Action Called for on Legislation to Boost School MH Funding

The legislation aims to expand nationwide a pilot mental health program that has been implemented over the last nine years in eight public schools in Los Angeles. That prevention-focused program, according to Napolitano, has been successful in preventing any documented suicide attempts by students at those schools, despite the fact that 33 percent of students who were chosen to participate had attempted suicide before enrolling in the program.

The legislation that advocates support would expand mental health programs in public schools, only half of which provide such services, through formal partnerships with community mental health entities. It would authorize $200 million in program grants annually for Fiscal 2010 through Fiscal 2014.

The school initiative may help address another priority for advocates of children's mental health: increasing the number of professionals trained to prevent and treat psychiatric illness among the children of active-duty service members and military veterans. Increasing stress on children whose parents have been deployed or returned with combat-related mental disorders has led to psychiatric problems in many of these youngsters. In addition to funding training for school personnel to respond to mental health issues that military families face, the legislation would fund “resiliency training” for students to prevent their developing mental health problems when faced with stresses relating to a parent's military service.

However, there remains a “pervasive shortage” of mental health clinicians with experience in providing needed mental illness “prevention and intervention strategies” for military families, said Janice Cooper, Ph.D., interim director of the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), during the May 6 legislative briefing.

“Family support is a critical factor for families left behind in deployment,” Cooper said.

A 2007 report by the NCCP found that school-based mental health programs that included personnel trained in recognizing and treating psychiatric illness in children of members of the military have been effective in schools with concentrations of those students, including schools near military bases.

The mental health needs of the children of active-duty and retired military members have been one of the lobbying focuses of members of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). Stephen Cozza, M.D., an AACAP member and a former Army colonel, provided a special briefing for congressional staff as part of the early May events that highlighted the emotional and psychological needs of children of combat veterans.

More information on National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day is posted at <www.nmha.org/go/childhood-depression-awareness-day>. Information on AACAP's legislative advocacy is posted at <www.aacap.org/cs/advocacy>.