But just because we’re always worrying doesn’t mean that we’re always wrong. Children today are struggling with their mental health — struggling to maintain a semblance of hope about the future they’re inheriting. — report feeling so discouraged that it interferes with their daily lives. 

This youth mental health crisis has been with us for a moment. In 2018, in response to the horrifying Parkland, Florida, school shooting, President Donald Trump’s using federal School Safety funding for investments to “expand the pipeline of school-based mental health services providers.” The ensuing began in 2019, near the end of Trump’s first term. 

And yet, despite the issue’s ongoing urgency, the second Trump administration . Among the schools that felt that loss was the Multicultural Learning Center, a public charter school on the outskirts of Los Angeles County. As the administration’s decision works its way through the courts, it’s worth considering what might be lost if we stop investing in supporting children’s mental health. 

A $4.6M grant for students’ well-being

Winter is sunny in Canoga Park, where the Multicultural Learning Center’s campus is cloudless, ice-free and pushing 70 degrees. The air’s crisp on a dry December Thursday in the school’s courtyard garden, which hosts a series of green, thriving native plants and a sign that outlines the school’s goals for its learners: “Caring, Respectful, Responsible, Safe, Tolerant.” 

The dual language immersion charter school opened in after California voters approved a statewide mandate largely banning bilingual education. Its status as a charter allowed it flexibility from that decision, which it used to pursue a child-focused pedagogy in both English and Spanish. Co-founder and executive director Gayle Nadler says that these elements serve the goal of “learner agency. We want our students to be ready to advocate for themselves.”

This focus on students’ social skills and well-being sharpened as the school reopened after the pandemic. This tracked national—and international—trends. A of the pandemic’s impact on children found that they “consistently point[ed] to a decline in child wellbeing globally.” At the Multicultural Learning Center, school leaders now estimate that they had capacity to support only one-quarter of their children who needed services. 

In 2022, seeking to grow that capacity, the school applied with several other charters for one of . They were awarded nearly $4.6 million over five years, which launched at the beginning of 2023. Simultaneously, the school secured funding from to construct a small “Wellness Center” where students could receive the mental health support they needed. 

That $4.6 million made it possible for the school to staff the center with two full-time therapists and a rotating group of graduate interns preparing for careers in social work or therapy. “The funds get used to partner with universities to have master’s-level students do their fieldwork with us,” Nadler says, “to hire recently graduated candidates from those same universities to work on our staff.” 

The program at Multicultural Learning Center modeled the twin purposes of the grant: create more demand in the job market for school-based mental health therapists by funding those positions while making the schools a training ground for future therapists.

When the administration zeroed out the grants last April, it blocked MLC from accessing the last $1.9 million originally budgeted for the project.

The sudden loss of funds left grantees like Nadler in a lurch. She estimates that her school’s share of the money raised their mental health services capacity to a level that they were meeting the needs of at least 95% of students who needed support. To try to recover the resources they’d been expecting, the school joined a lawsuit headed by Washington state. 

The federal government technically ended the grants by denying their renewal, arguing that they were no longer aligned with the president’s second term priorities. While federal grants are subject to regular reviews to ensure that grantees are meeting expectations, the Multicultural Learning Center and their co-plaintiffs countered that the administration had made the choice to cancel their grants without any substantive consideration of the work being done. 

In December, , and ordered the administration to undertake an appropriate review of the grants by the end of the month. The administration then disbursed small “interim” grants — $90,000 in the Multicultural Learning Center’s case — while individual reviews took place. As the deadline for these reviews neared, the Education Department requested an extension from the court while it prepared an appeal. 

On Feb. 24, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused, ruling that the administration appeared unlikely to convince the courts that it had provided grantees adequate reason for canceling their funding. 

In the meantime, the ruling meant that the department had to release the originally promised 2026 funds for the mental health grants for recipients like the Multicultural Learning Center.

The saga is far from over. As the Education Department plans its appeal, it released six months of the promised 2026 funding. In a letter sent to grantees, the department explained that the remaining half may be made available after it conducts an “updated performance and budget report,” depending on how the lawsuit is ultimately settled.

For now, the school is muddling through, staffing the Wellness Center through the end of this school year with the half-year of funding they were able to pry loose through the courts. Nadler says it’s a priority to maintain these services, but isn’t sure where she’ll find the funds to replace the federal resources if the Trump administration ultimately succeeds in blocking the rest of the 2026 money they’d budgeted for. 

Taking care of the kids still No. 1

Almost anything can become normal if we let it. Remember traveling without a phone in your pocket? Remember when school shootings were so rare that, when they occurred, we expected our political leaders to act to make them even less likely?

Humans can get used to most anything. But that doesn’t mean that we can navigate any particular new normal with an equal degree of ease. This is particularly true for children, who are less practiced at accommodation than their parents and caregivers. You might have grown used to bloodstained classrooms and brazen public corruption, but your 11-year-old’s gonna have questions when they first see these sorts of things. 

As I’ve written many times now, this is the key to understanding the United States’s youth mental health crisis. The various tech boogeymen haunting public discourse — smartphones, social media, screens more generally — are real problems, but insufficient for understanding the depth of the problem. No, today’s kids are gloomy because they are clearsighted: we have dealt them a genuinely terrible hand. 

To dig them (and ourselves) out of this hole, we need to 1) make actual, effective steps towards a safer, stabler and more dignified world worthy of our children’s dreams; and 2) provide mental health services to help repair the damage we’ve done to their well-being. 

“The number one thing you can do to prevent school violence,” Nadler says, “is mental health counseling, build[ing] relationships, taking care of the kids. That’s the number one thing. It’s not metal detectors, it’s not active shooter drills, it’s not armed guards, none of that.” 

“I just can’t imagine a world,” she added, “where we don’t take care of people — and it starts with children.”

There has been considerable debate in schools and among policymakers on how best to ensure American students are keeping pace academically. Research shows the COVID-19 pandemic and school shutdowns had a significant negative impact on students’ learning.

This debate over academic proficiency, while well-intentioned, is ultimately failing our children. It completely overlooks that American students are falling behind on a much-more important developmental goal: moral proficiency.

The failure to emphasize kindness, respect and character in our schools is encouraging other behaviors to fill that void. An epidemic of bullying pervades classrooms and affects students across the country. The numbers tell the story: According to a Pew Research Center released last year, nearly 60% of teens identify bullying as commonplace in their schools. One in five say it’s extremely common, and among teens it was cited as the second biggest problem affecting students today. Previous studies have found that two in five students say they were bullied on school property, and nearly half reported being victims of cyberbullying.

Three years ago, we lost our 17-year-old son to bullying. We sent a healthy, happy 16-year-old boy to a new school excited to make friends. He was kind to everyone, a leader, and wanted a life in public service. This made him a target. His reputation was destroyed by lies spread in person and online over the course of a year, beginning with a school election. While he stood up for himself until his final breath, he suffered in plain sight and — unnecessarily, avoidably and alone.

After his death, we learned that many schools, including our son’s, have no legal obligation to protect your child from bullying. We became advocates for change. No child should have to endure the same cruelty, anguish and pain as Jack did. 

This campaign for change took an important step forward in October when New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the to combat bullying in schools and extend protections already afforded to public school students to those in the state’s independent schools. A diverse coalition of caring legislators and faith-based and independent school leaders worked with us to pass the law, giving half a million private school students in New York the most basic human right: to feel safe. The law ensures that when a child comes forward or bullying is witnessed, the school is obligated to act promptly: investigate, communicate and respond. 

But these policy changes are a solution to an epidemic that needs a bigger fix than new laws. We know the cure. Bullying is like an insidious disease that grows unchecked in cultures where character and kindness are not cherished.

The chief mission of our schools must be teaching skills and values for life, not just improving test outcomes. That means respect for others and their differences. It means civility; not just reading the student handbook but living it. And it means calling out — and addressing — behaviors and actions that threaten the school climate for everyone. 

Bullying cannot be viewed as acceptable or endurable behavior. The old adages that it will “toughen them up” or “is part of growing up” are archaic and misguided. The bullying our kids experience today is not simple playground teasing — our children do not feel safe in school anymore, and because of social media, that fear follows them home. Ask yourself: How can you learn algebra in the classroom if you are afraid of what could happen in the hallway?

Only have protections in place for every child. This is unacceptable. We need to help the remaining four million private and parochial school students at risk. Anti-bullying mandates actually reaffirm the mission of our schools: teach the whole child. We hope the Jack Reid Law is a wake-up call. Laws are meaningless symbols if not lived. Climate and culture matter. It must start with school leaders and flow through the entire system of the school: from the chemistry teacher to the gym coach and to each child.

Kindness and bullying are both contagious. One is free; the other cost us our entire fortune — our beloved son. Which one do you want in your school?

For those of us who work in schools, this isn’t a surprise. It is simply the data catching up to what we see every day: Our children are struggling, and too many are not getting the support they need.

Across the country, young people are facing unprecedented levels of . This is true for children of every background. But as with nearly every social challenge in America, in low-income communities of color like the one my school serves on Chicago’s South Side. Families here are more likely to face housing instability, food insecurity, community violence and untreated trauma — and they are less likely to have easy access to high-quality mental health care.

When behavioral health needs go unmet, the consequences ripple far beyond the child. We see it when students can’t concentrate, regulate their emotions or trust adults. We see it in . We see it in teachers stretched to their limits and families overwhelmed by crises that could have been prevented with earlier support. Mental health is not separate from learning; it is a prerequisite for it. As I tell my team, children cannot learn if they are not safe, warm, dry, fed and well.

The recent report also makes something else clear: Families are being asked to carry more and more of the financial burden. Out-of-pocket spending on children’s behavioral health care is growing at more than twice the rate of other health care costs, increasing by an average of 6.4% each year. Families with a child receiving behavioral health care are far more likely to experience severe financial strain. In practice, this means that getting help for a child increasingly depends on whether a family can afford it.

That is how a two-tier mental health system takes root. Families with money can access private therapy and specialists. Families without it are left to wait, to ration care or to reach the system only when their child is in crisis. While the study does not break down spending by race or income, it’s clear that in a country where wealth and healthcare access are deeply unequal, rising behavioral health costs will hit Black and low-income families the hardest.

That is why schools like mine have become something they were never designed to be: frontline providers of mental health care.

At , a kindergarten through eighth grade public school on Chicago’s South Side, 28% of our students receive school-based mental health services. We partner with organizations like , offer virtual coaching through and employ multiple, full-time social workers because our students need these supports to succeed.

These services are not extras; they are as essential as textbooks and teachers. But providing them requires tradeoffs, and too often schools are forced to choose between academic programming and mental health care.

School-based services work because they eliminate the barriers that keep so many families from accessing help. There is no need to take time off work, find transportation or navigate an unfamiliar health system. Students receive support in a place they already know and trust. Problems are identified earlier, before they escalate into emergencies that lead to hospitalizations, school removals or long-term harm. In communities where mental health providers are scarce or unaffordable, schools have become the most reliable point of access.

But this role is not sustainable without public investment. Schools should not be propping up a broken healthcare system with education dollars.

