Roadmap

Meet the Unprecedented Demand for Mental Health Care in Schools

This year, schools are expecting to see a surge in the number of students and staff requiring additional support for their mental health. The pandemic, extended quarantine, economic downturn, and ongoing civil unrest have increased rates of anxiety and depression across every demographic, compounding a nation-wide mental health crisis that plagued schools and communities long before the coronavirus arrived. With a chronic shortage of community providers across the country, responding to this crisis will fall largely to schools and districts. This guide presents a roadmap to improve outcomes for students while minimizing strain on district resources and budgets.

Topic

K-12 Education

Proactively identify students in need of support

The first imperative is to understand which students need help. Schools typically rely on teacher referrals to route students to supports, but this carries two glaring weaknesses: students not displaying external signs of distress will likely go unnoticed, and many students lack a trusted relationship with an adult in their building who they would feel comfortable contacting when struggling with social, emotional, and psychological concerns.

Next Steps

To efficiently route students to appropriate supports, each school should also establish a Behavioral Health Intervention Team. These cross-functional teams enable schools to efficiently process a greater number of referrals, ensure that students are paired with the appropriate interventions and supports, and identify patterns of need across the student body that can inform adjustments to Tier I interventions and programming.

Learn more about Behavioral Health Intervention Teams in Stage 1 of our implementation guide.

Learn More in the Guide

Expert Insight

Alongside providing evidence-based therapeutics and access to virtual clinical care, it is essential that teachers find ways to embed social-emotional learning into lessons—even in the virtual classroom. Students need to develop the long-term skills necessary to navigate their own experiences and interactions through the pandemic and beyond; developing those skills now can prevent crises further down the road.

Read EAB’s recommended strategies for embedding SEL lessons into online classrooms.

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Related Resource

Before the outbreak of the coronavirus, more than half of the nation’s teachers reported poor mental health, and three in four reported feeling mentally and physically exhausted at the end of each day. 2020 has driven anxiety rates among educators to new heights as the majority of teachers report feeling anxious, worried, exhausted, and depressed. Protect the mental health of teachers and staff consistently throughout the school year with practices that are effective, scalable, low cost, and sustainable.

Support Staff Mental Health

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