18 minute read
Tackling teen mental health issues. Local professionals schools take aim at growing problem.
Artwork by Leki Lodato Albright
Local professionals, school district take aim at growing problem
BY LEKI LODATO ALBRIGHT AND ASHLEY LODATO
They’re the teens you see around the Methow Valley every day. They play sports, musical instruments and Minecraft. They perform plays and acts of community service. They make art, read books, watch movies. They ride horses and work on cars. They’re National Honor Society and Key Club members. They have jobs and chores around the house. They do their homework, mostly.
And they’re struggling.
More than one in three high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2019, a 40% increase since 2009, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study. That year, one in six youths reported making a suicide plan within the past 12 months — a 44% increase since 2009. And that was before the pandemic, the stressors of which only compounded mental health issues in adolescents, with 37% of high school students reporting that they experienced poor mental health and 44% saying that they felt “persistently sad or hopeless” in 2021.
When we hear about teen mental health issues, we’re inclined to believe that it’s teens elsewhere: urban youth, socioeconomically disadvantaged teens, or uber-affluent kids paralyzed by the burden of their limitless options. But the problem is close to home as well, right here in the Methow Valley and throughout Okanogan County.
A March 2021 article in the Methow Valley
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News addressed increased rates of “anxiety and depression brought on by losing the structure and social connections provided by school” during the pandemic.
But as the Methow Valley schools resumed full-time in-person learning at the beginning of the 20212022 school year, ostensibly ending the isolation that had caused so many kids so much pain, the anxiety and depression that the pandemic had heightened remained for many students. Just as the pandemic is not over, neither are the mental health challenges facing our teens.
Alarming trends
Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, adolescent mental health in the United States was worsening; rates of depression, anxiety, and their behavioral effects like selfharm and suicide were rising.
A common metric used by pediatric specialists to gauge children’s susceptibility to serious mental disorders is the list of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. These include physical and emotional abuse and neglect, substance abuse in the household, witnessing abuse of others, and losing an immediate relative. As the pandemic produced great personal and societal trauma, the number of children with ACEs grew.
From climbing death tolls leaving more than 140,000 children with fewer caregivers to social isolation and stress, a well-being crisis is not difficult to imagine. In fact, in October 2021 the American Academy of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Association, and American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry declared a national emergency in adolescent mental health. The declaration advocated for numerous policy changes, including funding prevention and support initiatives and bringing mental health even closer to the radar of schools, communities, and governments.
Kids’ mental health has been on the mind of administrators in the Methow Valley School District since long before the pandemic, said superintendent Tom Venable. Years ago, and in collaboration with organizations like Room One, Okanogan Behavioral HealthCare (OBHC), and
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the Public School Funding Alliance (PSFA), the district began to ramp up its mental health support services in all three of its school buildings: Methow Valley Elementary, Liberty Bell Junior/Senior High School, and the Independent Learning Center.
“Whether it’s educators, public health officials, mental health specialists or school counselors, all are reporting the same observations,” Venable said. “The issues that our teens are faced with are not new.”
While the pandemic amplified the issues, Venable said, it also made it apparent to everyone that schools can’t just focus on students’ academic and physical well-being; they must pay attention to the mental health care needs of teens.
“Increased rates of teen suicide, depression, anxiety and other behaviors we’ve witnessed within the school setting echo what parents have reported experiencing at home,” Venable said. “The school district has made teen mental health a priority and that is reflected in part by the sizeable investment we are making to expand our family and support services team.”
The expansion includes a new district-wide Health & Wellness Coordinator, Annelisa Tornberg, whom many students will recognize as the eternally cheerful and seemingly tireless former COVID liaison for the district.
Tornberg, an RN with more than 15 years of experience in public health and maternal child nursing, will work in support of students, families and staff, promoting physical and social-emotional health and well-being, Venable said, noting that Tornberg’s role will adapt to the “ever-changing needs within the student, family and staff populations.”
At the elementary school, which serves about 350 students, school counseling services have been expanded by 25%, with new school counselor Keri Moore available five days each week. Moore, who has had a close working relationship with the school district for many years as a social worker with Room One, will provide support services in grades K-5.
Grades K-3 will receive further support through a social-emotional learning curriculum that the school is piloting this year. Implemented by staff, the program will be evaluated at the end of the year to determine if the school wants to adopt it longer term.
At Liberty Bell, the school district has partnered with PSFA to expand its mental health counseling services. The district has partnered in the past with OBHC to provide an on-site mental health counselor, a position that is currently filled by Amy Jones, who is on a leave of absence. Former OBHC school-based mental health counselor Sean Fitzpatrick said last year that the demand for his services was four times his capacity.
“That made it clear to us that there was a growing need,” Venable said. “So through PSFA we secured support to fund an additional full-time, onsite mental health counselor.”