If our leaders are serious about equity, they must fully fund school-based behavioral health services, especially in high-need communities. That means investing in counselors, social workers, psychologists and strong partnerships with community providers. It means creating stable, ongoing funding streams rather than short-term grants that disappear just as programs take root. And it means ensuring that Medicaid and other insurers reimburse schools directly for the care they provide, so schools are not forced to subsidize health care out of classroom budgets.

The data make clear that children’s behavioral health care has become a central part of what it takes for young people to thrive. As long as access to that care depends on a family’s income or ZIP code, the gap between those who get help and those who do not will continue to grow. Schools like Great Lakes Academy are doing everything we can to fill that gap. With the right public investment, schools can ensure that every child — no matter their race or family income — has the support they need to learn, heal, and succeed.

As more people’s lives are upended each year due to climate disasters communities — and our political leaders at the local, state and federal levels — must do more to ensure the needs of children and families are met during these emergencies.

During wildfires and other disasters, we continually see the familiar pattern of school closures, child care disruption, families moving into temporary housing and routines essential to children’s sense of safety abruptly severed. Communities and political leaders at every level must confront a hard truth: Our emergency systems were not designed with children in mind. 

During wildfires, schools and child care systems are among the first institutions to fail. Children are displaced from classrooms, separated from trusted adults and thrust into shelters or hotel rooms never designed to support their physical, emotional or developmental needs. Studies show that stress brought on by exposure to natural disasters can have an outsized impact on children and lead to lifelong trauma. This trauma can lead to socio-emotional impairments; health-risk behaviors, such as alcohol and drug abuse; and even early death, according to the published in 2011 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente. 

This past year has made it clear that local jurisdictions can no longer rely on federal disaster systems to carry the full burden of recovery. As the future of entities such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency becomes more uncertain, states, cities and counties must assume greater responsibility for protecting their most vulnerable citizens. 

This starts with treating schools as critical infrastructure. While schools became formally recognized as part of critical infrastructure — specifically within the Education Facilities subsector in 2003 under Homeland Security Presidential Directive-7 (HSPD-7) — they are not allocated commensurate resources and protections for security as other designated critical infrastructure. 

The Covid-19 pandemic underscored the central role that schools play in economic stability, as widespread closures rapidly disrupted labor markets and productivity. Treating schools as critical infrastructure would align education with other essential public systems that underpin public health, safety and economic performance; as such, it merits long-term investment.

Second, schools need contingency plans that ensure continuity of in-person education when normal operations are disrupted. After the LA wildfires, many schools scrambled to set up alternate sites or transitioned to online learning. Students are still making up from the pandemic, and it is unclear whether those losses can be stemmed. Online learning should be used only when all other options have been exhausted, given the devastating impacts on student learning. The planning needs to begin now, not after disaster strikes.  

Third, practice is key to success. Emergency plans often fail children not because they are poorly written but because they are never written with children in mind. Children experience disasters differently than adults, and procedures designed without them can inadvertently heighten fear and trauma. Age-appropriate drills, school-based tabletop exercises and responder training in developmentally appropriate communication can dramatically improve outcomes. 

Local governments can formally integrate school districts, child care providers and pediatric health systems into emergency planning rather than treating them as afterthoughts once a crisis unfolds. Practicing with children builds familiarity, reduces panic and accelerates recovery — not just for young people, but for entire communities.

Finally, funding structures must reflect the realities families face after disasters. While billions are allocated for fire suppression and mitigation, far fewer resources are earmarked for sustaining schools, child care and pediatric mental health in the months and years that follow. Local and state governments should establish dedicated funding streams for child- and family-centered recovery — supporting school continuity, mental health care and family stabilization — since these investments can reduce long-term social and economic costs.

Implementing a family-centric disaster response model isn’t just a moral imperative. Adverse childhood experiences lead to an economic burden of  of dollars annually in the U.S, much of it absorbed by taxpayers through Medicaid and Medicare spending, special education, disability programs and lost lifetime tax revenue. When disaster responses destabilize children, short-term emergencies are converted into long-term public liabilities, driving government inefficiency and reactive spending. These failures also spill into insurance markets, increasing claims, and deepening reliance on federal backstops that distort risk pools and shift costs to the public.

In an era of escalating disasters and constrained budgets, policies that protect family stability during crises are not social add-ons but high-return investments: reducing future taxpayer exposure, stabilizing insurance systems and limiting the need for costly federal intervention after the fact.

The one-year mark of the Los Angeles wildfires should not serve as a memorial to what was lost, but as a reckoning with what must change. Disasters will continue to test our systems, but allowing children to bear the brunt of those failures is a policy choice, not an inevitability. Protecting children during emergencies necessitates radical change. If we fail to act, we are not merely accepting risk: We are knowingly passing preventable harm and long-term costs onto the next generation.

These realities compound the mental health challenges already intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many students, the fear of separation, the pressure to stay invisible and the stress of seeing loved ones targeted by inhumane immigration enforcement is deeply personal and destabilizing. 

There are real steps we can take to support the well-being of students. That includes protecting school areas from immigration enforcement, ensuring students know their rights and building systems of care that recognize the unique needs of these families.

But there’s another element we should be thinking about: our school-based mental health infrastructures. These spaces can be better equipped to support students in times of crisis, especially those disproportionately impacted by fear, racism and systemic injustice. 

This moment demands that we listen to students, not just because they are the most affected, but because they are already leading the way by helping to design and taking part in peer-support programs at their schools.  

At eight high schools across California, students are stepping into leadership roles as part of the,  launched by The Children’s Partnership in conjunction with the California Department of Health Care Services. The program was born from the vision of TCP’s youth-led policy council, the, which called for culturally responsive, student-led mental health support on campus. 

Young people are redefining what it means to support one another. At Serrano High School in Phelan north of San Bernardino, for example, peer leaders run a daily wellness center where they organize lunchtime wellness activities, host restorative circles and mentor English learner students, including those new to the U.S. To better serve their peers, several students proposed stationing themselves at the wellness center during an elective period so they could provide in-the-moment support to other students during the school day.  

At Sierra High School in San Bernardino, wellness ambassadors known as the “” have organized a Substance Abuse Prevention Fair that led to the identification and implementation of support-based alternatives to suspension, school policy changes and increased engagement among students. Since its inception more than three years ago, the Sunshine Crew has expanded into a structured, student-led wellness program with about 40 active members advancing mental health awareness, harm reduction education and public service initiatives.

This fall, the group is also launching a peer counseling program to complement its work. Across the pilot demonstration last year, 936 students statewide used peer support services,  underscoring the reach and impact of student-led mental health initiatives.

As one student put it, “This program is student-led, and it gave me the confidence to speak up, to lead and to support others.” Another reflected, “I didn’t think I’d graduate. Now, I lead school tours and tell my story to others.” 

This shift in school culture is the result of students driving change and institutions stepping back to make room. It happens when students are trusted, resourced and heard. And while programs like this are powerful, young people have made it clear: They need more. 

They want inclusive mental health education in classrooms. They want wellness centers that stay open beyond crisis moments. They want adults — educators, policymakers and community leaders — to treat mental health as a basic necessity, not a luxury. 

Now more than ever, in a climate where fear is being weaponized against vulnerable communities, we must commit to making schools places of healing, not more harm. That means investing in school-based mental health supports, expanding peer-to-peer programs, and ensuring that every student — regardless of immigration status, race or ZIP code — can access the tools they need to care for themselves and each other. 

We cannot separate mental health from the social and political realities young people are living through. And we cannot claim to support youth if we ignore the systems that harm them. When we center students — especially those from immigrant, low-income and LGBTQ communities — in designing and leading mental health strategies, we build schools that are not just supportive but transformative. 

Students have shown extraordinary resilience in the face of chaos. Their strength in navigating fear and instability is powerful, but it should not be the only tool they have. Resilience alone is not a solution; it’s a starting point. The youth are already doing the work. It’s time we meet them with the urgency, resources and respect they deserve. 

Families and schools play a crucial role in recognizing when a young person needs help and providing or connecting them with it, but they cannot possibly do it all. Fortunately, there is an untapped opportunity to expand support: the community-based organizations and out-of-school-time programs where young people already spend time, form trusting relationships, and feel a sense of safety and belonging.

Summer camps, youth mentoring, sports leagues, after-school clubs and countless other experiences — these are spaces where trusted relationships are built, often over years. Reaching young people through the organizations they already trust is crucial to broadening and strengthening the mental health safety net. With the right tools and training, they can become powerful front-line hubs for mental health support. But that requires real investment in partnerships, resources, and staff training.

Let’s be clear: This is not about turning after-school programs into clinics. It’s about embedding a layer of basic mental health support into places where young people already feel a sense of belonging. We can equip nonprofit staff to recognize, respond to and refer youth in need to professionals when necessary — ensuring the young people they serve are seen, supported and connected with the help they need. 

Today’s young people are more open than ever about mental health. Research from our organizations, (JED) and (APA), among others, shows that this generation is more self-aware and ready to advocate for emotional well-being than any before. And they are looking for support in familiar spaces where they already spend time: APA’s 2024 report found that more than 80% of young people recommend schools and community‑based organizations expand individual counseling services.

But openness alone isn’t enough. Support needs to meet them where they are.

Everyone who is part of a young person’s life is on the front lines of addressing young people’s urgent mental health needs. Rather than putting the burden on youth themselves to find support, we can build mental health expertise in the places they already are. 

The 150 organizations in APA’s Alliance Community, for example, collectively serve 31 million young people each year. Through these and so many other organizations, youth are already forming close bonds with the tutors, coaches and counselors they interact with at nonprofit organizations — putting these caring adults in an ideal position to recognize and respond to early signs of distress.

For many organizations it is not a big leap from their existing programming to supporting youth mental health. Sports, arts and crafts, being outside in nature, socializing with others, and so many other activities common to nonprofit youth programs – these are all key components to boosting well-being.

All of this presents an important opportunity to equip youth-serving staff with the tools and training they need to consistently and effectively support young people’s mental health.

Any community-based leader or staff member will tell you that providing mental health support is already part of the job. The reality is that they are often called upon, day or night, to help youth navigate urgent needs, typically under significant resource constraints – and too often without appropriate training or the institutional infrastructure for addressing and escalating mental health issues and crises. 

That is not sustainable, and does a disservice to both the young people and staff members. If we want to truly support youth, we have to support the people who support them by investing in training and mental health infrastructure that is effective and sustainable.

Many funders have longstanding relationships with youth-serving organizations, presenting an opportunity to extend their philanthropy to an area that can truly change lives: the mental health and emotional well-being of the young people who participate in these cherished programs. 

What does that look like in practice?

• Help organizations create strategic plans for how they will support the mental health of the youth they serve, including building basic infrastructure such as protocols, resource directories and safety nets to take pressure off individual staff members
• Fund staff training so youth workers know how to recognize emotional distress and respond appropriately
• Support partnerships between community-based organizations and mental health providers, including warm referral systems and local collaboration
• Invest in the well-being of frontline workers, many of whom are navigating secondary stress and burnout without support

Community-based organizations are uniquely positioned to meet the moment by providing critical support that can complement and extend school-based efforts. By now — and fostering stronger collaboration across every corner of the youth-serving ecosystem — we can build a more cohesive, responsive, and resilient network to support young people.

