Celina Pierrottet remembers 2016 as the year in which she and her classmates at the high school where they taught noticed a radical change among their students.
“We thought, ‘Is it me or are the kids really nervous?’” Pierrottet recalls. “That year we had a lot of kids exhibiting some type of school avoidance and other behaviors that we hadn’t seen as often. “I remember my colleagues and I looking at each other like, ‘There’s more this year,’ and then we fast-forward to the pandemic.”
Increased mental health needs among students following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed the US Surgeon General to declare a youth mental health crisisand the federal government has committed billions of dollars since then to help schools respond.
But Pierrottet, who now works as associate director of student welfare at the National Association of State Boards of Education, noted In a policy brief, a major barrier to getting students the help they need is noted: an inadequate supply of mental health professionals, specifically those accredited to work in schools.
Here’s what he found that’s getting in the way and how states are finding solutions.
Thin Pickups
One problem is that increasing the number of mental health professionals in schools takes time. Investments made to increase the pipeline now will not yield results (in the form of employable mental health workers) for several years.
During Pierrottet’s investigation, he discovered that Nevada State Board of Education officials noted in April of last year that the state’s preparation programs for mental health professionals only graduate 12 people each year. At the time, the state had a shortage of 2,863 school mental health professionals.
“It remains a challenge because it is a profession that requires advanced courses,” says Pierrottet. “No one is saying it’s necessary to change those requirements, but it’s a slow investment.”
There is also a need to ensure that school mental health professionals (whether school psychologists, social workers or counselors) reflect the demographics of the students they serve, he adds. One of the challenges is that, like their teaching colleagues, mental health professionals in training have to complete hundreds of hours of unpaid practice.
Pierrottet points to Virginia and Ohio as examples of states that have responded to that hurdle by creating programs that pay graduate students studying mental health care to work in schools. The 2019 program in Virginia “placed graduate students in school district positions and provided 200 trainees with financial incentives to work in schools,” according to its report, and Ohio has a similar, decades-old program for school interns. school psychologists.
“The race is won here with slow and steady to ensure that schools attract diverse candidates, who meet the diverse needs of their students,” Pierrottet says.
Manage workload
But immediate mental health needs have created an overwhelming workload for counselors.
Pierrottet writes in his policy document that national trade organizations recommend a student-to-professional ratio of 1:250 for school social workers, 1:250 for school counselors, and 1:500 for school psychologists.
There is a long way to go to alleviate workloads for all three types of positions. No state meets the recommended ratio for social workers, while Pierrottet found that only New Hampshire and Vermont have better caseloads than the recommendations for counselors. For school psychologists, only Idaho and Washington, DC, score better than the recommended ratio.
Some states have gotten creative to increase the availability of mental health professionals in their schools, such as turning to telehealth for counseling services.
It is no longer just school staff who alert counselors that students need mental health support. One of the forces driving the increase in demand for services is simply that students are asking for them, he notes, as evidenced by federal legislation. School pulse panel. The latest results show that 69 percent of schools report an increase in the number of students seeking mental health support since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“Schools say there is actually a growing demand for more mental health services in schools from students themselves who are simply expressing more anxiety in schools,” Pierrottet says. “Sometimes it can be a problem if students say, ‘I need this,’ but they can’t make that connection in school or maybe even outside of school.”
Pay the bill
One advantage to increasing staffing levels is that states have gained funding for school mental health services from massive infusions of federal cash, Pierrottet says, as $188 million of the bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022. The U.S. Department of Education projects that one of its grants will put more than 14,000 more mental health professionals in schools, according to the policy document, and the new Federal guidelines are making it easier for schools to bill mental health services to Medicaid instead of withdrawing them. money from their own budgets.
That doesn’t mean it’s been easy to get states to fund mental health services. However, Pierrottet says the programs she highlights in her report have benefited from states having what one analysis called a “its highest point” of financial cushion due to budget surpluses, as a result of factors including COVID-19 Relief Funds and higher than expected tax revenue. States like Michigan and Texas, which are analyzing thousands of millions in surplus The dollars, this year, are allocating part of those funds to mental health spending. Michigan has hired more than 2,700 full-time licensed behavioral health providers in schools since 2019, the report highlights, while Texas has set aside $280 million for telehealth counseling in schools starting in 2024.
“I think that right now there has been more success than in previous years due to this crisis, right?” Pierrottet offers. “It would be more difficult if there wasn’t a surplus in the budget right now. I think the stars are aligning right now. “There is will, there is motivation, and that is why at least in the last year there was some movement towards financing.”
Pierrottet added that it’s important not to think of students’ mental health needs as something that can be solved with funding alone. Rather, she described it as an issue that needs to be addressed from multiple sides. For example, some teachers are excited about receiving more training on how to support students’ mental health, she says, and those teachers also need support for their own mental well-being in order to be effective in the classroom.
“It’s important to think about this holistically,” he says. “When students are healthy and don’t have these anxious feelings, they are present and can learn. So it’s important for state leaders to think about this not just as, ‘Oh, we need to provide more mental health staff.’ It’s about the whole continuum, the whole school mental health system, and looking at it through the lens of the whole child.
