Emily Rice Published

Free Mental Health Resources Online For All Students, Parents In W.Va.

A brunette teen is seen from over their right shoulder. They are wearing a grey t shirt and black headphones. They are having a teleconference call with a woman wearing a white blouse and black glasses shown on a computer screen. Plants are seen around the desk and computer.
At the beginning of the year, West Virginia’s Department of Education partnered with the Cook Center for Human Connection to offer free online mental health resources to students and their parents. The pilot project began in just five counties but education officials were so impressed with the feedback they received that in May, they expanded the program to include all of West Virginia’s 55 counties.
Valerii Honcharuk/Adobe Stock
Listen

According to the CDC, adolescent mental health in the U.S. was worsening before the COVID-19 pandemic, and now, the nation’s youth is experiencing a mental health crisis.

At the beginning of the year, West Virginia’s Department of Education partnered with the Cook Center for Human Connection to offer free online mental health resources to students and their parents. The pilot project began in just five counties but education officials were so impressed with the feedback they received that in May they expanded the program to include all of West Virginia’s 55 counties.

The U.S. Surgeon General has issued multiple advisories in recent years, sounding the alarm on the mental health of the nation’s children.

In 2021, 42 percent of high school students surveyed by the CDC reported feeling sad and hopeless. A decade ago, that figure was 28 percent.

One 2021 study found the number of youth experiencing depression and anxiety has doubled since the public health emergency began.

“We are in a youth mental health crisis in the country, the Surgeon General has identified that, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Foundation for Children’s Hospitals,” said Anne Brown, president and CEO of the Cook Center for Human Connection. “So that’s not a surprise, but there are certain states that have extra challenges.”

The Cook Center for Human Connection is a national organization working to end suicide that operates parentguidance.org.

In West Virginia, from November 2021 to October 2022, more than 3,000 children visited WVU Medicine emergency rooms for mental health care. According to WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital in 2019, that number was about 2,000 children.

A 2021 study by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found that 708,000 people in West Virginia live in a community that does not have enough mental health professionals.

“I lived that, I know what that feels like to have a child who’s struggling and truly not have anybody that can see them,” Brown said. “I was three, six or 12 months away from services, whether I wanted a counselor, a therapist, or if I wanted a psychiatrist, there just wasn’t anybody to help. And so I had to drive these long distances, which is financially difficult, as well as time.”

NAMI also found that more than 55 percent of West Virginians aged 12 to 17 who have depression did not receive any care in the last year.

“This group of parents and children are struggling with mental health on a level that we’ve never seen before as a nation, and so the families don’t know exactly where to turn,” Brown said. “The reality is that 80 percent of families rely first on schools for their child’s mental health.”

The National Association of School Psychologists recommends a ratio of one school psychologist per 500 students. The association estimates the national ratio is one school psychologist per 1,127 students.

“In a school setting, the school psychologist really is the person who helps support and intervene in those situations for families and for children,” Brown said.

Michele Blatt, state superintendent of West Virginia Schools said in 2023, West Virginia’s school psychologist-to-student ratio was one per 1,750 students. She said the need for youth mental health services has never been greater.

“When we think about the rural areas of our state that do not have access to the mental health providers that you might see in some of our larger cities, then it’s just critical that we find a way to be able to support all of our families and all of our students, regardless of where they live in our state,” Blatt said.

Five West Virginia counties participate in Project AWARE, a 2020 to 2025 federally funded initiative to expand school-based mental health services in West Virginia. Blatt said she heard feedback that there wasn’t enough support for parents in the program, so she started looking for something to fill the gaps.

“We started investigating and looking around the various programs and was introduced to the Cook Center and their parentguidance.org opportunity that they had, and got positive feedback when they connected us with some other areas that were using it and so we decided to pilot it,” Blatt said.

The pilot began in Cabell, Clay, Harrison, Logan, Wirt counties, allowing students, parents and school personnel to log into parentguidance.org and peruse the catalog of courses 24/7 for free.

“The counties and the feedback we were getting was that it was received very positively,” Blatt said. “It was easy to use. It wasn’t hard for parents to log into the system and to gain access. And just having something that our schools could provide to parents was really starting to make an impact.”

After the success of the pilot, the West Virginia Department of Education entered a contract with the Cook Center to make ParentGuidance.org available to families at no cost to the user.

According to a May press release, across the country, 361 districts and 6,308 schools are using the organization’s model offering more than 3.3 million families in 46 states access to services.

“We’re paying about $3 million for a three-year contract for these services,” Blatt said. “For all parents, grandparents, foster parents, guardians of our students, and we’re utilizing the COVID relief funding that we received from the federal government to cover this contract at this time.”

While these free resources are available to all students, parents and school staff, they are online resources and not all West Virginians have access to reliable internet.

A 2020 survey conducted by WVU found that 83 percent of West Virginians have access to the internet in their homes. Of those reporting they do not have access to the internet in their homes, 33 percent reported accessing the internet through an internet-enabled mobile device like a smartphone or tablet.

That survey also found, in West Virginia, those with low incomes and those with lower educational attainment have the lowest rates of access to the internet. 

Older residents also reported lower rates of access and ability to use the internet, which could be an issue for some grandfamilies trying to access these mental health resources.

Blatt says West Virginia’s internet connectivity was first addressed by the Department of Education when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close and instruction to be conducted virtually.

“Most instruction went virtual at that time, we did some partnerships and actually put in public internet access points in the parking lots of every public school, library, higher education facility, and even our National Guard armories around the state,” Blatt said.

Blatt said many of these public internet access points are still operational, but if a parent or guardian doesn’t have access to the internet, they can contact their school administrator, counselor or teacher.

“There’s a lot of programs out there that will provide a hotspot for our families or some type of connectivity so that they can utilize the resources whether it’s our one on one computing programs with our students, or if it’s like parentguidance.org,” Blatt said.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Marshall Health.