Mental health care services are available in more than 80% of Minnesota’s public school districts. That figure represents , though persistent gaps remain.

While most student mental health support is provided by a combination of school staff and school-based mental health practitioners employed by outside agencies, other nonprofit programs also spend time in the state’s schools, offering unique types of care. These services include peer support for students living with addiction, or culturally specific support groups and activities designed to meet the unique needs of students from immigrant and refugee communities.

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One of these nonprofit programs is Know the Truth, an independent offshoot of the Twin Cities-based Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge. Know the Truth was created in 2006 as a prevention program designed to bring young people who had recently completed addiction treatment into schools to talk to teens about their own experiences.

Sadie Brown, Know the Truth director of prevention and community engagement, said that her organization started as a “grassroots effort going into schools,” providing guest speakers to add context to information that students were already learning in health class units on drug and alcohol use. Eventually, Know the Truth expanded to provide peer recovery services, developing partnerships with a number of Minnesota public school districts, including Anoka-Hennepin and District 916, which provides alternative programming to students in the northeast metro area.

Know the Truth provides expansive supports related to substance use, Brown said. “Not only are we meeting with students who are actively using now, we are also hearing from students who have use present in their home, say with mom, dad or siblings. And we are meeting with students who are in recovery and want to explore recovery — like how do they navigate that and find like-minded students who are also on a recovery path.”

Another nonprofit, St. Paul-based Restoration for All, focuses on supporting the mental health of the state’s African immigrant and refugee community. It also has also brought mental health-focused programs into public schools. Founder Tolulope Ola, a Nigerian immigrant and community activist, explained that she and her colleagues decided to expand their mental health supports to refugee and immigrant youth because they felt that not all teachers and staff understood their unique culture and experiences.

“We saw that students from our community were struggling,” Ola said. “We were concerned they were being misunderstood, and we knew we were best equipped to support them and explain to others where they were coming from.”

Working with youth is work with ‘purpose’ 

Every morning, Tiffany White wakes up knowing she’s doing a job she was born to do. As a youth peer support specialist for , White spends her days talking to young people in schools about drug and alcohol use.

Peer support specialists rely on their personal histories of addiction and recovery. White, now four years sober, is more than willing to talk about her long and painful journey with alcohol abuse. “I talk about my life every single day,” she said. “I tell the young people everything I went through because I want to help them. My life is no secret.”

In her teens, White avoided substances, but by the time she turned 21, she started drinking alcohol. “It seemed OK to drink because it was legal. I fell into it,” she said, explaining that she wasn’t “an instant alcoholic.” Within a few years, White’s dependence on alcohol had accelerated, and what at first felt like fun lost its luster.

“I started to get some real-life consequences,” she said. “I spiraled into depression and suicidal ideation. I got to a place where I didn’t care if I lived or died.” She drank so much, she said, that, “I started to have and . I’ve been in the hospital, in jail, but hallucinating really scared me.” For White, that crossed a line. “I thought,” she recalled, “‘If I’m not going to drink myself to death, I’m going to go to treatment.’”

White checked herself into a 13-month-long residential program at , a faith-based addiction treatment and recovery program with locations around the state. After completing the program, she took a job doing urinalysis tests for program participants. Then, someone told White about Know the Truth, a secular offshoot of Adult and Teen Challenge. She signed up to do a presentation for a local high school health class, where she and others shared personal stories of addiction and answered student questions.

The experience was significant.

After the presentation, a girl came up to White. “She was crying. She said, ‘I didn’t think anyone did the same things my mom did until I heard you speak.’ I saw I could use my own experience to help her. I thought, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do with my life.’”

During the academic year, White works out of three Twin Cities public schools (, in Little Canada and ), where she meets with individuals and groups. But her work isn’t limited to school hours: She also provides peer support services for students in the community and she regularly attends public events, like , a training and education program for young people on probation in Ramsey County.

If a student is assessed by a school social worker or psychologist and approved for peer support services, White can meet with them outside of school. In those cases, she selects spaces where teens feel comfortable. “We go to events, for walks, to the movies,” she said. “Sometimes we just ride around for two hours and talk.”

White also gives the young people — many of whom are struggling with their own or their family members’ addictions — her phone number. “I tell them they can text or call me anytime.”

Always being on duty suits White just fine. “This is what it is like to work out your purpose,” she said. “I work a lot. I don’t take time off, because it’s my passion. It doesn’t feel like work to me.“

One size does not fit all

The way young people think and talk about their mental health is influenced largely by their cultural background. founder Tolulope Ola understands this at her core.

A Nigerian immigrant and community activist, she saw that members of her community — especially young people who straddled between their family’s traditional culture and that of their U.S.-raised peers — struggled with their mental health. The adults in their schools often misinterpreted what they were trying to say, or failed to see that they were hurting.

These misunderstandings arose from a lack of cultural knowledge, Ola said: “Most of the organizations working in the schools don’t have what it takes to work with immigrant and refugee families.”

These gaps include a lack of personal understanding of the immigrant and refugee experience. “Many of these kids spent a foundational part of their lives in refugee camps,” Ola explained, where they learned survival skills often at odds with American behavioral expectations. When they surface in everyday interactions, these survival skills can be misinterpreted by school staff, and students can end up with diagnoses that aren’t accurate.

To address this issue, Ola said that she and her Restoration for All team have visited schools to hold workshops with school staff. They share information with educators about the traumas that many young people and their parents endured on their journeys to the United States, and they offer concrete examples of how best to interact with students when speaking about their mental health.

“Instead of asking kids, ‘What is wrong with you?’” Ola said, “we want educators and other adults to instead ask the question, ‘What happened to you?’ These children have lived through so much. The body holds the score.”

Ruth Ezeagwula, Restoration for All mental health and suicide prevention coordinator, said many young people from African immigrant and refugee communities feel like they have to switch behaviors and ways of speaking between school and home, especially when it comes to discussions about mental health. While immigrant and refugee kids are taught about the importance of speaking up about mental health concerns at school, many of their families avoid or even discourage talking about these issues at home, Ezeagwula said.

“Mental health wasn’t a thing that was talked about among the older immigrant and refugee population. It was mostly just, ‘Suck it up,’” she said. “Trying to bridge that gap is hard.”

In 2023, Restoration for All was awarded a four-year, $400,000  from the  (MDH), allowing them to expand the services to young people. This feels particularly important, Ola said, because there has been an among young people in the state’s African immigrant and refugee community.

“We are providing services for children, like mental health screening groups and individual therapy as well as suicidal monitoring,” Ola said. “We also do African mind-body practices to get them grounded. Sometimes they respond more to therapy when it is grounded in their cultural practices.”

Another MHD grant has funded Restoration for All’s work in schools in the Twin Cities, St. Cloud and Rochester “in connection with another organization called , as well as working in communities on [substance use disorder] and building peer support,” Ola said. “Though these issues cut across generations, our focus is on youth.”

In the trenches

On a late spring afternoon at St. Anthony Middle School, White is having a slow day. On the days she’s assigned to the school, she holds open hours in her basement office and schedules one-on-one appointments with students looking for addiction and mental health services. She also hosts support group meetings in the school library.

“It ebbs and flows,” White said of student visits. “Sometimes I’ll have a full load of kids. Sometimes it’s quiet.” Sometimes, concerned teachers send students to her. Other times, kids stop by for a quick check-in on their own.

While she wants young people to avoid using substances, White understands that many teens already drink or use illegal drugs or tobacco. She also believes that schools underreport substance use among students. “They might say only 2% use, but from what I hear it’s actually more like 70% of students use,” she said. “Schools turn a blind eye.”

Because of widespread use, White chooses to take a gentle-handed approach to her work. She believes accepting reality is the best way to actually help young people quit. “My goal is harm reduction,” she said. “I want these students to make educated decisions. That wasn’t available when I was young. I’ll just say, ‘Don’t do it for a day.’ They’ll come back and say, ‘I didn’t do it for a whole week.’ It’s a kind of reverse psychology.”

White’s work in schools is paid for by contracts and grants awarded to Know the Truth, not by individual insurance. Partway through the school year, she learned that her contract at Hastings High School was eliminated due to federal funding cuts. Not having a peer support counselor at the school has been a blow to some of the kids she saw there, White said. “They are really struggling. They’ll text me and say, ‘I wish you were here.’”

While cutbacks like this are discouraging, White tries to focus on the inroads she’s made with students at Quora, an alternative learning center for students with behavioral health needs in Little Canada.

For her first year in the building, White said that students didn’t trust her and it was nearly impossible to make inroads. “It was too chaotic,” she said, adding that the chaos made it impossible to hold support groups. But with time and patience, things changed: “It took me a year to get the students to trust me. But they trust me now. They are like night and day. They are asking me questions, talking to me. It feels pretty successful.”

White credits much of her success to what she calls her “genuine approach.”

“The kids call me Auntie,” White said. “They know I am an authority, but they want to hear what I’ve got to say because I have a friendly demeanor. I tell them, ‘I’m not here to judge you. I don’t care what you do. I just want to help.’ Saying that kind of stuff to them, that breaks the ice, and together we can make a change.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

The number of bills aimed at rolling back or prohibiting in-school protections and health care access has tripled from 77 in 2020 to some 300 a year in 2023, 2024 and 2025, according to the Movement Advancement Project. 

The drumbeat of legislation, report the , has taken a steep toll on the mental health of the students in the crosshairs — regardless of where they live. When the dramatic escalation in legislation started in 2023, 90% of LGBTQ people ages 13 to 24 said politics had a negative impact on their well-being — up from 71% in 2022.  

Policies enabling in-school support are particularly important to LGBTQ youth. Slightly more than half say they are accepted by peers or teachers at school, compared with 40% who are supported at home. The presence of even one supportive educator in a child’s life has long been shown to reduce , anxiety and depression. 

The number of young people impacted has risen sharply in recent years, though estimates vary depending on how data is tabulated. According to a recent Gallup survey, almost 2 million — or 9.5% — of teens ages 13 to 17 now identify as something other than straight or cisgender. That’s nearly twice as many as in 2020. 

The project tracks state LGBTQ and elections policies using interactive maps featuring detailed information that is continually updated. For the new report, researchers states that enacted one or more of 16 types of laws commonly proposed in statehouses since 2020 — nine restrictive and seven protective — throughout the country. 

They then combined that information with demographic data and surveys of LGBTQ young people’s well-being from a number of advocacy organizations. The top takeaway: Whether a student attends a school where teachers are able to talk about LGBTQ history, enforce anti-harassment rules, maintain confidences about a child’s identity and allow gender-nonconforming youth to play sports depends on where they live. 

Nearly half of queer youth live in one of 27 states that have enacted one or more restrictions on their rights, ranging from bathroom bans to laws prohibiting schools from enacting anti-bullying policies. Thirty-eight percent live in the South, 24% in the West, 21% in the Midwest and 17% in the Northeast.  

Of the nine negative state laws the researchers looked at, seven involve schools. The other two are bans on medical care for transgender youth and laws exempting providers of child welfare services, such as foster care, from nondiscrimination rules on religious grounds. 

