Specialty: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Keywords: Schools, Social Media, Adolescents

Background: Public school systems play a critical role in providing youth mental health support in the United States. In March 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, $190 billion in federal funding was allocated to K–12 public schools to address student engagement challenges. A large public school district used a needs-based index to distribute these funds for mental health support, attendance counseling, and family navigator programs. Our study explores how the funds impacted school-based support and student wellness. It also addresses social determinants of health by assessing effects between English and Spanish-speaking families.

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted child mental health and school communities  (Ng & Ng, 2022). Many schools implemented programs to promote recovery, but few have investigated their effectiveness. One initiative, launched by a major metropolitan district, provided funding to expand mental health, attendance counseling, and social services. Our qualitative study explores perspectives on the impact of this investment.

Methods: Twenty-five focus groups were conducted in English and Spanish with 59 parents, 34 students, and 50 school staff across the district in Spring 2024. Semi-structured guides explored service types, impact, challenges, and recommendations. Transcripts were analyzed using rapid qualitative analysis (Hamilton & Finley, 2019) to identify main themes.

Results: Main themes included parent engagement, student wellbeing, social resources, and safety. A reciprocal relationship emerged between access to social services and parent engagement. Staff said help with services like Medicaid applications acted as a "foot in the door" to connect with parents, while parents reported increased interaction with school staff to meet material needs. Safety was both a challenge and top priority. A key impact was hiring more staff, which improved supervision in high-risk areas. For student wellbeing, parents emphasized services for migrant and bilingual students. Staff recommended standardized recruitment and orientation to sustain efforts after the initiative.

Conclusions: This evaluation of a large urban school district impacted by COVID-19 offers lessons for school-based support, including parent engagement, student safety, wellbeing, and community-centered program continuity. Schools and mental health partners can use these findings to better support youth well-being.

Citations:

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2024). K-12 education: Education should improve its data on federal school meal programs and pandemic recovery efforts (GAO-24-106913). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106913

Ng CSM, Ng SSL. Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's mental health: A systematic review. Front Psychiatry. 2022 Oct 18;13:975936. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.975936. PMID: 36329921; PMCID: PMC9622998.

Hamilton AB, Finley EP. Qualitative methods in implementation research: An introduction. Psychiatry Res. 2019 Oct;280:112516. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2019.112516. Epub 2019 Aug 10. PMID: 31437661; PMCID: PMC7023962.