With kids back in school, educators brace to help with ongoing mental health troubles

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/09/02/ [login to see] /with-kids-back-in-school-educators-brace-to-help-with-ongoing-mental-health-trou
As the new school year begins, teachers at many schools across the country are adding a new component to their routines: a mental health check-in with their students. The idea is to open up conversations around how kids are feeling emotionally, and to connect them to help before issues escalate to a crisis.

"I've been really impressed with the proactive position that school systems have taken," says Dr. Tami Benton, psychiatrist-in-chief at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the president-elect of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Many schools that Benton works with are spending less time focusing on academics in the first few weeks of the school year, and more time checking in on kids' mental health and school readiness. "They're actually starting to develop their own approaches to assessing the social-emotional development status of kids," she says.

The new approach comes after two and a half rocky years of pandemic, with kids' lives disrupted by bouts of remote schooling and many families in economic stress, which worsened the already shaky state of children's mental health in the U.S.