Tennessee has adopted eight, Arkansas, Montana and Idaho enacted seven each, and six other states imposed six or more new restrictions. Three-fourths of Southern states and two-thirds of the Midwest ban trans youth sports participation and medical care, while a third or fewer do in the West and Northeast.

While several states have adopted new, protective laws since 2020, MAP estimates that 6 in 10 LGBTQ youth live in places where there is no legal guarantee of support. 

In 2023, 2 in 5 LGBTQ young people and their families said they had considered moving because of politics in their home state. Just 4% actually had — but if that rate is an accurate reflection of all affected families, at least 266,000 people have likely relocated, the researchers estimate.

According to a survey released earlier this year by The Trevor Project, 25% of cisgender queer youth and their families and 45% of trans families to a state with more protective laws. Seven in 10 families with a transgender member living in states with restrictive laws have thought about relocating, while 12% have crossed state lines for medical care.     

Along with its state policy tally, the project released summarizing information gathered by half a dozen LGBTQ advocacy groups about the impact the recent political climate has had on queer young people. The data echoes the 2023 findings of a 74 investigation that found harassment, victimization and discrimination have spiked in blue states as well as red. 

Recent surveys by The Trevor Project and GLSEN, which advocate for protective school policies, found there is no state where fewer than 93% of LGBTQ students reported hearing slurs in school in 2023. Nationwide, 83% were harassed, 54% were sexually harassed and more than 12% assaulted. 

Research has long established that a hostile school climate translates to absenteeism, lower grade-point averages and graduation rates, and dramatically higher discipline rates, depression and stress — all of which can impact a student’s life trajectory. 

The number of young people impacted has swelled, a change the report attributes in part to generational shifts. While 3% of Baby Boomers and 5% of Gen X identify as LGBTQ, a 2025 Gallup survey found the rate is 14% among Millennials and 23% for Gen Z. 

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the number of high school students ages 13 to 17 who identify as LGBTQ rose from 11% in 2015 to 26% in 2023.  

Some of the sharp increase can be attributed to changes in how data is collected and categorized; to people realizing at younger ages they are not straight or cisgender; and to internet access to queer communities. But much of the rise can be attributed to the number of young people who identify as bisexual and/or nonbinary.

The number of transgender people of all ages, for example, has hovered around half a percent for the last decade, according to the University of California, Los Angeles’ Williams Institute. Meanwhile, Gallup found 59% of LGBTQ people in Gen Z, defined as those born between 1997 and 2006, are bisexual, and 76% of nonbinary adults are under age 29.

The Los Angeles Unified School District saw an increase in the number of patients, including students and their families, receiving medical, dental and behavioral health services at expanded wellness centers, according to a new  by the Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health. 

The district’s 17 wellness centers and three school-based health centers served nearly 55,000 patients during the 2023-24 school year — an increase of 9% from the previous year — with more than half of student-age patients between 14 and 19 years old. Nearly 7,500 patients visited a wellness center or school-based health center for behavioral health services, a nearly 25% increase compared to the prior year. 

“When students have access to quality healthcare, they have greater opportunities to succeed,” said Maryjane Puffer, executive director of the L.A. Trust, in the report. “The Wellness Centers and SBHCs (school-based health centers) continue to be lifelines for students and families.” 

The centers provide comprehensive behavioral health services such as mental health assessments, substance use evaluations, developmental screenings and psychotherapy. Of the patients who were between the ages of 6 and 19, 27% were receiving psychotherapy at an L.A. Unified wellness center. 

About a tenth of the children age 6 to 19 also received a mental health diagnosis, including for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and attention deficit disorders. More than a third of those diagnoses were of “other disorders,” including autism, disorders related to severe stress, and developmental disorders, which increased from the 2021-22 school year. 

“These numbers reflect growing trust in the services and a deepening understanding of the connection between health and academic success,” Puffer said. 

Students also received primary care services, preventative services such as medical screenings, flu and measles vaccinations, testing for sexually transmitted infections, contraceptive management, referrals to substance use treatment and dental exams. 

The report also indicated that 37% of patients 6 to 19 years old were diagnosed as overweight or obese, an increase of 7% from the previous year. Nearly half of all patients who were seen were also diagnosed as overweight or obese.

“The data also underscores ongoing challenges, including rising obesity rates and persistent behavioral health needs,” Puffer said. “These findings fuel our commitment to expanding innovative solutions such as dental-medical integration, mental health interventions, and partnerships that promote healthier lifestyles for students.” 

This was originally published on .

There is a persistent misunderstanding that child development mainly occurs through “sensitive periods” of brain plasticity. While these are neurobiological realities and concentrate in the early and teen years, development from ages 6 to 12. In middle childhood, what some researchers call the , the brain is fine-tuning itself for the what’s ahead. It trims away unused connections and strengthens the ones children use most, making thinking more efficient. Messages travel faster along these pathways, helping kids focus, remember and manage their impulses. This is also when brain systems for planning, problem-solving and getting along with others grow stronger, laying the foundation for the more complex learning and relationships of adolescence.

But kids this age are grappling with rising rates of anxiety and depression, unrelenting social-media pressure and even the lure of artificial intelligence “friends” that can replace real-world connection. Pediatricians and teachers are : Kids who used to skip into school are now dragging their feet, weighed down by worry.

What’s happening?

A few things. The pandemic left lasting scars. Children lost classrooms, playgrounds, routines, even relatives. Emergency room visits for mental health crises jumped 24%. Surrounding these impacts are the digital deluge. Heavy social media use is driving up depression, anxiety and isolation. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warns of an “” later in adolescence — and the signs are already cropping up in elementary school. These elementary years are, true to their name, foundational. Socially, emotionally and academically, this is when lifelong patterns are formed. But kids this age don’t always show their struggles the way teens do. Their worries often go unspoken.

This isn’t just about protecting the middle years of childhood. It makes little sense to invest billions in the early years while limiting the impact of those investments . And it makes no sense to wait until adolescence to try to reconnect with young people who have fallen off track when it’s far easier to keep kids flourishing all the way though. Investing in middle childhood is both worthy on its own merits and a form of prevention, keeping the pipeline strong from early learning through graduation.

But here’s the hopeful part: Researchers and practitioners know what works.

show children in this age band thrive when they have safe environments, consistent relationships with caring adults and engaging opportunities to learn and play. These ingredients can’t be confined to classrooms alone. They require a community effort.

That means parents, teachers, coaches, librarians, pediatricians, afterschool staff and neighbors all pulling in the same direction. It means building out shared practices and norms: daily check-ins where kids feel seen, pediatric visits that include questions about friendships, mentors who know how to spot early warning signs, even small gestures — like a friendly “How’s school going?” — that remind children that they matter.

But for this to happen, middle childhood must be on the policy agenda. That means building smoother transitions from early learning into elementary school and from elementary into middle school, and making before- and after-school programs, summer learning and enrichment universally available for elementary-age kids, not . It also means ensuring the adults who regularly interact with this age group have the training, time and support to nurture social, emotional and cognitive growth alongside academics. If adults are caught in a whirlwind of scarcity and stress, children in the missing middle are more likely to be ignored.

Expanding the agenda is ambitious, but not unrealistic. The nation has done it before. From expanding early nutrition programs to launching Early Head Start classrooms to now passing widespread restrictions on cellphone usage during the school day, society has acted boldly for children when science and the moment demanded it. When researchers learned how toxic stress harms babies’ brains, communities responded — with warmth, conversation and responsive care. Today, communities and policymakers are actively responding to the damage it is now clear social media can wreak on adolescent brains.

Child and family stakeholders know how to mobilize  —  and need to again in order to activate communities’ collective understanding and response. Kids going through middle childhood deserve nothing less. As Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “We cannot sit idly by.”

Let’s not.

We analyzed four waves of Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study from the 2020-21 school year for 6,245 teens (mean age 13.2 years) nationwide. Forty-two percent of them attended school remotely, 27% attended at least partially in person, 24% moved from remote to in-person learning and 7% attended in some other pattern (moving into and out of in-person learning multiple times, for example). The racial/ethnic composition was similar to that of the United States teen population, with 53% white respondents, 14% Black, 24% Latino and 10% students with other backgrounds. The sample was approximately evenly split by gender, and about one-fourth of responding students came from households with total income under $50,000.

What did we find?

In line with the accepted wisdom, teens who attended school in person during the 2020-21 school year reported better than those who took online or hybrid classes. They reported being both happier and less stressed.

But when looking at the relationship between the type of school attended and mental health for teens of different races/ethnicities, family incomes and types of neighborhoods, we found disparate patterns.

Black and Latino teens, lower-income students and those from less-advantaged neighborhoods often reported being happier and less stressed when they attended school remotely that year than hybrid or in person. This is in contrast to the finding that, overall, teens in remote schooling reported being less happy. In some cases, the less-privileged teens reported being happier than their more privileged peers in remote schooling; in others, it meant that less-privileged teens reported similar mental health across all types of schooling, whereas their wealthier classmates reported worse mental health when attending remotely.

More privileged teens were happiest and least stressed when attending school in person.

These differences were sometimes quite large. For instance, white students attending school in person scored 2.7 points higher on our 36-point measure of happiness than those in fully remote classes. But for Black students, it was the opposite — those attending in person scored 0.5 points lower. Latino students also did not see nearly the large benefit of in-person attendance as white students did. Similarly, students whose families earned between $100,000 and $199,999 a year scored 2.7 points higher when attending in person versus remote. But those whose families earned less than $25,000 per year scored 1.2 points lower. Similar patterns were seen on our measures of stress levels.

The survey responses do not contain enough information to explain these widely disparate patterns. Maybe less-privileged teens, whose families were by the pandemic than their wealthier peers, were more concerned about contracting COVID and infecting loved ones. Perhaps their schools were more stressful than those attended by more privileged teens, so remote schooling was a welcome reprieve. Whatever the reason, the type of school predicted different mental health outcomes for different groups of students, complicating the story that school closures were bad for all kids.

This is not to say that kids with different backgrounds should be encouraged to attend school remotely versus in person in the name of mental health. At a baseline, that’s segregation, which is morally repugnant. On top of that, our analysis didn’t touch on the academic harms of remote schooling, which are — particularly for less-privileged students, who tend to suffer greater learning loss than their more privileged peers. When making a decision as important as whether to close schools, officials must consider multiple effects, including academics and mental and public health.

But it is critically important to get to the bottom of why students from varied backgrounds experienced different types of school so differently. If schools are to be places where all students can learn at their best and thrive, they must support the mental health and well-being of students from all backgrounds.

It is clear from our research that simplistic understandings about what happened in schools during COVID no longer suffice. Our results provide valuable new evidence that the closures were experienced differently by varied groups of students, so it shouldn’t be surprising if different student groups need different interventions and resources in recovering from the pandemic and its aftermath.

Unfortunately, the possibility of future pandemics and other disasters means spring 2020 may not be the last time U.S. schools need to close on a large scale. The next time schools shut and then reopen, less-privileged students may need help in transitioning back to in-person schooling, above and beyond the support all students will need to make up missed learning.

