it’s ideal? No, but there’s at least some consistency. However, I know it’s causing a lot of familial stress and financial strain on parents. Hybrid would not relieve that … and I worry for younger kids in particular, and for our special needs kids with autism or kids with anxiety, those changes in routines, rather than every day being similar, is not good.”
Although those working with children agree that virtual learning is not ideal, they also recognize that coming back to school during the pandemic will look very different from kids’ expectations. For safety reasons, returning to school would require mandated social distancing, limited opportunities for socializing with peers, limited use of playground equipment, and lunch time restricted to classrooms, among other changes.
“For so many kids, this is supposed to be their safe place,” Magness said. “If we come back and it’s so rigid that it feels scary, what does that look like as far as mental health goes, and how do we build resiliency through that?”
It is apparent that COVID-19 has created many struggles in addressing the mental health issues of students, however, the increased implementation of technology has actually increased families’ access to mental health resources in some ways never done before by schools.
“Technology, I believe, because of this, is gonna change the way we do everything moving forward,” Minichan said. “There are positive things, we’ve now built websites that we can continue to change and update and provide more resources, because there’s a stigma around mental health, folks can get the information they might need without actually having to talk to somebody and I think it’s important to have that too, and we just never had it before. The accessibility has changed.”
While schools are making large strides in using technology to address mental health issues, counselors and teachers agree face-to-face learning is still a better way to identify whose needs aren’t being met.
“It’s harder for teachers,” Minichan said. “In a physical classroom, you can pick up on ‘oh Katherine seems a little quiet today or down’ but when you’ve got a screen and you scroll through 25 kids, it’s hard to pick up on things. We’re missing those kids that aren’t acting out, they’re just quietly suffering.”
October 1, 2020 | By Katherine Fish
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