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Finding counselors
The funding is there, but the applicants are not — at least not yet, said Venable. The school district is actively recruiting for the position, but “it’s a real challenge,” Venable said, noting that districts all over the state and country are looking at the feasibility of providing similar services, but are finding it difficult to identify qualified individuals to fill the positions.
“The feedback I’m hearing is that mental health counselors are all burned out,” Venable said. “They’re exhausted. The pandemic took its toll on them.”
Venable also noted that the Methow Valley housing crisis is hampering the district’s recruitment efforts toward its overall goal of having two qualified mental health professionals serving the district’s nearly 700 students.
Liberty Bell school counselor Erika Spellman pointed out that OBHC currently has seven open positions for school-based mental health counselors. Venable said that the MVSD’s preference would be to find a qualified counselor willing to work full-time, but in the meantime the district is looking into other ways to provide the counseling services, such as telehealth. “It
Resources
Community resources
• Room One, Methow Valley’s one-stop social services center. (509) 997-2050; www.roomone.org. • Okanogan Behavioral
HealthCare, 24-hour crisis line: 1-866-826-6191 or (509) 826-6191.
Other resources
• Only7seconds.com. • National Crisis Phone Line: 1-800-273-8255. • National Crisis Text Line:
Text the word “HOME’ to 741741. • Teen Crisis Line: 1-310-855-4673. • Teen Crisis Text Line: Text the word “TEEN” to 839863. • LGBTQ Trevor Lifeline: 1-866-488-7386. • LGBTQ Trevor Text Line:
Text the word “START” to 678678.
doesn’t replace in-person interaction,” Venable said, “but it would be better than nothing.”
Spellman said that they’re currently in “the honeymoon phase” at Liberty Bell — although that very well may change by the time this article goes to print.
“After the fatigue of last year, we’ve all returned refreshed. We had a good summer, people got to travel, they got to be with friends and families. Masks aren’t required, there isn’t mandatory COVID testing. The list of students of concern is small,” she said. “But we know the level of anxiety and depression is high amongst students and at some point the honeymoon ends and we expect the list to grow, and then we will really feel that lack of resources. There’s a cycle to mental health just like there’s a cycle to the school year, and we’re in the sweet spot of both right now. But we know that the levels of anxiety and depression were high last spring and we know they didn’t just magically go away over the summer.”
Spellman said that she and most other school counselors aren’t trained mental health counselors. But in the absence of other onsite providers, they are often put in positions to play these roles, or at the very least be advocates for students seeking support. “But I can help them only so far,” she said, referring to both her expertise and time.
So Spellman and other local school administrators are getting creative. “We’re talking about mental health issues a lot in school,” she said, “and one thing I’ve noticed is how comfortable this generation is talking about their issues. There used to be this stigma about seeking mental health support, but now you hear kids talking to each other saying things like ‘My therapist said, …’ and that stigma is just not there. It’s a really positive trend.”
Another positive aspect about students’ openness is that it makes it easier for their peers to come forward if they are struggling. “I really see these kids advocating for one another, looking out for each other’s state of mind,” Spellman said. “If they hear that a friend is struggling, they might feel comfortable sharing their own mental health concerns.”
Spellman also said that students are more savvy about mental health issues, as well as wistfully optimistic. She shared a story about a seventh-grade advisory class that role-played a scenario about how to cure anxiety. “They tried biofeedback, it didn’t work. They tried pseudo-therapy, it didn’t work. They tried exercise therapy, it didn’t work. But they invented a therapy machine and it worked,” Spellman said.
Even though the solution was implausible, Spellman said, two things about the role-play were noteworthy: first, the students’ familiarity with different forms of therapy, and second, their willingness to discuss the things that make therapy necessary in the first place.
“These kids have grown a lot in their sense of awareness of what’s going on around them,” Spellman said. “The things that weigh heavy on parents weigh on kids as well. They’re concerned about economics, about climate change, about the state of the world.”
Social media effects
But Spellman also assigns some responsibility to social media, which she — like others — believes “plays a huge role in loneliness.” Spellman addressed the “pressure of trying to be something” and the “heightened sense of awareness” of others’ seemingly idyllic lives in relation to the anxiety many students feel.
The public school, of course, doesn’t — and shouldn’t — bear the full weight of teen mental health struggles. Families, churches and social circles all play a role in watching out for kids’ emotional needs. But many families can’t
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afford private therapy, demand for private services often exceeds local counseling capacity, and many teens don’t necessarily feel comfortable sharing the state of their emotional health with people they are close to.
The public school system, where the bulk of the Methow Valley’s teens spend the bulk of their weekdays, is therefore well-situated to notice when kids are struggling and to do something about it.
In addition to addressing mental health issues in advisory groups, Liberty Bell is again using the Only 7 Seconds curriculum to try to mitigate loneliness and isolation. The “everybody belongs” message may seem over-simplified, but connection is truly the antidote to loneliness, and communities can play a role in giving teens a meaningful sense of their own significance.
