STUDENT Mental Health
What students need in, their own words
“Two years ago, I had a lot of mental health struggles. I was diagnosed with depression, and I was unable to do a lot of my schoolwork; my grades dropped severely.” Joshua, a high school student from Yarmouth shared his struggles with the members of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee in Augusta. He, along with more than a dozen other students, advocated for increased mental health support for students in Maine schools, citing facts, statistics, and stories of the extreme need to focus on student mental health and solutions to a growing crisis in Maine schools. The students, ranging in age from elementary to high school, are part of the Maine Department of Education’s Student Cabinet that has worked for the past two years to better understand the mental health needs of Maine students, pushing lawmakers to support needed changes and increased resources. “There are thousands of students in Maine who don’t have access to [mental health] resources but are suffering from similar problems and although they have school counselors, they are too busy often pursuing academic affairs. [Schools] don’t have enough social workers available to them to provide them with the necessary emotional support to get them through their issues,” Joshua told the committee. Joshua admits he is one of the lucky ones. He was fortunate to be able to seek support from a health care expert outside of his school because he says the resources 10
Maine Educator | Fall 2023
he needed were not available in his district. However, he understands help for many isn’t as readily available which is why the Student Cabinet asked lawmakers to continue to push for a bill the Maine Education Association supported that would increase the counselor to student ratio to the American School Counselor Association recommended 250 students to 1 counselor.
311 to 1 ratio
Currently, in Maine, there are 311 students to one school counselor. Additionally, the students want to see an increase in social workers and school psychologists in schools. Here, the numbers are worse with 1 social worker for every 617 students and the recommended ratio is 1 to 250; school psychologists in Maine are rare
with 1 to every 1,830 students, with the recommended being 1 to 500 students.
1,830 to 1 ratio
“Our educators are making a tremendous effort to promote social/emotional wellbeing-but more is needed,” Grace Leavitt, MEA President told lawmakers as she supported a bill to increase the