Research described in this article was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health,  Award Number R01HD108398 (PI: Hackman). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Will they have setbacks without the structure and resources that many schools provide, like healthy lunches and guidance counselors? Will they spend more time than usual on their phone? Will they get enough sleep? Too much? 

Raising kids in these modern times means grappling with countless questions, many of which intensify around this time of year.

As parents, it’s our job to keep our kids safe and happy, and that can feel like a tall order at a time when the state of youth mental health is declining. The shows that two in five high school students reported feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness, and one in five seriously considered attempting suicide. We must look at these somber numbers not as a data set, but as an urgent call to action. 

According to from the Coalition to Empower our Future –- an organization  we help lead –- parents across the country are worried about the state of youth mental health. Nearly 60% consider it “very or somewhat poor,” and only one in four believe it will be better in the next six months. This is not the future that we should settle on for our kids.

Luckily, there’s a promising starting point for tackling the youth mental health challenge, and it begins with using a broad lens. To have a chance at improving things for our children, we need to consider the many factors that impact their mental health.

We know each child’s experience and situation is different. This is true even across different kids in the same households. Competitive sports may provide a healthy outlet for one but may overwhelm another. The child in rural Texas facing food and housing insecurity will have different anxieties than the child in Los Angeles being bullied at school. One teen may suffer from too much time on social media, while on those same platforms, his brother may find a meaningful community that makes him feel less alone. 

So, it makes sense that parents surveyed in our coalition’s research see youth mental health as a complex and multifaceted issue. As one parent in Texas put it, “Even if you find a solution, it may work for a little while or for some children, but then if anxiety or a new issue crops up, then you may have to find a different solution. [The approach] has to stay pretty fluid.” We surveyed 2,320 parents in April, including 600 each in California, Texas and New York.

Furthermore, nearly eight in 10 people surveyed believe a comprehensive approach to tackling the youth mental health challenge is better than a narrow one focused on one singular cause, such as phones and similar devices. As former public servants, we know that overly narrow solutions can’t solve such complex problems effectively. And as parents, we also know that what may work for one child, family or community may not work for another. 

Parents aren’t the only ones who see a comprehensive approach as the best means of addressing youth mental health challenges. In a separate of more than 1,400 clinicians, the majority said there isn’t one simple solution to the youth mental health challenge and urged policymakers to make multiple investments and reforms to solve it.

We must meet this issue’s nuance with an equally nuanced mindset for problem-solving. That requires a serious dialogue about how we support parents and kids in navigating these challenges.

Despite a difficult environment, many parents are doing their best to serve as safe spaces and advocates for their kids. Our coalition’s research shows that they rely on a broad range of resources and people — mental health professionals, family members, friends, religious organizations and teachers — to help them support their children’s mental health. Schools are an essential part of this effort. We need increased collaboration among parents, community leaders, educators, and policymakers to better support our kids. 

Parents are understandably frustrated by how challenging it is to find the right tools and resources to support their kids, and they want youth mental health to be more affordable and accessible. Communities must identify ways to increase access to care through multiple avenues like telehealth, group sessions, community-based care, and more. We can’t solve this problem without every voice at the table.

As partners in a coalition working to convene a broad conversation about youth mental health, we see the power of bringing disparate perspectives together to discuss the challenge from a variety of angles. Our coalition includes organizations focused on afterschool programs, media literacy, mental and physical health conditions, homelessness, LGBTQ youth, Jewish families and child welfare, among others. 

As former public servants and parents ourselves, we know there is a widespread and bipartisan consensus around the urgency of solving this generational challenge.

We have a chance to make meaningful change – we should take it. Our kids deserve the very best. 

 The three authors serve on the board of directors of the Coalition to Empower our Future.

By the end, though, I wish it had been called An Adolescent.

I’m sure its title was intentional. My alternative isn’t catchy and theirs resonates with parent’s and society’s deep fears and default mindsets about terrifying teens. These include:

•  Our kids, especially boys, are on the edge of falling into the dangerous trap of social media.
• They are unruly and often clash with detached, emotional dads. 
•  They lack respect for adults and struggle in chaotic schools where teachers resort to shouting to maintain control.

Many discussions about youth in TV shows, movies, research, and everyday conversations , despite social science suggesting a more positive approach. Cultural narratives about “kids these days” often focus on deficits, especially regarding youth from groups that have been the targets of discrimination and oppression. They are among the most maligned, creating harmful stereotypes that leave many feeling undervalued.

Ages 10 to 25 are crucial for the development of youth and young adults — for their identity formation, decision-making, and personal growth, and also to learn from mistakes. While some young people do get caught up in dangerous content online, . While some do struggle, their experiences should not define or overshadow the dynamic potential of this developmental stage like Adolescence does. 

Many of the poignant moments in Adolescence are between boys and their dads. These scenes show both generations struggling awkwardly to connect, to understand each other, and to express affection. The series’ co-creator and co-writer, that Jamie’s father, Eddie Miller, isn’t “overly tender and doesn’t tell his boy he loves him constantly…. [But he] brings in as much love as he can. He does to the best of his ability.” As viewers, it seems just fine, since that’s just the way it is.

The myth of the inevitable conflict between teenagers and parents, though persistent, is overblown. , and everyday bickering is normal as young people become more independent. But only 5% to 15%  of teenagers have serious, ongoing conflicts with their parents. Perceptions of the level of conflict vary between mothers, fathers, and teenagers within the same family, and . None of that means that families are a war zone or that teens live in a different world from their parents.

consistently shows that, on average, teenagers from all backgrounds view their families positively. In a study of over 27,000 young people grades 4 to 12, the vast majority said they have strong relationships with their parents, with 85% reporting that their families consistently provide love and support. It’s not okay that 14% of these youth say their family gives them love and support only sometimes or not at all. Those families need targeted support and healing. But they are not the norm that you might assume by what is portrayed in Adolescence and public discourse.

Teenagers and adults inhabit separate worlds in Adolescence. Teenagers use a secret language of emojis that adults struggle to understand, leading to communication breakdowns and frustration. Psychologist Briony Ariston works hard to build rapport with Jamie, so much so that he asks her if she likes him “just as a person.” It’s evident she has developed a bond with him when she breaks down after he leaves, though she doesn’t show him. 

Jamie’s deepest longing is to know that despite committing a terrible act, he has inherent value as a person and he is loved. Mutual relationships are essential for building trust, but some people who work with youth have conflated the importance of maintaining professional boundaries with not expressing responsible, genuine care. This is essential for effective practice and for recognizing the humanity of even those .

the justice system would be more effective if those in the system could be seen as, in Jamie’s words, “just as a person” while they are serving their sentence. Unfortunately, youth of color and others who have been marginalized are less likely to be liked “just as a person” when the adults around them are mainly from the majority culture.

About 75% of young people report feeling supported by adults outside their families. While surveys indicate variability in support from specific groups like teachers or youth workers, adults generally view their more positively than the youth themselves do. This highlights the opportunity for improvement, showing that current realities differ from common perceptions about adolescence.

Finally, Adolescence portrayed secondary schools as hellholes where teachers scream at students in a futile effort to gain a modicum of control. Yes, that verbal threats and violent behaviors have increased since before the pandemic. Yet despite facing challenges, our research found 68% of students grades 4 to 12 often feel safe at school, and 67% believe rules are enforced fairly. 

Creating safer, relationship-centered schools requires significant effort. Many students, teachers, and families are bullied or overlooked, especially in lower-resourced communities that struggle to meet daily needs. However, across diverse schools, administrators, educators, and families are collaborating to foster respectful and engaging environments where every student feels welcomed and safe. It’s challenging, but it is achievable.

Adolescence is a compelling series that raises questions about families, adolescence, youth culture, and society, which merits far more attention than they usually get. I worry that the vast majority of compelling stories that shape our culture’s thoughts about kids reinforce narrow, problematic, and deficit-focused views. I want to hear diverse stories of teens from various places, cultures, and backgrounds, showcasing their sparks, struggles, and solutions. I seek narratives of young people, with the support of adults, becoming positive forces in their communities and the world as they transition into adulthood.

The outcomes surprised me. Not only were my patients engaged; kids introduced me to beloved pets and belongings, and children who had been shy in person chatted comfortably from their bedrooms. What I first saw as a barrier became an unexpected window into my patients’ lives. It soon became clear that teletherapy could be a powerful solution to the growing mental health needs of America’s kids.

It’s not just me. shows high-quality virtual treatment has made a meaningful difference for countless children and families — for anxiety, stress, depression and PTSD, and across age groups, it bridges critical access gaps and offers benefits that often match and even surpass traditional face-to-face treatment. 

Partner schools refer students across grade levels to therapists of mental health issues. shows that equitable access to 1:1 virtual care has improved school attendance, reduced behavioral issues and drastically reduced wait times for support.

Teletherapy also offers unique clinical advantages. For children with anxiety, being at home creates a sense of safety that encourages openness. When overwhelmed, kids can step away or turn off their camera, giving them space to manage their emotions in ways that aren’t always possible in person. Plus, virtual sessions can help families assess and de-escalate situations before they reach crisis levels.

Alongside stigma, access is one of the biggest obstacles to youth mental health care. Families often face barriers like transportation, tight schedules, cost and limited local providers. The is overwhelming — some 20% of children in the U.S. have a diagnosable mental health condition, yet from a mental health professional. And of those who do, before receiving adequate care, particularly those from low-income families. 

Teletherapy transforms this landscape. Kids can join from home or a private space at school, and parents can participate without missing hours of work. Schools can help connect families to care, often at low or no cost. Virtual care also opens doors to a broader network of clinicians, including those who speak a family’s language or specialize in specific needs. This flexibility in matching — regardless of geographic constraints — can help families connect with the care they need and supports the building of stronger relationships, leading to better outcomes.

Teletherapy is also a critical lifeline for those working in school districts. Counselors and teachers are often the first to notice when a child is struggling, but they’re stretched impossibly thin. The a student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1, yet the national average is 408:1, with some states facing much worse.

Virtual care helps bridge this gap without overburdening school staff. And when schools, providers and families work together, the result is a stronger, more coordinated safety net for students. 

For teletherapy to be effective, however, clinicians must possess the skill set to and build rapport in new ways — it’s not simply a matter of moving care from in person to online. Structured virtual activities such as interactive games, role playing or guided drawing exercises, digital communication skills and caregiver involvement are and delivering meaningful care. That’s why it’s essential for families and schools to work with clinicians trained in virtual treatment.

While most adults still , today’s kids — raised on FaceTime, Zoom and social media — often feel more comfortable . Many prefer the familiarity of digital platforms, and tools like screen sharing, whiteboards and online games can make therapy more dynamic and engaging. Teletherapy isn’t a replacement for all in-person care, especially for complex cases. But it’s a powerful, proven solution for many. Across the country, schools and families continue to see a  , and virtual care can offer access, flexibility and effectiveness at scale. Looking ahead, there’s no doubt that teletherapy will play an increasingly vital role in shaping the future of student mental health care.

These relationships are now in jeopardy. Recent federal cuts to education programs will directly impact initiatives like after-school programs, mentorship programs, and youth counseling services — critical resources that connect students with trusted adults who can guide them through difficult times.

