CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Schools work to identify, prevent mental illness

Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier - 8/31/2016

Aug. 31--Fourth in series

WATERLOO -- Jails and emergency departments are the placement of last resort for people with severe mental illness, but their first encounter with the makeshift mental health system is likely in school.

An estimated 5,500 youth in Black Hawk County have a diagnosable mental, emotional or behavioral disorder. That's one in five kids. One in 10 youths have a serious emotional disturbance that hinders their ability to function.

And suicide is the second leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 24.

Those statistics alone make it imperative advocates keep youth at the forefront of their discussions around mental health and mental illness.

But the absence of services for youth -- particularly after the closures of the pediatric unit at the Independence Mental Health Institution and of the Iowa Juvenile Home -- compounds the issues.

That's how four of the five top priorities for the Cedar Valley Mental Health Planning Coalition came to be centered on youth.

"The earlier you can get treatment, the more you can reduce the chance for more complex issues later in life," said Debbie Roth, of the Cedar Valley United Way, who facilitates the planning coalition with retired county public health director Bruce Meisinger. "We don't have enough crisis intervention services to support one of the biggest killers of adolescents and early adults, so that's why adolescents is there first."

The lack of crisis intervention centers for adolescents and children are the top two priorities and screening and prevention for them fall at four and five.

There's no silver bullet answer to increasing crisis intervention services for youth. Like with adults, it's going to require more psychiatric beds and more psychiatrists or other mental health professionals working in the state.

The latter in particular is one of the top goals the coalition is working to address.

Diagnosis and prevention

Many of its efforts, however, are targeted at identifying and preventing a more severe mental illness in youths. Right now, it typically takes four to seven years for someone to be diagnosed or treated for a mental illness; for youths, that can be a huge part of their educational career.

"That's where we've got a lot of opportunities early on, especially in the schools to at least intervene to address those issues so maybe, just maybe they don't show up in our offices when they're 23, 24, 25," said Tom Eachus, executive director of Black Hawk Grundy Mental Health Center and a member of both the mental health planning coalition and the Stepping Up initiative working to decrease the number of people with mental illness in jails.

Treatment services are expanding in schools. Black Hawk Grundy Mental Health has nearly a dozen mental health providers working in Waterloo and Cedar Falls schools, thanks to the help of some funding provided by the Cedar Valley United Way. Students can be taken out of non-core classes to get treatment during their school day.

To earlier identify those students who may need help, the coalition is working with experts and advocates to develop a mental health screening process. If successfully implemented, students would get a mental health evaluation at the same time they get a physical and hearing and vision tests.

Already, some students are referred to counselors and professionals for an evaluation. But the coalition's goal is to make it part of a routine health check, rather than by referral.

Now is the time

Working in tandem with the efforts of the mental health planning coalition is an effort in Waterloo schools led by Donna Kitrick. Kitrick is the coordinator of the school's five-year Now is the Time Grant.

Waterloo schools already had a foundation with the Success Street program that brought in mental health services starting in about 1994.

The Now is the Time Grant grant got its start based on executive orders from President Barack Obama following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Part of that effort was expanding mental health services, including in schools.

Waterloo has used its grant funding to not only increase its mental health services in its schools but also leading a mental health first aid training program to aid with identifying young people in need of services.

The program has trained 354 people in the communities and in the schools, including beyond Waterloo, to be more in tune with children's mental health.

It's not a diagnostic tool but rather encourages those who've been through the training to identify warning signs and risk factors. There's no easy way to identify a youth who is struggling, but the program encourages asking those difficult questions about self-harm or what's behind their behaviors to get at whether they need professional help.

The mental health first aid's key tenets are to assess youth for risk of suicide or harm; listen without judgment; give reassurance; and encourage the appropriate professional help and other support strategies.

The grant is now in its third year, and Kitrick is working to lay the foundation so the program can continue beyond the grant's funding.

"If we can help and develop a plan and get them in therapy and engage them in their recovery process, I mean, our adolescents, one of the things they have going for them is they're very resilient," Kitrick said.

___

(c)2016 Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier (Waterloo, Iowa)

Visit Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier (Waterloo, Iowa) at www.wcfcourier.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.