Jocelyn Gecker, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

School Counselors Sound Cry For Help After Buffalo Shooting

Most states are struggling with mental health support in schools, according to a recent report from the Hopeful Futures Campaign, a coalition of national mental health organizations. In some states, including West Virginia, Missouri, Texas and Georgia, there is only one school psychologist for over 4,000 students, the report says.

Every school, it seems, has a moment that crystallizes the crisis facing America’s youth and the pressure it is putting on educators.

For one middle school counselor in rural California, it came this year after a suicide prevention seminar, when 200 students emerged saying they needed help. Many were sixth graders.

Another school counselor in Massachusetts tells of a high school student who spent two weeks in a hospital emergency room before he could get an inpatient bed in a psychiatric unit.

For many schools, last weekend’s shooting rampage in Buffalo, carried out by an 18-year-old who had been flagged for making a threatening comment at his high school last year, prompted staff discussions on how they might respond differently.

Robert Bardwell, director of school counseling for Tantasqua Regional High School in Fiskdale, Massachusetts, said the shooting in upstate New York shaped how he handled a threat assessment this week. He told staff, “Dot our i’s, cross our t’s because I don’t want to be on the news in a year, or five years, saying that the school didn’t do something that we should have to prevent this.”

A surge in student mental health needs, combined with staff shortages and widespread episodes of misbehavior and violence, has put extraordinary strain on school counselors and psychologists. The Buffalo shooting highlights their concerns over their ability to support students and adequately screen those who might show potential for violence.

When the accused shooter in Buffalo, Payton Gendron, was asked in spring 2021 by a teacher at his Conklin, New York, high school about his plans after graduation, he responded that he wanted to commit a murder-suicide, according to law enforcement. The comment resulted in state police being called and a mental health evaluation at a hospital, where he claimed he was joking and was cleared to attend his graduation.

“I get that schools are still safe. And I believe that,” said Bardwell, who is also executive director of the Massachusetts School Counselors Association. “But it also feels like there’s more and more kids that are struggling. And some of those kids who struggle might do bad things.”

Childhood depression and anxiety were on the rise for years before the pandemic, experts say, and the school closures and broader social lockdowns during the pandemic exacerbated the problems. The return to in-person classes has been accompanied by soaring numbers of school shootings, according to experts who say disputes are ending in gunfire as more students bring weapons to school. Teachers say disrespect and defiance have increased. Tempers are shorter and flaring faster.

“The tagline I would go with is the kids are not all right,” said Erich Merkle, a psychologist for Akron Public Schools in Ohio, a district of about 21,000 students that he said is dealing with an increase in student depression, anxiety, suicidality and substance use, as well as aggression and violence, among other behavioral problems. “I can tell you that therapists are struggling.”

Many parents had hoped that as classrooms reopened, the troubles of distance learning would fade away. But it quickly became clear that the prolonged isolation and immersion in screens and social media had lasting effects. Schools have become a stage where the pandemic’s ripple effects are playing out.

School staff is “100% taxed,” said Jennifer Correnti, director of school counseling at Harrison High School in New Jersey, where counselors have been under strain as they help students acclimate after two school years of pandemic learning disruptions. “Everybody. Administrators, staff. Like, there’s no one that’s escaping. There is no one leaving school feeling amazed every day.”

Suicide risk assessments, in particular, are up sharply. The 15-year counselor says she has done as many of them in the past three years as she did in the 12 years prior.

She and Merkle both said that they use mass shootings like the one in Buffalo, and another one in which a 15-year-old shot four classmates in Michigan, to discuss how they would have responded.

At Livingston Middle School in rural central California, counselors have conducted suicide prevention lessons in classrooms for years. Pre-pandemic, the lessons would result in about 30 students saying they wanted to see a counselor, said Alma Lopez, the district’s counselor coordinator and one of two counselors at the middle school.

“This year I got 200 kids, which is a quarter of our student population,” she said. “That is such a huge number. I can’t see 200 kids every week. That is just impossible.”

Many of the kids seeking help were sixth graders with issues related to friendships, she said.

Quickly, school staffers made changes, holding as many one-on-one sessions as they could, providing more group lessons on mental health, and putting flyers in every classroom with the suicide prevention hotline number.

They brought back as many activities, clubs and assemblies as they could to help kids connect. And Lopez said she is constantly reminding her district that more support is needed, a plea echoed by her peers nationwide.

Lopez oversees a caseload of about 400 students at her school in Livingston, California — far more than the ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association of one counselor for every 250 students.

“It’s a huge strain right now,” she said. Many students in her school are the children of farmworkers in a community that was hit hard by COVID-19 infections and deaths. She worries about missing something important.

“I think a lot can get lost,” she said. “If we don’t intervene in time, the issues that come with grief are going to be compounded in a big way to create additional challenges.”

Lopez and other counselors convened a discussion early last week on how to help students process fears related to the Buffalo shooting and whether it was safe to go to the supermarket.

Federal relief money has helped address shortages of mental health professionals at some schools, although some have struggled to find qualified hires or used the aid to train existing staff.

