CDC: 4 in 10 students feel sad, hopeless

On Board Online • March 13, 2023

By Lisa Castillo
Special Correspondent

In 2021, 42% of high school students felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row that they stopped doing their usual activities, according to a February report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Nearly three in five teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021, which is double the rate for boys and represents a nearly 60% increase over the highest level recorded in the past decade.

In a new question, 29% of high school students said they experienced poor mental health during the past 30 days, according to the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011-2021. The figure was 52% for youth who identified as LGBTQ+.

New York State is 29th among the 50 states in "overall child well-being," according to the 2022 KIDS COUNT Data Book published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The ranking is based on 16 indicators, including rates of poverty, obesity and teen births. (In education, New York was ranked 15th.)

In her executive budget, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed investing $10 million to develop school-based mental health services and an additional $10 million in grants for youth suicide prevention programs. Last year's budget included $100 million over two years available to eligible school districts as grants to address student mental health issues, administered by the state Office of Mental Health.

Three in four students express negative attitudes toward school

The worrisome trends involving mental health of young people can be traced to before the pandemic hit the U.S in 2020. In fact, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness increased by almost 40% among young people in the 10 years preceding the pandemic, including an increase in suicidal thoughts and behaviors, according to the CDC.

A nationwide survey of more than 21,000 high school students just before the 2020 shutdowns specifically asked about attitudes toward school. Nearly three-quarters of the students reported negative feelings related to school, primarily "tired," "stressed" and "bored," according to researchers at Yale University.

The American Psychology Association (APA) sounded the alarm in a 2010 article entitled, "The Kids Aren't All Right," which was based on an online survey of more than 1,200 children aged 8-17. One finding: parents were out of touch. While 44% of the children reported sleeping difficulties, only 13% of their parents were aware of the problem. About 20% of the children said they worried a great deal or a lot, but only 3% of parents considered their children's stress to be extreme.

"There is no question that schools are doing a lot to address mental health issues," said NYSSBA Executive Director Robert Schneider. He noted that four school districts presented different approaches at a session at NYSSBA's 2022 Annual Convention & Education Expo in Syracuse, while Nassau BOCES presented on the topic of school climate surveys.

The featured school district initiatives all involved partnerships with community organizations, such as:

• Highland Central School District worked with Families Together to develop a Junior Youth Peer Advocate program at the high school level.
• Malone Central School District worked with North Star Behavior Health Partnership to increase the amount of counseling available and with the Berkshire Farm Center for "wraparound services" including mentoring and summer programs.
• North Syracuse Central School District partnered with Contact Community Services for a program called "Suicide Safety in Schools." It provides crisis and mental health training for staff, parents and students.
• South Colonie Central School District worked with the University of Rochester Medical Center and the New York State Office of Mental Health to create a more comprehensive approach that includes universal screening of students in kindergarten, grade five and grade nine.

Improving equity seen as part of the solution

The Rye City School District has worked with Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with Stanford University's Graduate School of Education, since 2018. The nonprofit provides survey instruments and analysis that help schools build plans based on the resulting data. Many questions on the surveys are open-ended, such as "I wish my teacher knew ." or "I wish my parent knew ."

"Challenge Success has enabled us to have a larger conversation in the community about what success looks like to students with differing needs and goals," said Superintendent Eric Byrne. The work "has helped us to support our kids' mental health at both middle and high school."

One of the founders of Challenge Success is Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at Stanford and author of a January 2022 article in Phi Delta Kappan entitled, "A caring climate that promotes belonging and engagement." The article focuses in part on the issue of equity: "Students don't learn as much when they feel uncertain about their belonging."

In an interview, Pope said she feels the pandemic has helped bring the issue of student mental health to the forefront.

"Very few people question us now about the importance of mental health, because they can see it with their own eyes," she said.

In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children's Hospital Association issued a joint declaration of a "national emergency" in youth mental health noting that the pandemic had further intensified the strain on children by undermining the safety and stability of families. Among their recommendations is increased federal funding to ensure access to mental health screening, diagnosis and treatment from infancy through adolescence.

The Mayo Clinic advises parents and teachers to watch for sudden or dramatic changes in children's behavior as indicators of stress, such as: emotional outbursts or greater irritability; trouble sleeping; withdrawing from family and friends; school struggles or changes in school performance; frequent headaches or stomach aches; and increased defiance.