Parents play a key role in their child’s wellbeing, of course, but they are not the only source of support for children and teens. that having a caring, reliable adult — whether a teacher, coach, mentor, tutor or neighbor — can profoundly impact a young person’s well-being and resilience.

These relationships matter. In a of over 130,000 students, those least susceptible to suicidal thoughts and bullying were those who reported having strong connections with not just their parents, but also other caring adults. found that students who felt supported by teachers were less likely to struggle with behavioral issues, even when facing bullying.

We’ve long known that parents can help young people feel supported, validated, and equipped to handle adversity. But rates of parental burnout are increasing, with reporting that they feel completely overwhelmed. In 2024, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared parent burnout .

There’s never been a better time to recognize and invest in other adults who have a role to play in raising children. In addition to rising , children today face increasing and a lack of accessible resources and support services. 

Trusted adults can lessen these burdens. With the right training, a teacher, mentor, or other adult can provide invaluable emotional, psychological, and even academic support to children and teens. They can literally save lives, helping young people navigate adolescence with a sense of security and confidence. And : Adults who invest in children’s lives often find a renewed .

To be sure, trusted adults are not just anyone. We’ve seen tragic instances of adults, both parents and non-parents, misusing their positions of trust; that has led to a growing awareness of the dangers of abuse or misconduct. Concerns about should always be taken seriously.

But fear should not prevent us from stepping up to help young people. 

Thankfully, that distinguish a truly trustworthy adult. They foster an environment of safety and trust. They listen without judgment, offer guidance, respect young people’s autonomy and empower them to explore solutions on their own rather than providing all the answers. By contrast, those who seek to exploit their role often resort to manipulation or controlling behavior. They may also demonstrate a lack of respect for boundaries or a tendency to dismiss concerns.

To increase the number of trusted adults in young people’s lives, it is critical to engage community members and support science-backed mentoring programs. For example, a school-based group counseling and mentoring program, has been improve school engagement and reduce violent crime involvement among young men. 

Programs like , a comprehensive youth development program, provide education, mentorship, and job training for young adults between the ages of 16 and 24, increase college enrollment, improve employment outcomes and promote civic engagement, . also provides mentorship that builds confidence and leadership skills for girls and young women, with research in both academics and behavior.

Expanding programs like these across a variety of interests — whether in visual arts, music, sports, or academics — can help ensure that all young people have access to mentors who can guide them, help them build self-esteem, and inspire them to develop their unique talents.

With less access to such programs, many young people will lose the mentors they need, as well as opportunities to engage in activities that nurture their personal growth, mental health, and leadership skills. This harms children and threatens the fabric of our society, leaving a generation without the tools they need to contribute meaningfully to our democracy. We need more programs, not fewer, and more people willing to step up to support our children. 

By recognizing the importance of trusted adults in the lives of children, we can create a broader safety net that extends beyond households, ensuring that young people receive the support they need to succeed and thrive. When we connect with the young people in our lives, we play a role in raising a generation that feels supported, as well as in creating a society that values connection, compassion, and the mental health and well-being of its young people.

That’s a fancy way of saying bots are increasingly capable of sounding human, putting humans increasingly at risk of bonding with them. OpenAI admits its own catch-22: These improvements create “both a compelling product experience and the potential for overreliance and dependence.” In short, as the tech gets better, the social risks get worse.

Ed tech tools are not immune to this challenge. As AI floods the market, technology companies and district leaders alike must start asking the hard question: If bots are increasingly built to emulate human relationships — if they are being engineered to sound human — are they also being designed to help connect students to actual humans?

If not, AI tools run a big risk of displacing their human connections. That poses long-term risks to students’ well-being, their ability to maintain human relationships and their access to networks that open doors to opportunities.

In a new report, , Anna Arsenault and I set out to analyze whether and how that question is being addressed in AI-enabled college and career guidance.

This is a domain where chatbots are especially likely to take hold. On average, high schools have one guidance counselor for every . Research suggests a mere of high school counselors’ time is spent on career advising. Such scarce human resources create gaps where chatbots can help, offering students on-demand personalized advice about applying to college, graduating and launching careers.

Our report features insights from founders, CEOs and chief technology officers at over 30 technology companies that build and implement chatbots to support students as they apply to college and continue through to their careers.

Based on these interviews, Open AI’s warnings about anthropomorphization — attributing human characteristics to non-human things — ring true. For example, most college and career bots have names and are designed to mimic cheerful, upbeat personalities. Many go beyond informational support to offer students emotional and motivational assistance when counselors can’t.

Are students over-relying on these bots? It’s too early to tell. But while most of the leaders we interviewed envision a system of hybrid advising that gives students access to both bots and human coaches, the majority admitted that some students gravitate toward bots in hopes of avoiding human interaction altogether.

In short, the possibility that students may start to bond with and rely on bots, rather than humans, is very real.

Luckily, a number of the leaders are taking steps to build bots that foster relationships, rather than just mimicking them. Here are five examples of efforts to ensure that authentic human connection is an outcome, rather than a casualty, of AI products:

Promoting frequent social interaction offline: , which spun out of Arizona State University’s student-led , is an AI companion that supports students’ personal growth. The bot has been trained to learn about the relationships in students’ lives. If students tell the bot they are struggling or bored, it will suggest reaching out to specific friends or family members. Axio has also worked to curb overreliance by limiting students’ time on the app.

Involving students’ families and friends: is a nonprofit that operates a virtual community center where students can interact with AI-powered coaches that help them apply to college. To ensure that those digital relationships don’t replace real ones, Uprooted Academy asks students to identify up to five supportive individuals in their lives when they enroll. The tool automatically updates those five people by text message every two weeks with recommendations for supporting students’ college progress.

Prompting conversations — even the hard ones: , an AI counselor and tutor, coaches high school students throughout the college application process. Through conversations with the students, CollegeVine’s bot, Sage, keeps track of how they describe their interactions with advisers and teachers. When it comes time to ask for recommendation letters, the bot can coach students on whom to ask and how to address any challenges they might have faced in interacting with those adults.

Matching students and mentors: is a platform that recruits online volunteer mentors to coach high school students on projects related to their academic and extracurricular interests. The company recently released an AI success coach, Lubav, which helps students find the right mentors on the platform and craft messages to them.

Practicing networking through online role-playing: is a chatbot designed to help students practice asking for help. The platform includes a series of career development activities in which students practice for interviews with the bot and draft networking and job-hunting emails, social media messages and letters asking for references.

These examples highlight AI’s potential to strengthen human connections. However, the incentives to build relationship-centered AI tools are weak. Few schools are asking for these social features or evaluating tools for their social impacts.

If things remain as they are, the more anthropomorphic bots simulate relationships across guidance, tutoring and student support, the more they could foster student isolation. 

But that outcome is not inevitable. Research underscores the importance of relationships in and . To live up to their mission, schools should prioritize human connection, ensuring that AI tools work for — not against — expanding students’ networks. Information technology coordinators and purchasers, superintendents, principals and educators who are involved in procuring new technologies should demand evidence that AI enhances relationships and implement data systems to track that progress. Entrepreneurs taking steps to safeguard and expand connections should be rewarded for their efforts.

Otherwise, ed tech companies risk the same catch-22 as OpenAI: building artificial intelligence that gets better and better, but to the detriment of the human relationships students need to thrive.

Disclosure: Julia Freeland Fisher serves as an unpaid adviser to Backrs.

From abortion to taxes to private school choice, many issues divide along party lines. But as youth suicide, self-harm and related challenges remain at crisis levels, mental health can and must remain a bipartisan issue. 

The most recent from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention paints a grim picture of the state of mental health among kids and teens in America. According to the survey, nearly all indicators of poor mental health, including suicidal thoughts and behaviors, worsened between 2013 and 2023. In fact, in 2023 alone, 20% of students seriously considered suicide and almost 10% made an attempt. These numbers are deeply concerning, particularly as mental health issues are affecting younger and younger children.

At , the mental health provider I co-founded to offer telehealth services to students, families and educators, more and more young people are being referred by their school counselors. The differ based on age, but common challenges include anxiety, coping, family and relationship issues, and depression. What is abundantly clear is that there are not enough targeted resources — whether in schools or communities — to address this crisis. 

In an era of ever-increasing political polarization at the federal level, state capitals are the most promising venues for sustained, rapid, bipartisan action on youth mental health that is tailored to local needs. Here are four state lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, who are working to expand mental health resources with efficient, effective solutions:

Before being elected to the Indiana state Senate in 2012, Republican was the director of law enforcement for the state Department of Natural Resources. He witnessed firsthand how the challenges the department faced daily were directly connected to gaps in mental health services that have existed for years and been further amplified since COVID. Since then, Crider has pushed for mental health reform. In 2023, he led efforts to pass , which built out a system of for children and adults, and he is looking to expand these efforts next year in partnership with the Indiana Mental Health Roundtable.

State Sen. has been a mental health advocate since joining the Colorado State House in 2017. A Democrat, in 2018 she authored , which expanded access to youth suicide prevention programs and lowered the age of consent for minors to seek outpatient psychotherapy services. During the pandemic, she authorized legislation creating the program, which provides up to six free sessions of virtual or in-person therapy to all kids in Colorado. Last year, she was able to extend the funding for iMatter for another decade, and as the incoming president pro tem of the Colorado Senate, she is poised to continue her advocacy for youth behavioral health.

State Rep. , Republican of Georgia, has a deep personal connection that has inspired him to become a leading voice in mental health. After , his son was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, and while his family was able to afford care, he saw that most Georgians couldn’t. That led him to spearhead efforts to pass in 2022, the Mental Health Parity Act, which dramatically expanded mental health insurance coverage across the Peach State. More recently, Jones led the charge to raise Medicaid reimbursement rates for behavioral health coverage, which will increase the number of providers in the state. 

In his first budget session as chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery, Massachusetts Democratic state Sen. established a pilot program for school-based telehealth services. These are now available in the Somerville and Agawam school districts, in partnership with Cartwheel, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program.

Lawmakers all over the country from different backgrounds are supporting mental health legislation and advocating for solutions. Beyond the examples cited above, there has been bipartisan support for investment in school-based mental health solutions in Pennsylvania, with $100 million annually going toward a mental health and school safety fund; in Arizona, $2 million has been appropriated for a rural telehealth pilot; and Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida are creating a per-pupil mental health allotment. The work continues, across the aisle, to build out successful solutions to the ongoing mental health crisis.

Correction: The Colorado state senator’s last name is Michaelson-Jenet.

“Congratulations! You have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation. Bring all your stuff, and be there on time.”

Similar text messages were also received by Black children and students across the country. For me – an education analyst and school leader – and for my son – a freshman at a historically Black university – the jarring incident not only infuriated us. It also prompted important questions about how best we should respond in this fraught time in our history.

Hudson’s natural reaction was to reach out to his family. Here’s how he recalls the episode:

On Nov. 6, I was sitting at my desk doing work, when I saw a text come in from one of my group chats. There are about 12 of us on that chat—all of us friends, most of us are in college, some of us go to the same school. In the text, one friend asked the group, “Have you all seen the plantation text?” At the time, most of us hadn’t yet gotten the text on our own phones (that would happen over the next few days), so she shared a screen grab.