The challenges are compounded by an increase in gun violence on school grounds, said David Riedman, a criminologist and co-founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, which keeps a national tally of instances when a gun is fired at schools.

According to that tally, there were 249 shootings in K-12 schools in 2021, more than twice the number in any year since 2018, when Riedman began the database. So far this year, there have been 122 shootings.

There is also a notable difference from previous years, he said: Many of the incidents were not planned attacks, but typical disputes that ended in gunfire.

Mental health specialists outside of schools have been feeling the strain, as well, said Bardwell, referring to his student with a history of mental illness and who spent two weeks this year in an ER waiting to be admitted for psychiatric care.

It highlights the country’s broken health care system, he said, and shows the state does not have enough residential mental health capacity, especially for adolescents.

Richard Tench, a counselor at St. Albans High School in West Virginia, said it’s impossible to refer students who need outside counseling to therapists in his area.

“All our referrals are full. We are wait-listed,” he said. “If the referrals are full, where do we turn?”

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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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This story was first published on May 22, 2022. It was updated on May 23, 2022, to correct the location of the high school the suspect attended. It is in Conklin, New York, not Binghamton, New York.

With Students In Turmoil, US Teachers Train In Mental Health

Since the pandemic started, experts have warned of a mental health crisis facing American children. In some states, including West Virginia, Missouri, Texas and Georgia, there is only one school psychologist for over 4,000 students.

As Benito Luna-Herrera teaches his seventh-grade social studies classes, he is on alert for signs of inner turmoil. And there is so much of it these days.

One of his 12-year-old students felt her world was falling apart. Distance learning had upended her friendships. Things with her boyfriend were verging on violent. Her home life was stressful. “I’m just done with it,” the girl told Luna-Herrera during the pandemic, and shared a detailed plan to kill herself.

Another student was typically a big jokester and full of confidence. But one day she told him she didn’t want to live anymore. She, too, had a plan in place to end her life.

Luna-Herrera is just one teacher, in one Southern California middle school, but stories of students in distress are increasingly common around the country. The silver lining is that special training helped him know what to look for and how to respond when he saw the signs of a mental emergency.

Since the pandemic started, experts have warned of a mental health crisis facing American children. That is now playing out at schools in the form of increased childhood depression, anxiety, panic attacks, eating disorders, fights and thoughts of suicide at alarming levels, according to interviews with teachers, administrators, education officials and mental health experts.

In low-income areas, where adverse childhood experiences were high before the pandemic, the crisis is even more acute and compounded by a shortage of school staff and mental health professionals.

Luna-Herrera, who teaches in a high poverty area of the Mojave Desert, is among a small but growing number of California teachers to take a course called Youth Mental Health First Aid. It teaches adults how to spot warning signs of mental health risks and substance abuse in children, and how to prevent a tragedy.

The California Department of Education funds the program for any school district requesting it, and the pandemic has accelerated moves to make such courses a requirement. The training program is operated by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing and available in every state.

“I don’t want to read about another teenager where there were warning signs and we looked the other way,” said Sen. Anthony Portantino, author of a bill that would require all California middle and high schools to train at least 75% of employees in behavioral health. “Teachers and school staff are on the front lines of a crisis, and need to be trained to spot students who are suffering.”

Experts say while childhood depression and anxiety had been on the rise for years, the pandemic’s unrelenting stress and grief amplified the problems, particularly for those already experiencing mental health issues who were cut off from counselors and other school resources during distance learning.

For children, the issues with distance learning were not just academic, said Sharon Hoover, professor of child psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health.

Child abuse and and neglect increased during the pandemic, according to Hoover. For children in troubled homes, with alcoholic or abusive parents, distance learning meant they had no escape. Those who lacked technology or had spotty internet connections were isolated even more than their peers and fell further behind academically and socially.

Many children bounced back after the extended isolation, but for others it will take longer, and mental health problems often lag a stressor.

“We can’t assume that ‘OK we’re back in school, it’s been a few months and now everyone should be back to normal.’ That is not the case,” said Hoover.

Returning to school after months of isolation intensified the anxiety for some children. Teachers say students have greater difficulty focusing, concentrating, sitting still and many need to relearn how to socialize and resolve conflicts face-to-face after prolonged immersion in screens.

Kids expected to pick up where they left off but some found friendships, and their ability to cope with social stress, had changed. Educators say they also see a concerning increase in apathy — about grades, how students treat each other and themselves — and a lot less empathy.

“I have never seen kids be so mean to each other in my life,” said Terrin Musbach, who trains teachers in mental health awareness and other social-emotional programs at the Del Norte Unified School District, a high-poverty district in rural Northern California. “There’s more school violence, there’s more vaping, there’s more substance abuse, there’s more sexual activity, there’s more suicide ideation, there’s more of every single behavior that we would be worried about in kids.”

Many states have mandated teacher training on suicide prevention over the last decade and the pandemic prompted some to broaden the scope to include mental health awareness and supporting behavioral health needs.

