New Mental Health Initiatives At Carver
During the pandemic, many students expressed that the sudden transition from virtual learning led to the depletion of their mental health, affecting their work and thinking strategies due to the sudden change in their day-to-day schedules and isolated environments.
Carver School of Engineering and Science shares its plan to strengthen its community by introducing new mental health initiative systems while focusing on parent empowerment and student expression.
According to an article published by the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments,” The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–21 complicated implementation challenges during the school year, as both K–12 learning activities and health surveillance and support from schools shifted from in-person physical environments to virtual platforms at the same time reported problems with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts reached unprecedented prevalence levels among students”.
As these problems arise and continue to affect students in the community, Ms.Nash, a counselor at HSES shares their new plans in effort to reduce or eliminate these effects.
“Last year we did four wellness days where one day, twice a year we would do different wellness activities; we did things like yoga, listening to music, and art therapy. We’re going to be offering different topics and training sessions for parents to better support their students and about the importance of wellness. Students at the mental health fair will be able to walk around the different tables about different community organizations and agencies which provide services related to mental health such as counseling services and mentoring programs. .”
According to the same article, “‘Parent involvement in their child(ren)’s mental health treatment has a significant positive effect on outcomes,4 yet there are many challenges to engaging parents as part of school-based efforts. Meaningful inclusion of parent and family voices in a participatory planning process will enhance the relevance and impact of any school mental health initiative. Parent participation is particularly important for populations who have been historically underserved and marginalized based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or sexual orientation, who may have different perspectives about needs and services, language barriers, or other preferences for how they might wish to participate”.
As of 2021-22, KFF (The Landscape of School- Based Mental Health Services ) reports 96% of public schools reported offering at least one type of mental health service to their students, only one-third of schools provide outreach services, which includes mental health screenings for all students’ and ‘Approximately one out of five schools reported offering mental health services through tele-health during the 2021-2022 school year.
As more school districts begin to initiate these strategies a question arises of how effective are these techniques? Are students actually benefiting from them?
Anna Rogers, an 11th grade student attending HSES states her take on the new plan
¨I think its not helping as much as they think because they have it in the morning when all the students are tired and don't want to pay attention and especially since they pack everyone in the gym...¨
Another student shares(grade 10)
“I'm not really sure, I don't think I directly benefited from it, usually it's something most of us do because we have to not because we have a choice.¨