None of us knew how to respond. The language was obviously racist, but it was phrased in such a friendly manner that it was more confusing than inflammatory. It was only after I read it a few more times that the words sunk in. I was shocked.

At the time we didn’t know how many people had received the text, or if it had been sent to people in other areas. But all of us began to grow very upset. And angry. Racism in any form upsets me. That’s why I decided to tell my family in our group chat. I was raised to believe that when bad things happen, you need to check in immediately with people you trust, and family is the first place you go for that trust. 

—

When Hudson’s missive reached our family chat, I was among the first to read it. Our family chat is typically a boisterous free-for-all, filled with comments about upcoming plans, family jokes and dog photos. But now we all fell silent. One by one, my parents, my uncle and our cousins began to weigh in about the mysterious nature of Hudson’s text. Who sent it? How did they get the students’ phone numbers? And most important, what can we do to support my son, a freshman, who had just left the nest?

My chest constricted, and a familiar, unpleasant feeling began to set in. I felt the same sense of disorientation two years earlier when someone called my daughter the n-word at school. I wrote about it in 2022, : “I’ve worked in schools in New York City for more than 10 years and received my doctorate in educational leadership, yet I felt ill-equipped at first to handle this situation because this was my daughter.”

This time it was my son.

Somehow this felt even more invasive. Only a few months ago, I was basking in the joy of my son attending an HBCU, building his independence, beginning adulthood. Yet now, racist hatred had reached Hudson in a way that was faceless and intangible. How do I tell him that this is the world we live in? And how can I, a researcher who studies hope, provide some glimmer of optimism at such a dark moment?

Given my background in education, I knew that, legally, there were resources and systems my child could turn to for help and assistance. But more immediately, I needed to know how to provide comfort to him when he is many states away at a college.

How we respond to our children at this moment in our history — particularly as they navigate a national mental health crisis — is crucial. And so my advice to parents is to channel the fierce anger into something positive and constructive.

Here’s what we did:

Report it.

We began making calls. According to Jessica Rosenworcel, chair of the , law enforcement bureaus are investigating the texts, which were apparently sent to Black people across the country, targeting various HBCU students. This first step of reporting an incident to the authorities is essential, so that they can properly document the scale of the problem.

Hold space for your child and validate their feelings.

When my son first shared the text to our family chat, I called him privately and offered to drive to his school and pick him up. The mother bear in me kicked in: I wanted to bring him home and protect him, and I was determined not to let him get hurt again. I know from my studies, as well as my own personal experience, that the unknown is scary; and that having an anonymous threat targeted at you makes that dreadful feeling overwhelming. But, no surprise, I couldn’t tear Hudson away from the friends, community and independence that he’d rightfully earned at his school and was obviously enjoying.

So instead, I validated his feelings over the phone, confirming to him that it is painful to read a text like that, and that it was okay to feel the anger he was feeling. But I also encouraged him to understand that this was the precise mission of the racist actors who’d sent the text: to disrupt and disorient him. What he did with those feelings, I told him, was up to him.

Monitor your child’s mental health.

It is no secret that, since the pandemic, mental health challenges with teenagers and college students have soared to an all-time high. Indeed, in 2023, the National Educational Association that most college students today meet the criteria for having at least one mental health issue.

Today, we, as parents, are on the front lines of this problem, and we are being called on every day to bear witness to the vulnerability of our children’s mental health and well-being. So what do we need to do? 

Speak to professionals about what resources are available for situations like this; reach out to other parents to share ideas about supporting our children.

Additionally, have a conversation with yourself about your expectations. In our household, for example, we want our children to do well, but they are not required to have perfect grades or attendance. Mental health always takes priority, so if that means taking a day off from school, so be it. 

We will all face many challenges as we continue to navigate this divided world, but care, empathy and support are paramount for our children. I had to put aside my own fierce anger and make room for my son to share what was going on inside him. It is our duty as parents to navigate these challenges with micro-doses of hope and solidarity.

In early 2021, the district was back in school after closing for the pandemic, but my teachers were fried. We serve approximately 1,300 students in four schools and three off-campus sites, including a program for 18- to 22-year-olds with a high level of special needs and pre-K-12 programs for those with social-emotional disabilities and autism. We were all waiting to see if we would get a vaccine for the coronavirus, and everybody was a mess.  

To help teachers de-stress, I took a 200-hour teacher training in mindfulness, social-emotional learning and yoga with . Educators can integrate these practices into their classrooms and use them to support their own mental and physical health. Everyone who completes the course is certified to teach yoga, so when I finished, I offered my stressed-out teachers a class on Fridays. We met in the library. Everybody spread out and brought their own mat, giving us enough physical distance that we could take our masks off. 

When the first six-week session was done, all 10 teachers said they wanted to continue — and learn to teach yoga themselves. Today, the district has about 46 educators who are certified Breathe for Change facilitators, and our program serves a dual purpose. It helps the teachers help themselves, which empowers them to build a culture of care and trust with their students. And it benefits our students in a variety of ways.

The schools where teachers regularly implement these strategies have seen a significant decrease in chronic absenteeism. At Colegrove Park Elementary, the rate dropped 11% last year, which put the school in the top 10 for attendance statewide. In recognition of this achievement, Colegrove Park was awarded a from the NBA champion Boston Celtics.

One teacher told me that since she started using mindfulness strategies in her fourth-grade classroom, “I haven’t had a significant disciplinary referral this year.” That’s huge in a district where 71% of the students are identified as high-need. As a former science teacher, I love this kind of qualitative evidence that the program is working. 

At Drury High School, one creative teacher came up with the idea of giving students facing discipline a choice: They could sit in detention or participate in mindfulness and yoga practice. So many took her up on it that the school started offering yoga regularly for all students. 

I asked the football coach to co-present with me to all the teaching assistants, and to see him stand there and say, “I know you need this, because I need this,” was amazing. He talked about his football players and said, “I need them in the zone. And for me to get them into the zone, they have to quiet their mind and be fully present to me so they can hear me and understand what I expect from them.” That was a very powerful moment.

The young adults in our 18- to 22-year-old transition program have also been heavily involved. Many of these students are unable to communicate verbally and will always need some level of supervision in their lives. Teachers use yoga breathing techniques to help calm students who become agitated, and the physical movements provide a form of exercise for those who struggle with physical fitness and control.

The program has also grown beyond the district, through partnerships with other community groups and local nonprofits. For example, we offer a free community yoga class at the library twice a week, which primarily draws senior citizens. The class has a limit of 15 people and is always full. I have seen regular attendees progress from not being able to touch their toes to doing full Sun Salutations. Just after the pandemic, I did a session at the library for parents while their kids went off to a reading. It helped them relax and become more comfortable being around other people again. And I’ve done modified yoga sessions for breast cancer survivors, who often lose mobility in their upper body. We have also partnered with the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to develop a graduate-level course for educators in social-emotional learning, and we have a map to provide evidence-based curriculum for all grade levels. 

For next year, my goal is to step back from leading this initiative and have our core group of certified instructors implement practices in the classroom and train their colleagues. I’m getting to the point in my career where I’m thinking about the legacy I will leave to this district that I’ve loved and served. These yoga and mindfulness practices will be an important part of that.

A new initiative from the University of Vermont hopes to address the shortage of mental health professionals available to support the state’s youth.

Known as the Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools, the program plans to train and place 52 school counselors, social workers and mental health clinicians in rural schools throughout Vermont for the next five years.

 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found rising levels of depression and anxiety among Vermont middle and high school students. 

Despite this, Vermont lacks an adequate number of . In 2023, the state’s Workforce Development Board estimated a need for 230 more providers to meet growing demand. 

The new Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools aims to address the gap. 

Through the program — funded by a $3.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education — University of Vermont graduate students are expected to contribute at least 25,000 clinical hours annually to support rural communities.

“Vermont mental health needs are pervasive and complex and they’re currently underserved and this is a way to reach them,” said Anna Elliott, associate professor of counseling.

Elliott, the principal investigator for the grant, has experience running a similar initiative in Montana, where she spent five years developing a program to support rural communities with mental health professionals. 

A key part of the program, Elliot said, is to encourage graduates to continue working in rural schools or mental health facilities after completing their training. She said she tailored the program to Vermont’s unique needs. This included analyzing various statistics from community needs assessments on issues such as suicide rates, substance use disorder and the stigma associated with seeking mental health services, ensuring the program aligns closely with the landscape of Vermont’s mental health needs.

“One of our primary goals in setting up the training program was attending to students’ reports that they often didn’t feel prepared to go and work in a rural environment,” she said. “Having an intensive and intentional training program that sets them up to really understand what they’re walking into and how to be prepared and how to ask for support incentivized students to stay, so we’re hoping to replicate that here.”

The program offers a stipend to those who remain in their assigned schools for at least one year, helping to ease potential barriers like securing a full-time job or finding affordable housing.

In Montana, Elliott said she noticed some graduate students couldn’t stay in rural schools due to limited funding for permanent positions. Other challenges, including housing and job security, also made it difficult for them to remain in these high-need areas.

“I’m taking the model that I did in Montana and integrating that in with the community schools model to not just say, ‘here’s a couple graduate students that will be here for a year’ but let’s actually take a systemic look at what’s happening in the school — what are the needs, resources, barriers and strength,” Elliott said.

To address these challenges, the program focuses on recruiting graduate students who already come from rural areas. By offering low-residency options, the program allows these students to complete much of their coursework remotely. This means they can stay at home rather than moving to campus, making it easier for them to balance their studies with their existing commitments.

“This grant provides significant opportunity to bring students into the helping professions who might not otherwise have access to this kind of specialized training,” said Danielle Jatlow, a co-principal investigator and social worker who coordinates UVM’s bachelor’s of social work program, in a press release from the university.

UVM faculty, including program co-leaders Robin Hausheer and Lance Smith, both associate professors of counseling, are starting outreach to rural schools. They hope to place graduate students in schools as early as this semester, according to the release.

“There are people and kids that are getting served this year that might not have been otherwise,” Elliott said in the release. “So that feels like everything.” 

This was originally published on .

LGBTQ youth advocacy organizations are reporting sharp increases in calls to suicide prevention hotlines, with the overwhelming majority of callers saying the election is the source of their fears. In addition to teens and children, the groups say that in recent days they have also been contacted by unprecedented numbers of families and teachers.

Starting Nov. 3, the number of crisis-service calls, texts and online chats received by The Trevor Project increased 125% over the week before, with an additional spike “beginning Nov. 5 approximately around midnight ET,” an organization spokesperson told ����Ӱ��. Trevor also reported a 200% rise in the number of callers who specifically mentioned the election. 

After former President Donald Trump’s re-election, Trevor posted an advisory note at the top of : “TrevorText and TrevorChat are currently experiencing long hold times due to the election. If you need immediate assistance, please call the TrevorLifeline at 1-866-488-7386.”

The organization has a number of online resources for youth, caregivers and educators, including guidance on , a and . 

