The past two years have presented unprecedented challenges that have uniquely impacted the mental health and wellbeing of our students. As highlighted in a recent U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory, the pandemic has exacerbated youth mental health needs that existed before the pandemic and spurred a national youth mental health crisis.
We have seen dramatically increased rates of psychological distress among children and youth. Many young people in our City experienced unimaginable trauma and loss and are struggling with the return to in-person learning.
For students to thrive in school, they must feel safe and supported by their school communities, and our schools must be places that are healing-centered, where students and families experience physical, psychological, and emotional safety. Students are 21 times more likely to seek support for mental health issues at school than at a community-based clinic, if at all.
However, too often when students are struggling, they are met with exclusionary school discipline and policing practices that only further traumatize them and perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline, disproportionately harming Black and Brown students and students with disabilities. Each year, in New York City schools, tens of thousands of students are suspended, losing days, weeks, or months of instruction and thousands of students with unmet emotional needs are removed from class—including some handcuffed as young as 5 years old—by NYPD officers and taken away from school by Emergency Medical Services (EMS) when medically unnecessary.
Sadly, this year is proving to be no different, and may be worse. Compared to two years ago at this time, we have received about 25% more calls from families requesting assistance with school discipline matters. In December, we heard from a parent whose daughter had already been suspended from school 6 times for a total of twenty-five school days. Three months into the school year, her child has missed out on more than one third of the days of instruction. We can and must do better for our young people.
Schools need key resources to transform school environments, address our students’ mental health and behavioral needs, and help improve academic outcomes. Even with the hiring of 500 new school social workers, NYPD school safety agents outnumber NYC Public Schools social workers by more than 1,000. In addition, while the City funded some mental health initiatives in schools over the last year, many of these programs do not address the immediate needs of school communities and are piecemeal. What New York City needs is a comprehensive system to ensure that students are receiving direct mental health services, schools are receiving support to effectively manage student behavior and mental health, and NYC Public Schools is coordinating within key parts of the agency and across other key agencies to provide this support. It is more urgent than ever that our City invest in practices that support young people and divest from practices that criminalize them. We urge the City to work towards creating a comprehensive, integrated system of mental health and behavioral health supports for students.
THE MENTAL HEALTH CONTINUUM
From the Mental Health Continuum Program Team
The Mental Health Continuum Initiative (MHC) is a school and community-based program designed to build a stronger continuum of care to improve the provision of mental health services to students and families. MHC is a cross-agency partnership between NYC Public Schools, NYC Health + Hospitals, and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH).
Schools participating in this initiative will receive expanded, appropriate, and timely care for students struggling with mental health challenges, through a culturally responsive and family-centered approach, via virtual and in-person sessions from school, home, and NYC Health + Hospitals clinics. MHC is currently being rolled out across 50 participating schools, including 5 District 75 schools. All participating schools are in the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn.
The MHC is an advocate initiated project recommended by over 200 organizations, the City Council, and the City Comptroller that seeks to build a stronger continuum of mental health care within schools and to create more effective linkages between school- and community-based mental health support structures. The funding for this initiative is $5 million for FY 2022 and $5 million FY 2023, and agencies are currently advocating for baseline funding to make this a multi-year program.
Participating schools receive funding to develop the capacity of their staff to leverage a whole school collaborative problem-solving approach to address the behavioral, social, emotional, and mental health needs of their students. MHC partner schools will also receive funding to support the establishment or enhancement of school-based mental health facilities. These funds are intended to ensure that each school can offer students and families a welcoming, affirming, and culturally responsive environment during the provision of mental health services.
The School Mental Health unit in the Office of School Health will collaborate in partnership with NYC Health + Hospitals regarding the implementation of clinical mental health supports for participating schools. School Mental Health is responsible for the facilitation and oversight of all CBO/School Mental Health partnerships and ensures quality school-based access to mental health services that meet the needs of general education school communities across the NYC Department of Education as they are agreed upon and intended.
Five NYC Health + Hospitals Child and Adolescent Clinics are participating. Enhanced dedicated staffing at these clinics will allow for timely access to mental health supports with a range of services, including onsite school-based services, expedited clinic appointments, urgent care, and tele-video visits to the students while in school or at home. Students and their families will also have access to the full range of mental health services available in the clinic sites. The goal is to provide meaningful and stable connections between school staff, who know their students and families’ best, and mental health service providers committed to serving their local communities.
The NYC Well call line is available to support school leaders, staff, and students with mental health inquiries, including crisis counseling, suicide prevention, information and referrals to behavioral health services, and access to mobile crisis teams. A Children’s Mobile Crisis Team (CMCT) is made up of behavioral health professionals, such as social workers and peer advocates, and is designed to reduce 911 calls, the number of children referred to psychiatric emergency rooms, and hospitalizations. The CMCT provides short-term therapeutic crisis response to children while connecting them to long-term mental health supports such as psychiatry, therapy, and case management services. The services are provided where the child is experiencing a crisis, such as the child’s school or the family’s home.
