Reports of suicidal threats and self-harm tendencies among Pennsylvania school children shot up after Gov. Tom Wolf ordered schools to close in March, new data from the state Attorney General show.
The state’s Safe2Say hotline, which was created in the wake of the 2018 Parkland, Fla. school shooting to field threats of student violence, saw the number of tips related to suicide and suicidal ideation rise by 18 percent during the 2019-2020 school year compared to the year prior, according to a report published this month by Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose office oversees the program.
Consistent with last year, concerns about bullying and cyberbullying were the dominant source of tips to the Safe2Say hotline. Calls related to suicide constituted the second-largest share of tips, followed by reports of cutting and self-harm.
The overall share of tips related to suicide and self-harm, however, more than doubled once schools closed statewide in March.
They constituted 17% of all tips to Safe2Say between July 2019 and March 2020, and spiked to 37% of all tips after March 13, according to the report. The Pittsburgh region reported a large number of tip numbers through the Safe2Say system. The intermediate units #2, #3, #7 and # 27 cover students in Allegheny, Beaver, and Westmoreland County. Those units accounted for 4,052, which is a disproportionately large percentage of the state's 26,015 tips from July 2019 through June 2020.
Screenshot taken from report
Adolescent mental health experts say the figures are barely surprising, given the near-total social isolation many young people experienced as COVID-19 wrought illness, job loss and death in their communities.
“Kids receive a lot of support from schools and from peers, and those support channels were cut off,” said David Lillenstein, president of the Association of School Psychologists of Pennsylvania. “They’re left feeling isolated and alone to confront their challenges, and that’s scary.”
Lillenstein and other pediatric health experts point out that the desire to reopen classrooms this fall is motivated by concerns about child health and welfare as much as it is about academics.
Psychologists and pediatricians say children learn and develop best in schools, where they can socialize with peers under the eye of watchful adults.
But, confronted with a failing national testing infrastructure and pressure from teachers unions and some parents, many districts have decided to start the school year online with hopes of eventually resuming in-person instruction.
The state has largely left it up to schools to determine how to support their students’ mental health, resulting in patchwork of resources that may prove inaccessible for children who have unreliable internet access, or who rely on referrals from adults in school to access treatment.
“There has to be a much stronger line about what we expect [schools] to do,” said Nick Ospa, an organizer with Youth United for Change, a youth-led advocacy group in Philadelphia.
Children in suburban districts such as Derry Township in Dauphin County, are among the lucky ones.
The district near Harrisburg has trained all of its teachers in trauma intervention methods, and will devote one class period each day to help students process the way COVID-19 has affected their schools, homes and communities.
“We’re trying to teach students relaxation strategies so if they’re stressed out or anxious, they’ll have coping strategies,” said Lillenstein, who also serves as a school psychologist in Derry Township. “We’re trying to emphasize that it’s okay to need help.”
But not all schools have the resources to roll out universal programs for staff and students.
Many schools contract with behavioral health firms to provide counseling to vulnerable students, which can offer telehealth appointments. But elected officials and advocates are worried they won’t be able to replicate their services online, or to reach all the children who may need support.
State Sen. Wayne Langerholc (R-Cambria) pointed out that group-based therapy practices have had to curtail their in-school offerings to comply with state social distancing guidelines.
The closure of one such facility in his western Pennsylvania district is poised to leave “an entire subset of my population in my district [without] mental health treatment,” Langerholc said Tuesday, during a joint hearing of the House and Senate Education Committees. “God knows what’s going to happen to those kids.”
In Philadelphia, COVID-19 scrambled an effort to create a district-wide, five-year mental health plan for schools. And while the district has published a plan to support social and emotional learning this fall, Ospa said it was “milquetoast.”
“It’s better than not saying anything, but it doesn’t seem to have a lot of substance,” Ospa said.
Ospa said virtual learning is already poised to exacerbate academic inequities in Pennsylvania’s public schools. To prevent it from wreaking a mental health crisis as well, he said, schools leaders and educators should consider how they inflame stress and anxiety for students.
That may mean limiting testing to relieve student stress, or giving students flexibility in their online class schedules if they have to share internet connections with family members.
If school leaders act proactively to minimize stress and anxiety for students, they won’t have to provide as many services to respond to mental health needs, Ospa said.
“There needs to be a culture shift in how schools relate to young people,” Ospa said, echoing a view his organization has held since before the COVID-19 pandemic. “Schools need to take accountability that they cause much more harm than we need, and that contributes to a bloated sense of need [for mental health services.]”
Elizabeth Hardison is a reporter with the Pennsylvania Capital-Star where this story first appeared.