“The Trevor Project wants LGBTQ+ young people to know that we are here for you, no matter the outcome of any election, and we will continue to fight for every LGBTQ+ young person to have access to safe, affirming spaces — especially during challenging times,” CEO Jaymes Black said in a statement to ����Ӱ��. “LGBTQ+ young people: Your life matters, and you were born to live it.”

The , which typically receives 3,700 calls a month, logged 2,146 between Nov. 3 and 6 alone. Young people generally make up the vast majority of contacts, but the rate of calls from parents, grandparents and teachers concerned about someone in their family or class jumped from less than 7% of all contacts to 28% during those three days. 

“Most of the time, we take calls from kids in crisis who don’t have supportive families, who are afraid of being evicted or afraid of being outed,” says Lance Preston, the organization’s executive director. “Parents are now calling us about, ‘What am I going to do? What if this turns into a situation like Texas, where if I support my child, I’m going to be investigated by CPS?’ Teachers reaching out and saying, ‘What if I am a supportive ally and my school decides that I [shouldn’t have a] license anymore? Is this election going to create a situation where I could lose my job?’ ” 

The weekend before the election, Rainbow’s hotline took a call from an Alabama 16-year-old who reported he was part of a four-teen suicide pact, Preston says. His colleagues were able to intervene to stop the plan.  

“They had decided that if Trump won the election, that they were going to kill themselves because that meant that the United States people did not want them here and did not want their existence to be accepted,” he says. 

“I’m so thankful that that young person reached out to report that, because we were able to get to the other kids, get their parents involved and do some mitigation and get them some help. But that would have been four kids that we would have lost. That is unacceptable.”

Last winter, the number of calls to Rainbow Youth from young Oklahomans more than tripled after transgender teen Nex Benedict died by suicide following months of in-school bullying. The suicide occurred in February, after a fight in a girls’ restroom that Nex had been forced to use under a new state law.

Nine in 10 callers reported bullying in their school, Preston said at the time. Since the start of this calendar year, the organization has heard reports of nine LGBTQ teen and nine adult suicides in the state. It now operates a crisis support center in Oklahoma City. 

The Southern Equality Project, which to families in the 25 states that have banned LGBTQ youth health care, also reports a “slight uptick” in requests from families of trans youth: “Many of the requests specifically mentioned fears about Trump, a national ban or needing to leave the country for care,” says Communications Director Adam Polaski. 

Because young people have no experience advocating for and securing LGBTQ rights, Preston says, they are particularly vulnerable to political rhetoric. “They didn’t fight for these rights,” he says. “They were born with them, and now they are seeing them taken away.”

He and other advocates say they expect the volume of calls to stay high through at least February, as a second Trump administration presumably begins acting on campaign promises to end gender-affirming care and curtail in-school LGBTQ protections throughout the country. 

“The best thing for us to do is to accept where we are, but also to send a positive message to these young people that we may be heartbroken, but we’re not broken,” he says. “We need to be putting that positive message out there that we need them to stay with us. They have an army of allies behind them, and we’re going to get through this.”

The figures are stark. The number of kids who are chronically absent has doubled since 2016. More than one-quarter of all U.S. public school students missed at least 10% of the 2022-23 school year. That’s equivalent to more than three weeks of classroom time.

Accepting chronic absenteeism as the new normal simply isn’t an option. It can — and must — be stopped. 

The crisis is everyone’s problem, but it doesn’t impact everyone equally. The school districts that have experienced the largest spike in chronic absenteeism are low-income and majority nonwhite, with absentee rates 13% higher in the lowest-income districts than they are in the wealthiest ones.

This trend bears significant long-term costs, as attendance at school is strongly correlated with academic success, graduation rates — and even future job prospects. Students who are chronically absent are more likely to be socially disengaged and alienated, and to have an encounter with the criminal justice system. 

At , the network of public charter schools we help run in northern California, we have made tackling this crisis a priority. Caliber serves primarily low-income Black and Hispanic students from transitional kindergarten — an additional year of school before kindergarten for students needing extra support — to eighth grade. As at many schools, our attendance levels dropped after the pandemic and chronic absenteeism began to soar. During the 2022-23 school year, over 40% of students at Caliber schools qualified as chronically absent. 

At the start of last school year, we rolled out a pilot program to shift the narrative to one of chronic attendance. Our nonpunitive, data-driven approach could serve as a model for other schools.

A key component of our strategy is our Student Wellness and Attendance Team — our SWAAT team. Its members, who include school therapists, administrative staff and other professionals, track daily attendance and maintain a database that enables Caliber’s administrators to detect patterns across time. Using this data, we identified “red flag” days when students were most likely to skip school — like Fridays, especially before a holiday.

To counter that trend, we gave students a teaser: Mystery Fridays, a surprise event one Friday per month that celebrates them. They don’t know which Friday it will be, so there’s a strong incentive not to miss one.

Family outreach has been another key pillar of our strategy. Like many schools, we check in at home every time a student misses school. But we also discuss with parents what material their children missed, how they can get caught up and what future lessons will cover. Our goal is to reinforce the message that when students skip school, they’re missing out on valuable instruction and relationships with peers.

Instead of involving — which fails to engage students or address the root causes of absenteeism, and has been shown to have a negative, long-term impact on attendance — we refer students who miss 20% of class to a support panel. Its members work with the student, parent and/or guardian to discuss appropriate services for underlying issues, including housing instability and mental health challenges. Non-punitive solutions like counseling are prioritized in this early intervention effort.

By the end of the year, we had reduced chronic absenteeism by more than 13 percentage points, from 40% to 26.8%, and we’re off to a good start in 2024: both schools in our network averaged over 95% daily attendance in the first month of the year.

There’s still work to be done. One in four public school districts say nothing they’ve done has been effective in reducing chronic absenteeism, but chronic absenteeism won’t get better on its own. Our experience shows that with positive and proactive approaches, it can be reversed.

The on teens’ mental health are well-documented. But could bullying also shape their future aspirations?

In an effort to address rising incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia, New York City’s Education Department launched an anti-hate hotline, officials said Monday.

The goal is to streamline related to hate, harassment, and discrimination, adding another avenue on top of a four-year-old online portal for all bullying complaints.

The hotline (718-935-2889), staffed with Education Department employees, will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday. Callers can remain anonymous, but the pre-recorded greeting suggests having your student’s ID number or your staff ID number to “expedite your call.”

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“There is zero tolerance for hate in our schools,” incoming Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement, “and this new hotline will help ensure incidents are reported and addressed.”

The announcement was part of a suite of initiatives the Education Department highlighted as the city commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terror attacks by Hamas on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people. More than 250 people were taken hostage and Israel’s subsequent attack on Gaza has killed , including many children, and has led to a.

Prior to the new hotline, students and staff members could report incidents with their school or through a bullying portal the department launched in 2020 in response to a

From September to January last school year, the city saw roughly 440 school reports about incidents related to ethnicity or national origin, up about 30% from the same time the year before, . There were nearly 290 reports related to religion, up nearly 78% from the year before.

, according to the annual school surveys. About 40% of the middle and high school students who responded to the survey reported seeing harassment based on race, ethnicity, religion, or immigration status, up from 30% in 2019.

Many people had been asking the Education Department to create a hotline or dedicated way to specifically report hate-rated incidents, including , who faced a raucous student protest over her support of Israel in the aftermath of the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

Marder recently sued the city for failing to protect her before students began marching in the hallways, calling for her ouster. She has, however, remained at the school — she now helps oversee student discipline as one of the school’s deans — and has been heartened that the new school year has started off relatively calm under a new principal. She spent much of the past year calling on outgoing schools Chancellor David Banks to create a hotline like the one that was just launched.

“I’m very happy they are finally doing this though it shouldn’t have taken a year,” she told Chalkbeat.

As , the Education Department’s Office of Safety and Prevention Partnerships expected to deploy additional staffers to public schools on Monday, officials said. And ahead of Oct. 7, Education Department officials sent reminders to principals about the role of schools to create safe spaces for students to engage with current events — but in ways that ensure schools don’t take political stances, officials said. Students have previously complained that

Additionally, the Education Department this fall is offering new anti-discrimination staff training with a specific focus on antisemitism and Islamophobia. The city’s Hidden Voices curriculum — which focuses on historical figures whose stories seldom get told — is expected to release installments by the end of the school year on Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans, and the city is encouraging of different cultures and their histories. The school system’s is continuing to meet this year, as a way to demonstrate to students how to build bridges across different groups.

This story was originally published by . Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at . 

However, more than 80% of LGBTQ students feel , and nearly 58% have experienced discrimination. These numbers show that many LGBTQ students are not safe at the two places they spend most of their time. This lack of safety has a significant impact on students’ mental health, school performance, relationships and future plans. LGBTQ students are not getting the support they need, and it is resulting in systematic harm.

Teachers are in a perfect position to be the accepting adult LGBTQ students need and to advocate for them in their schools. Students spend thousands of hours in school over the course of their K-12 careers. In that time, they form trusting relationships with teachers, especially those who serve as coaches, club advisers and activity leaders. School is where many explore the names, pronouns and identities that feel right to them. How teachers react to this exploration directly impacts how students feel about themselves and their safety. Teachers also have the ability to push for improvements to policies to make schools safer for students when students can’t advocate for themselves. 

Without this support, queer students are more likely to .

Advocacy for queer students can take a variety of forms, depending on the school and district, as well as state laws and policies that might limit what educators can do.

Teachers can establish themselves as a safe person in a variety of ways, like including items in the classroom such as flags, posters and . This can also be done through clothing and accessory choices including rainbow earrings, lanyards, buttons, bracelets and other jewelry can help students know they are safe.

Teachers can also set up a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance or Gender and Sexuality Alliance). These groups have a variety of names (Rainbow Club, Come As You Are Club) and create a space for LGBTQ students to gather. There are huge when a school has a GSA, even if students don’t attend. These include feelings of safety and better psychological well-being and reduced likelihood of hearing homophobic remarks or negative comments about gender expression or transgender individuals. , meaning that if a school has any extracurricular clubs, it has to allow GSAs. Information about starting one can be .

It is important to know school and district policies about bullying and discrimination. Teachers should learn how students can report this type of behavior and what should happen after they make that report. They should understand the power structure in the school and district so they understand the chain of command. They should also find out who the Title IX coordinator is — — and learn how that system works. This will help them assist students in reporting instances of harassment and provide ground to stand on when they talk to administrators about policies that aren’t followed or students who aren’t being protected. 

Teachers can advocate for specific policies like creating gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms, improving anti-bullying policies and harassment reporting,and addressing dress codes that target LGBTQ students. They should go into these meetings prepared with research and statistics about the needs and experiences of queer students, school and/or district policies, state and/or federal laws, students’ personal observations or specific concerns. It’s also helpful to come prepared with possible solutions as a starting point for discussion, and to follow up to ensure that things change.

Advocating for LGBTQ students is, unfortunately, a long process in most schools — it takes work and it takes courage. Educators may feel alone at their schools, but they aren’t. Lots of teachers are advocating for students in schools across the country, and there are support systems in place. is one place to start. Teachers need to keep fighting the good fight and helping the kids who need it.