Net Exchange Response
Title: What can teachers do to support students with mental health concerns?
Date Posted: 6/27/2011Question: “What mental health concerns should teachers look for? What can they do if
they suspect a mental health problem in a student, such as depression, anxiety, or a
related concerns? What should teachers do if they think that a child is going through a
trauma?” Response: Support for teachers as they address the many barriers to student
learning always needs to be a high priority in staff capacity building. The problem, of
course, is how to get it out of the margins when it comes to school improvement planning
and practices. Given that this matter is being worked on, there are many resources
available for enhancing teacher understanding and action. A good starting place to find
aids for staff development is our Online Clearinghouse Quick Finds –
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/quicksearch.htm . There are Quick Finds on the matters cited
above and on most topics of concern related to students’ emotional, behavioral, and
learning problems.
With specific reference to the above questions, below are a few cautions and comments:
What mental health concerns should teachers look for?
As our early research found, teachers are good at identifying students who are not doing
well. They quickly identify students with behavior problems; they see students who are
unsuccessful in class and see the emotional overlay that results. Teachers are often
frustrated by the lack of immediate support for these students.
This points to the irony of the push to formally screen such mental health concerns as
depression and suicide. Most teachers and student support staff are painfully aware of
students who are troubled and troubling. Identification is not a big problem (and formal
screening always over-identifies common problems of sadness, frustration, and anxiety).
The big problem is that there are seldom appropriate programs in place to respond once
students are identified. In our work, we encourage student support staff to move into
classrooms to assist teachers in strengthening the support for students of concern as a step
in deciding the nature and scope of the problem. Often the primary need is to make
changes in the learning environment.
What can they do if they suspect a mental health problem in a student, such as
depression, anxiety, or a related concern?
The student support staff at the school or district is the first line resource. The first step
could be to invite student and learning supports personnel (e.g., the school counselor,
school psychologist, school social worker) into the classroom to get to know the students
and look for natural opportunities to enhance the success of students in learning and
social interactions. Should more be needed, the student and learning supports staff can
use what they learned from working with the student to begin the process of finding
special and specialized assistance.
What should teachers do if they think that a child is going through trauma?
The concept of "trauma" is going through some transformation. There is a group who
believe that the high and constant level of traumatic stress that some students, especially
in poor urban schools, experience should be seen as eligible for the label "post traumatic
stress syndrome."
Another group mainly stresses the importance of the school working to outreach to
families, to help strengthen the social safety net in the community, and to advocate for
economic opportunities to strengthen the community. The teacher’s focus in all this
should be on continuing to provide personalized support and guidance in the classroom
and work with student and learning supports staff to develop appropriate social and
emotional supports and accommodations as necessary.
Beyond the Above Questions:
We stress that mental health in schools should be embedded into a Comprehensive
System of Learning Supports with every school having a Learning Supports Component.
This approach places mental health efforts into the context of addressing barriers to
teaching and learning and re-engaging disconnected students. As we stressed in a recent
policy brief (online at http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/embeddingmh.pdf ):
“The time has come for ending the counterproductive competition that arises from
efforts that push separate, narrow agenda for student and learning supports. No
single program or service can address the range of factors interfering with equity
of opportunity to succeed at school for the large number of students affected. And
the competition for resources resulting from separate advocacy for such programs
and services, such as those associated with mental health in schools, is
contributing to the continuing marginalization and resultant fragmentation of such
endeavors and the fact that they reach only a small proportion of the many
students who should be beneficiaries.
The bottom line in terms of policy is that it is time to adopt a comprehensive
concept such as learning supports as the umbrella under which those who push for
expanding the focus on mental (and physical) health must learn to embed
themselves. A health agenda (and especially a clinical health agenda) by itself is
too narrow to fit into the broad mission of schools in our society and is inadequate
for enabling equity of opportunity for all students to succeed at school. We can
continue to build a few islands of excellence (demonstrations, pilots) and ‘Cadillac
models,’ but with over 90,000 schools in the U.S.A., the scale of need demands
moving quickly in fundamentally new directions.”
We are working with state education departments and school districts across the
country who are pioneering such an approach. See
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/summit2002/trailblazing.htm
Submit a request or comment now. UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools Dept. of Psychology, P.O.Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA 90095. tel: (310)825-3634 email: Linda Taylor ~ web: https://smhp.psych.ucla.edu
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