Taking on the mental health challenges of our students
A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report found “many adolescents experience positive mental health, but an estimated 49.5 percent of adolescents has had a mental health disorder at some point in their lives.”
According to the HHS report, those disorders can include anxiety, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or eating disorders. Any of these could effect the ability to learn or study.
In Thursday’s Eagle, a report by staff writer Irina Bucur told of a proposed bill in Pennsylvania that would allow students in kindergarten through 12th grade to take up to three mental health days as excused absences without a doctor’s note.
The move, according to some local mental health professionals, could help students manage stress.
Ken Messina, the clinical director of Slippery Rock University’s counseling center and an associate professor of counseling and development at the university, said excused mental health days would give students permission to step away and take care of themselves without the risk of accumulating an unexcused absence.
“I think (the proposed bill) is a great movement toward de-stigmatizing mental health,” Messina said. “It’s aiming to not penalize students or parents for taking those days off for mental health.”
House Bill 1519 advanced from the House of Education Committee in January. Student groups, parents and educators now wait for the proposed legislation to be considered and put to a vote in the House of Representatives.
“It is time that mental health supports are normalized in schools, allowing for schools to better understand how they can help students who take absences,” wrote state Rep. Napoleon Nelson, of Montgomery County, who sponsored the bill.
“Few challenges are as urgent or pressing as the lasting impact of stress and emotional duress on our students,” Nelson wrote.
Oregon and Utah have already passed similar legislation.
Students today do not experience the world the same way students did 50 years ago, and students in 50 years time will not experience the world the way it is experienced now. As it was 50 years ago, it is important that we meet the challenges students face the way they are facing them, not the way they were once faced.
There is much work to be done to bring about the normalization and improved access to mental health assistance. We applaud lawmakers for considering mental health days as a small step, and will be watching for results.
— RJ
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