According to the National Survey of Children’s Health, nearly 35 million children in the United States are living with emotional and psychological trauma. For these children, the effects of abuse, neglect, poverty, violence, imprisonment, homelessness, and loss come at a serious cost to their health and educational attainment. Their traumatic experiences impair their ability to learn, alter their brain chemistry and development, prompt feelings of isolation and helplessness, and may even catalyze the onset of a mental health disorder.
While 35 million children are dealing with trauma of some kind, only a fraction of these students—approximately 8 million of them—have access to a school psychologist. Even fewer students have access to a social worker. Across the nation, only 63 percent of public schools even offer all students a counselor.
As the Center for American Progress has found in a first-of-its-kind analysis, America’s most vulnerable youth must contend with an alarming inadequacy of mental health and counseling services in their schools. Our findings reveal low levels of student access to full-time counselors, psychologists, and social workers in nearly every state across the country, but with significant regional variation. In addition, the few mental health providers who are available in public schools tend to be overworked and undersupported.
[For more of this story, written by Perpetual Baffour, go to https://www.americanprogress.o...nsel-or-criminalize/]
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