Counselor wants help addressing students’ mental health needs 

Q:  I’m a school counselor in a large public middle school, and in the last few years I’ve seen an uptick in the number of students with serious mental health needs. I’m talking about four or five kids in my caseload who end up utilizing 30% of my time. The other counselors in my school are dealing with the same thing. These students have complicated needs, and we can’t just brush them aside. I’ve been having an ongoing debate with my principal and other administrators. I think we need to be doing more on the front end to teach stress reduction skills, but in an all-hands-on-deck kind of way. This issue is too big for counselors to manage on their own, unless they clone us or take all the meaningless paperwork off our plates. I’m thinking we could address mental health issues in more depth in health classes, and get all teachers some training so they can each teach at least one lesson per semester on coping strategies. My department would write those lessons. I’m just trying to think outside the box yet stay realistic. Teachers already are tasked with so many mandates, from testing to bus duty to staff meetings, so I’m a little afraid to bring this up with them, but we’re just drowning. We have no time for prevention because we’re so overwhelmed with these high-needs kids. How can I get support from the rest of the staff so that we’re working together to prevent and address problems?  

A:  I’m not surprised by your experience. According to the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 22% of 13- to 18-year-olds have a serious mental illness. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people.  

Some states are taking action. Most notably, a law recently took effect in New York that requires mental health issues to be included in the health education curriculum. It’s the first state to pass such a law, and the intention is to give students the knowledge they need to recognize in themselves and others when they need help. And even in the absence of state laws, many school districts across the country are being similarly proactive.