Schools seek additional funds for mental health initiative

May 09--METHUEN -- An amendment filed to the state budget for next year would bring $60,000 in additional funds to mental health programs in Methuen schools.

Statistics from the National Alliance on Mental Illness show that 50 percent of students with mental health issues drop out of high school.

"When students' mental health needs go unchecked, they do not make academic progress," said John Crocker, guidance director for Methuen Public Schools.

Last year, Methuen's grant proposal for the University of Maryland'sCenter for School Mental Health National Quality Initiative program was accepted, and the guidance department joined 11 other districts in the country working to create a comprehensive school mental health system.

"We're talking about changing ... what you do with mental health in the schools," said Crocker. "We're talking about providing therapeutic services in the schools, and creating collaborative partnerships with community mental health providers."

The Center for School Mental Health program in Methuen is funded by cooperative agreement grants from the federal Health and Human Services department and the University of Maryland.

The additional money to Methuen, if granted when the budget is finalized, would go toward expanding guidance staff. Methuen is the only district in the state involved in the initiative.

"I think a lot of schools are not even addressing mental health," said Crocker. "Some are approaching it strictly from an academic counseling standpoint. We're talking about putting clinicians in schools."

Crocker said academic counseling doesn't address the "whole student" and that academic successes or failures should be viewed through a mental health lens.

"Students don't get enough mental health services, and it's not just Methuen, this is across the country. When we look at the data around the prevalence rates for mental health problems, this is a problem for youth," said Crocker. "You talk about the implications of not directly addressing this, it's a community problem -- students drop out, they get involved with substance abuse."

The program reflects a statewide school-based health center initiative, which sets up full primary health care systems within schools.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, there are 33 school-based health centers in the state -- the closest one to Methuen is the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center, housed at Lawrence High School.

A comprehensive school mental health system only addresses mental health issues with students, something state Rep. Linda Dean Campbell, D-Methuen, said is lacking in the district, and in society overall.

"We're hearing from the medical community and educators that this is a very important issue," she said. "I get the calls from families saying 'I have a family member, a young adult who needs mental health care, I have to wait two weeks and I just can't. Can you help us?'"

In the first stages of the Center for School Mental Health program in Methuen, Crocker said his staff started doing mental health screenings with parental consent, and coordinating follow up services for at-risk students who show symptoms of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, trauma, and disruptive behavior.

He said schools are uniquely positioned to provide those mental health services.

"You talk about all the barriers there are to outside mental health, it's incredible," said Crocker. "Something as simple as transportation or the inability to break through sometimes nine-month-long waiting lists -- when you provide mental health services in schools, it's a safe environment. We see students in their natural environment. A lot of times their problems come out in social-emotional ways at school, and then they're dealing with our staff, who are familiar people."

The next phase of the Center for School Mental Health program will focus on data reporting, said Crocker. Next year, the additional funds, if allocated, will allow for more staff to help manage caseloads and work through the data collected from students.

Crocker hopes that the more data published from Methuen and the other schools involved in the program, the more other districts will see the benefits of a preventative model.

"My only hope is that it doesn't take a tragedy for them to adopt it," he said.

___

(c)2016 The Eagle-Tribune (North Andover, Mass.)

Visit The Eagle-Tribune (North Andover, Mass.) at www.eagletribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.