chh@heraldsun.com; 419-6654
CHAPEL HILL -- Orange and Chatham counties will expand school-based mental health services to help bring health care directly to children.
The Orange Person Chatham Area Program (OPC) has worked with mental health providers and the school systems in both counties to ensure 23 part-time therapists are available at schools to provide mental health assessments, short-term therapy and referrals to more intensive mental health services.
"School-based mental health services are a way for kids to experience those in a more natural way," said Lisa Lackmann, OPC's child and mental health planner. "You help kids access services, and you make sure they can take advantage of them."
The school-based mental health services expansion comes in the midst of an ongoing process of changes in the mental health system state-wide. Over the past eight years, the mental health system has shifted from being county-run to completely privatized then back to the more public sector.
Part of the shift involves mingling primary health care with mental health care, said Judy Truitt, area director of OPC.
"I think what is happening is a movement to make treatment not a separate thing that occurs for an individual but is integrated into their existing support system," she said.
In a similar way, school-based mental health care expansion hopes to bring services to the support system where kids spend most of their day - in school, Lackmann said.
"We want to provide services in a more natural setting," she said.
As a result, Lackmann has worked with citizens, providers, school personnel and public agencies across Orange and Chatham counties to bring those 23 part-time therapists to schools and provide constant refresher training geared specifically for school clinicians.
Such training included a seminar on Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress in Chatham County in spring 2009 and a cognitive behavior therapy training in fall 2009.
"Moving in this direction has strengthened our relationship with our partners in the school system," Truitt said. "It's kind of a natural outgrowth of a community-based system."
Increasing the number of clinicians at schools, even if they are only part time, adds a layer of expertise to the school-based system.
"I do think it helps the school building and helps the folks in the school more because they recognize that a lot of their time goes to kids with behavior and emotional difficulties," Lackmann said. "If they have a resource in their building in addition to the school resources it's a win-win for everyone."
More efficient mental-health services also facilitate the school's educational goals, said Jim Wise, student assistance program specialist at Chapel Hill High School. Not only do on-site clinicians eliminate the need for an office visit -- taking time to miss school -- but they also can give students immediate help instead of waiting for an appointment.
"The schools, they want kids to learn," Lackmann said. "When you take away some of their impediments in terms of their behavior and emotional difficulties, they are better able to learn."
And despite an unwillingness to address depression and anxiety among teenagers and adolescents, Truitt said the instances of this type of mental illness among students in high school and even middle school is high. Nationally, 20 percent of children have a mental health crisis at some point, Lackmann said, and according to the Northern County Psychiatric Association the incidences of depression among children and adolescents has increased in the past 40 to 50 years.
"A lot of them are just so loaded up with so much stuff or the feeling that they need to be superkids," Wise said. "That they're not meeting some sort of expectations, and a lot of times it's their own."
Even among middle schoolers, though less prevalent than in the upper grades, mental health services can make a huge difference, Lackmann said.
"If we can reach kids who have mental health issues in middle schools, we can hit off problems down the road," she said.
In this way, clinicians are able to work part time at a variety of schools and assert a presence in an environment where children will hopefully feel more comfortable asking for help, Truitt said.
"One of the things that our system has struggled with forever is the issues around stigma and whether people want to get treatment and how that's perceived within the community," she said. "If going down to talk to someone that's in the office at the end of the hall can in a lot of ways remove a lot of issues around the stigma, it's a great way to approach it."
