October 4, 2023
Government Meetings
Spotsylvania
Oct. 4 – Wednesday – Planning Commission – Read more
Stafford
Oct. 4 – Wednesday – Community and Economic Development Committee – Board Chambers – Read more
Oct. 4 – Wednesday – Infrastructure Committee – Board Chambers – Read more
Oct. 4 – Wednesday – Board of Supervisors (at 3 pm and at 7 pm) – Board Chambers – Read more
The Kids Are Not Alright
by Nick Brousse
GUEST WRITER
Equipped or not, educators are on the frontlines of managing students’ mental health challenges. Many of our students are not alright, and our education system must evolve to improve academic performance and better develop healthy and productive citizens.
Teenage mental health challenges, self-harm, and suicides have increased over the past decade. In 2021, nearly 60% of high school girls nationwide reported persistent sadness or hopelessness, and a heartbreaking 25% of girls had made a suicide plan.
What our boys are externalizing is just as alarming. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, youth homicide victims increased 46% between 2013 and 2020, with males accounting for 74% of youth homicide victims in 2020.
Our school community lost one young girl to suicide and two young men to senseless violence within months. This crisis is real, and it’s on our front doorstep.
As a support specialist working with at-risk students, I see the tidal wave of threat assessments for potential self-harm, threats of violence, and erratic, emotion-led behavior. It’s drowning educators and disrupting learning.
COVID-19 often gets the blame, and the pandemic did turn our students’ lives upside down. They lived in isolation. They witnessed or heard about hundreds of greater Fredericksburg residents who lost their lives, who lost their jobs, and more. But adolescent mental health professionals saw this coming long before the spring of 2020.
For the same reason my school and schools nationwide have funded security personnel and weapons detection systems, we must protect our student’s safety and well-being against worsening mental health. But we can’t do it alone.
Investing in partnerships with community-based and private mental health professionals for students most in need is a start.
For decades, students have received traditional services like speech, occupational, and behavioral therapy in school. Mental health should be no different.
Treatment in schools for our most challenged students has significant benefits—access to and adherence to treatment increase. Barriers to treatment for marginalized populations decrease. And schools offer a familiar environment to receive mental health services.
Further, schools should emphasize skill development as much as SOL pass rates. Managing stress, problem-solving, controlling impulses, and handling adversity are critically essential skills – both in classrooms and out. Emotion powerfully influences cognitive functions like perception, attention, and reasoning. Teaching skills students can apply at school and in support of their mental health is a no-brainer.
A superintendent from Georgia once asked, “How many people have been fired from their job because they confused a colon with a semicolon?” No one, as far as I know.
Let’s balance the scales, address this crisis head-on, and ensure our students leave our care prepared for whatever life throws them. Our students – and their safety – are counting on us.
Nick Brousse is a Student Support Specialist in Fredericksburg.
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