{"id":29038,"date":"2017-12-21T11:01:21","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T17:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=29038"},"modified":"2017-12-21T13:15:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T19:15:23","slug":"as-students-mental-health-needs-grow-schools-find-counselors-have-little-time-for-counseling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2017\/12\/21\/as-students-mental-health-needs-grow-schools-find-counselors-have-little-time-for-counseling\/","title":{"rendered":"As Students&#8217; Mental Health Needs Grow, Schools Find Counselors Have Little Time For Counseling"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_29043\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/12\/StudentMentalHealth-HR.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-29043\" alt=\"StudentMentalHealth-HR\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/12\/StudentMentalHealth-HR-620x348.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"348\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">And The Rest\/Flickr \/ CC BY-SA 2.0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">\n<\/div><p>When Moore Public Schools Superintendent Robert Romines asked some of his high school students what the district could do better, they told him they needed more help with mental health.<\/p><p>\u201cI was a bit shocked,\u201d Romines says.<\/p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.samhsa.gov\/data\/sites\/default\/files\/Oklahoma_BHBarometer_Volume_4.pdf\">More and more<\/a>\u00a0of Oklahoma\u2019s teenagers are dealing with mental illness, and the increase has caught a few school administrators off guard.<\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/372652790&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=false\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p><p><!--more-->Moore\u2019s high schools have counselors, and outside groups also provide mental health services to students, so Romines thought students were getting the help they needed. But he quickly realized why they weren\u2019t.<\/p><p>Most of Moore\u2019s high school counselors were busy helping students choose a career path and get into college. And while Romines says those other responsibilities are critical, he now knows it isn\u2019t enough. The Moore district is hiring three new counselors to focus on mental health.<\/p><p>The situation is similar in Norman Public Schools. Administrators there also recently noticed kids needed more help than counselors could provide. District spokesperson Alesha Leemaster says both of Norman\u2019s high schools now have Student Advocacy Coordinators whose sole responsibility is to help kids dealing with trauma.<\/p><p>Prior to the new hires, however, counselors spent much of their time helping kids with class schedules and college entrance exams.<\/p>\n<h3>\u2018Monster\u2019 distractions<\/h3><p>The executive director of the Oklahoma School Counselor Association, Mary Waters, says it\u2019s good that some districts are paying more attention to student mental health, but she still thinks school counselors spend too much time doing things they shouldn\u2019t be asked to do.<\/p><p>\u201cA big part of what counselors are saddled with, frankly, is this testing monster,\u201d she says \u201cAnd at the high school it really can be an onerous burden.\u201d<\/p><p>Walter says counselors overloaded with administrative duties are often ineffective at other responsibilities that should be prioritized, like students\u2019 mental health. Consequently, some kids don\u2019t get the help they need.<\/p><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.unitedwayokc.org\/sites\/default\/files\/files\/REAL_Vital%20Signs%20Vol%203_Ed1%20heather.pdf\">Oklahoma County data<\/a> show only one in four kids with a mental health disorder received services. National data shows a similar trend: A 2015 report from the Child Mind Institute found that only about 20 percent of young people with a diagnosable anxiety disorder get help.<\/p><p><a href=\"http:\/\/pediatrics.aappublications.org\/content\/early\/2016\/11\/10\/peds.2016-1878\">Another national study<\/a> found, that while teen depression is on the rise, there hasn\u2019t been a corresponding increase in mental health treatment.<\/p><p>Waters says school counselors can change this.<\/p><p>\u201cI call us first responders,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe we\u2019re going to be the first ones who notice the depression.\u201d<\/p><p>She says spotting such issues is important because mental health and education go hand in hand.<\/p><p>\u201cNo parent drops their kid off at the schoolhouse door to receive therapy. They drop their kid at the schoolhouse door to get an education,\u201d she says. \u201cBut we all know if there\u2019s a huge emotional issue, they\u2019re not going to be able to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Uptick in Oklahoma<\/h3><p>Anxiety and depression in teens are on the rise nationally, but mental illness has long been a problem in Oklahoma. Mental Health America<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalhealthamerica.net\/issues\/ranking-states\"> ranks Oklahoma<\/a> as one of the states where youth mental illness is the most prevalent.<\/p><p>In Tulsa, Union Public School\u2019s Executive Director of Secondary Education Lisa Witcher says she\u2019s noticed this growth in her district.<\/p><p>\u201cWe deal with students who\u2019ve been affected by trauma on a more regular basis than we ever have in my 26 years of education,&#8221; she says. \u201cAdditionally, we deal with more incidents of self-harm.\u201d<\/p><p>She says\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/education\/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty\/2015\/01\/15\/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?utm_term=.4f6df571dad7\">an increasing number of students are living in poverty<\/a>, and a life of poverty often accompanies trauma. But she doesn\u2019t think that\u2019s the only reason for the uptick in mental illness.<\/p><p>\u201cThe loads that pre-teens and teenagers are carrying seem to be quite stifling for some of them at times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Moore Public Schools Superintendent Robert Romines asked some of his high school students what the district could do better, they told him they needed more help with mental health.\u201cI was a bit shocked,\u201d Romines says.More and more\u00a0of Oklahoma\u2019s teenagers are dealing with mental illness, and the increase has caught a few school administrators off [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[746],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29038"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29051,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29038\/revisions\/29051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}