Help children feel comfortable seeking treatment
The violence of school shootings, the surging overdose death toll, and the increase in teen suicides are in the front of our minds as individuals, families and communities. A future of more suffering and loss is unbearable.
It’s past time for Ohio to fully commit to evidencebased prevention, early intervention and treatment services in our schools.
As adults, our job is to prepare the next generation to be healthy people, good neighbors, good citizens.
Families and schools are partnering to make sure that young people are gaining the knowledge and skills needed to be successful in life. The focus is on whole learning. It’s understood that success means more than academic achievement; it also means developing character, compassion, personal and social responsibility and connection to community. How to accomplish this today is necessarily different than how it was done before. The school violence that families fear today is vastly different than what was feared in the past.
Violence comes in three forms: community violence, interpersonal violence and self-harm. Children deserve to learn how to prevent all three forms and to protect themselves when prevention doesn’t work.
Fortunately, there are research-driven strategies that can help parents, schools and communities partner to prepare children for today’s world.
School-based behavioralhealth services are an extremely effective strategy in identifying youths at-risk of or experiencing a mentalhealth or substance-use disorder and in helping them access care. This risk comes from a variety of places. Sometimes it’s adverse childhood experiences like witnessing domestic violence or living with an adult with untreated mental illness. Sometimes it’s chronic stress like daily hunger, generational poverty, or the pressure of being a sports star or getting into that Ivy League college.
Stigma, lack of access to treatment providers, ineffective insurance coverage and transportation issues are barriers to people talking about their mental health needs and to accessing behavioral-health care. We must end the stigma of mental illness by teaching kids K through 12 that, just like the brain is part of the body, mental health is part of health care. Most children spend about six hours a day in the school setting, so schools offer an ideal environment for the delivery of prevention, early intervention and treatment services to help families naturally overcome these barriers.
Good mental health and a substance-free lifestyle are essential to students’ success in school and in life.
Research shows that when students are provided with developmentally appropriate prevention activities and social-emotional supports, including mental-health counseling, they are more likely to achieve academically and reach their future goals. Students and families benefit from such supports in other meaningful ways as well, including developing positive self-esteem and resiliency, maintaining healthy family and peer relationships, and delaying the use of tobacco, alcohol and other substances. Unfortunately, mental-health and substance-use disorders are common and often go untreated. The National Institute for Mental Health estimates that more than 20 percent of young people experience significant symptoms consistent with a diagnosable mental-health and/or substance-use disorder every year. More than half of all behavioral-health conditions start before age 14.
School-based behavioralhealth services support the health and wellness of each student, promote a positive school culture and aid teachers in managing classroom behaviors and focusing on teaching. Every student in every school across the state deserves to be engaged in prevention programming to support healthy growth and development.
Ohio is well positioned to rapidly expand school-based behavioral-health services using existing school and community partnerships. State and local decisionmakers must fully commit to investing in the future of every student, teacher, family and community with school-based behavioralhealth services.