A surge in student mental health needs, combined with staff shortages and widespread episodes of misbehavior and violence, has put extraordinary strain on school counselors and psychologists.
“I get that schools are still safe. And I believe that,” said Bardwell, who is also executive director of the Massachusetts School Counselors Association. “But it also feels like there’s more and more kids that are struggling. And some of those kids who struggle might do bad things.”
School staff is “100% taxed,” said Jennifer Correnti, director of school counseling at Harrison High School in New Jersey, where counselors have been under strain as they help students acclimate after two school years of pandemic learning disruptions. “Everybody. Administrators, staff. Like, there’s no one that’s escaping. There is no one leaving school feeling amazed every day.”
“This year I got 200 kids, which is a quarter of our student population,” she said. “That is such a huge number. I can’t see 200 kids every week. That is just impossible.”Quickly, school staffers made changes, holding as many one-on-one sessions as they could, providing more group lessons on mental health, and putting flyers in every classroom with the suicide prevention hotline number.
“It’s a huge strain right now,” she said. Many students in her school are the children of farmworkers in a community that was hit hard by COVID-19 infections and deaths. She worries about missing something important. The challenges are compounded by an increase in gun violence on school grounds, said David Riedman, a criminologist and co-founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, which keeps a national tally of instances when a gun is fired at schools.
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