In the wake of teen suicides in Okanogan County in the past two years, the Only 7 Seconds curriculum has been adopted both officially and unofficially by many area schools and parent communities, providing a common framework and language for kids, parents, school staff and community members to address the issues that lead to suicide.
Spellman said that she and other school staff are committed to each student having a trusted adult they can talk to. “It takes a village and our village is the wider school staff — not just counselors and teachers, but bus drivers, cooks, paraprofessionals, coaches and custodians,” she said. “We want every student to have one adult that they feel like they can talk to and not be judged.” Spellman encourages parents to ask students if they have identified their own trusted adult associated with the school.
Local mental health counselors agree. “Teens should talk to a trusted adult,” said one. “If they don’t have someone like that they can go to Room One and talk to one of the compassionate and skilled folks there.”
Other issues
In addition to feelings of anxiety, isolation and depression, local mental health professionals say they are seeing teens struggle with family and friend relationships, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicidal thoughts. Worldwide, suicide is the fourth-leading cause of death among 15-19 year-olds, the World Health Organization reports, and dozens of students at Liberty Bell knew at least one of the teens in Okanogan County who died by suicide in the past two years. And for LGBTQ+ youth, the rate of poor mental health and suicide ideation and attempts is even higher, a 2022 CDC report shows.
Local school administrators are doing as much as they can to address teen mental health issues, beyond expanding mental health counseling capacity, Venable said. “We’ve named a Dean of Students for each school — retired principal Bob Winters at the elementary school and Activities Director Michael Wilbur at LBHS — and we’ve added several new staff members to decrease class size, which gives students a higher level of access to a caring adult. We’ve expanded afterschool clubs and activities offerings, giving students more opportunities to engage and connect with other students.”
“I can’t overstate the importance of the school district being able to fill the open mental health counselor position,” Venable said, “but we are also trying to offer as many other supports and services as we can. Many parts make up the whole.”
Ultimately, Venable said, the more people who “love and care for youth” who are willing to get involved with the school, the better. This isn’t just wishful thinking; it’s a strategy backed up by data.
“Our research shows that surrounding youth with the proper support can reverse these trends and help our youth now and in the future,” said CDC Acting Principal Deputy Director Debra Houry, M.D., M.P.H. School connectedness — “a sense of being cared for, supported and belonging at school” — is critical to “addressing youth adversities,” said Kathleen A. Ethier, PhD, Director of CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.
“Students need our support now more than ever, whether by making sure that their schools are inclusive and safe or by providing opportunities to engage in their communities and be mentored by supportive adults,” she said.
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The state of mental health in the U.S.
More and more Americans are experiencing mental health illnesses, a study by Mental Health America says.
It’s important to note that even though the study is dated 2022, the datasets analyzed are from 2019 — before the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our report illuminates the continuing crisis both in the prevalence of mental health conditions and in access to mental health services,” Schroeder Stribling, president and CEO of Mental Health America said. “It is clear that we must do more to ensure that Americans are able to lead mentally healthy lives.”
The organization’s 2022 State of Mental Health study found that nearly 50 million Americans experienced a mental illness in 2019, and more than half of those people went untreated. That’s a number that has increased every year since 2011, the group said.
Both adults and youth in the U.S. lack adequate insurance coverage for mental health, Mental Health America said.
Suicidal ideation — where someone actively imagines and may even plan committing suicide — is also increasing among adults and has every year since 2011. Nearly 5% of American adults reported having serious thoughts of suicide in 2019. Substance use is also on the rise. Nearly 10% of U.S. adults had a substance abuse disorder in the past year, the survey found.
Among youth, more children are reporting major depression than in previous years. The study found that 15% of youth experienced a major depressive episode in the past year, a 1% increase from 2021. Multiracial youth are at the greatest risk for severe depression, the study showed, with one in every seven multiracial youth reporting severe depression.
A more startling statistic is that fewer than one in three children with severe depression receive consistent mental health care and substance abuse among them is on the rise, including alcohol usage. While that study’s data was from 2019, the organization also conducted screenings during the pandemic that suggested the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t improve Americans’ mental health.
“We are in the midst of a twin pandemic in 2022, we are battling both the public health crisis introduced by COVID-19 and a mental health crisis,” Stribling said. “If we ignore the mental health crisis happening, it will linger for decades to come.”
Those screenings found that nearly two-thirds of people screened for depression in 2020 had severe or moderately severe symptoms. Of those who scored severe depression, 70% had never been diagnosed with a mental health condition.
“We are witnessing a historic increase in various mental health conditions,” said Deborah Dunsire, president and CEO of pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, who partnered with MHA in creating the COVID-19 screenings and dashboard. “Companies, governments, academia and society need to act together to find solutions for this global mental health crisis.”
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