But school districts nationwide also say they need more psychologists and counselors. The Hopeful Futures Campaign, a coalition of national mental health organizations, last month published a report that found most states are struggling with mental health support in schools. Only Idaho and the District of Columbia exceed the nationally recommended ratio of one psychologist per 500 students.

In some states, including West Virginia, Missouri, Texas and Georgia, there is only one school psychologist for over 4,000 students, the report says. Similarly, few states meet the goal of one counselor per 250 students.

President Joe Biden has proposed $1 billion in new federal funding to help schools hire more counselors and psychologists and bolster suicide prevention programs. That followed a rare pubic advisory in December from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on “the urgent need to address the nation’s youth mental health crisis.”

In early 2021, emergency room visits in the U.S. for suspected suicide attempts were 51% higher for adolescent girls and 4% higher for adolescent boys compared to the same period in 2019, according to research cited in the advisory.

Since California began offering the Youth Mental Health First Aid course in 2014, more than 8,000 teachers, administrators and school staff have been trained, said Monica Nepomuceno, who oversees mental health programming at the California Department of Education.

She said much more needs to be done in the country’s largest state, which employs over 600,000 K-12 staff at schools.

The course helps distinguish typical adolescent ways of dealing with stress — slamming doors, crying, bursts of anger — from warning signs of mental distress, which can be blatant or subtle.

Red flags include when a child talks about dying or suicide, but can be more nuanced like: “I can’t do this anymore,” or “I’m tired of this,” said Tramaine El-Amin, a spokesperson for the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. More than 550,000 K-12 educators across the country have taken the Youth Mental Health First Aid course since it launched in 2012, she said.

Changes in behavior could be cause for concern — a child who stops a sport or activity they were passionate about without replacing it with another one; a typically put together child who starts to look regularly unkempt; a student whose grades plummet or who stops handing in homework; a child who eats lunch alone and has stopped palling around with their friends.

After noticing something might be wrong, the course teaches the next step is to ask the student without pressuring or casting judgment and letting them know you care and want to help.

“Sometimes an adult can ask a question that causes more harm than good,” said Luna-Herrera, the social studies teacher at California City Middle School, a two-hour drive into the desert from Los Angeles.

He took the course in spring 2021 and two weeks later put it to use. It was during distance learning and a student had failed to show up for online tutoring but he spotted her chatting online on the school’s distance learning platform, having a heated dispute with her then-boyfriend. Luna reached out to her privately.

“I asked her if she was OK,” he said. Little by little, the girl told Luna-Herrera about problems with friends and her boyfriend and problems at home that left her feeling alone and desperately unanchored.

The course tells adults to ask open-ended questions that keep the conversation going, and not to project themselves into an adolescent’s problems with comments like: “You’ll be fine; It’s not that bad; I went through that; Try to ignore it.” What might seem trivial to an adult can feel overwhelming for a young person, and failure to recognize that can be a conversation stopper.

The 12-year old told Luna-Herrera she had considered hurting herself. “Is that a recurring thought?” he asked, recalling how his heart started racing as she revealed her suicide plan.

Like CPR first-aid training, the course teaches how to handle a crisis: Raise the alarm and get expert help. Do not leave a person contemplating suicide alone. As Luna-Herrera continued talking to the girl, he texted his school superintendent, who got the principal on the line, they called 911 and police rushed to the home, where they spoke to the girl and her mother, who was startled and unaware.

“He absolutely saved that child’s life,” said Mojave Unified Superintendent Katherine Aguirre, who oversees the district of about 3,000 students, the majority of whom are Latino and Black children from economically disadvantaged families.

Aguirre recognized the need for behavioral heath training early in the pandemic and through the Department of Education trained all of her employees, from teachers to yard supervisors and cafeteria workers.

“It’s about awareness. And that Sandy Hook promise: If you see something, say something,” she said.

That did not happen with 14-year-old Taya Bruell.

Taya was a bright, precocious student who had started struggling with mental health issues at about 11, according to her father, Harry Bruell. At the time, the family lived in Boulder, Colorado where Taya was hospitalized at one point for psychiatric care but kept up the trappings of a model student: She got straight As, was co-leader of her high school writing club and in her spare time taught senior citizens to use computers.

For a literature class, Taya was assigned to keep a journal. In it, she drew a disturbing portrait that showed self-harm and wrote about how much she hated her body and was hearing voices she wanted to silence.

Her teacher read the assignment and wrote: “Taya, very thorough journal. I loved reading the entries. A+”

Three months later in February 2016, Taya killed herself. After her death, Taya’s parents discovered the journal in her room and brought it to the school, where they learned Taya’s teacher had not informed the school counselor or administrators of what she had seen. They don’t blame the teacher but will always wonder what if she had not ignored the signs of danger.

“I don’t think the teacher wanted to hurt our daughter. I think she had no idea what to do when she read those stark warning signs in Taya’s journal,” said her father, who has since relocated with the family to Santa Barbara, California.

He believes legislation to require teacher training in behavioral health will save lives. “It teaches you to raise the alarm, and not just walk away, which is what happened to Taya.”