Growing concerns over a statewide mental health crisis among school-age youth has led the Rhode Island Department of Education to launch a new student mental health support program, state officials announced last month.
RIDE has collaborated with K-12 telehealth provider Hazel Health to offer free mental health services to all students and families for the next year. The California-based provider expects to make its services available to close to 130,000 Rhode Island students.
The partnership aims to “break down barriers to care and build a foundation for healthier students,” said Angélica Infante-Green, the state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, in a state press release. Governor Dan McKee also called the services “a critical investment in our students’ well-being and future success.”
Some leaders in the Providence Public School District have noticed increasing rates of mental health challenges among the district’s students. Toni Akin, current co-chair of the Providence School Board’s Health and Wellness Committee, said students have expressed more concerns to her over their peers’ behavior, especially involving substance use or bullying behavior.
Rising mental health concerns among PPSD students also follow recent reductions in the district’s social workers and teachers due to the expiration of federal COVID-19 relief funds.
The Health and Wellness Committee has since applied for a grant opportunity at the Family Service of Rhode Island, which would help staff two additional clinicians and one manager to “help with this shortfall,” Akin added.
For Akin, social workers play an important role in supporting elementary school students and new immigrant families who have the added burden of securing housing and health insurance upon arriving in the state.
Complaints against PPSD’s lack of support for multilingual learners — many of them new immigrants — prompted a U.S. Department of Justice investigation and monitoring agreement that was settled earlier this month, The Herald previously reported.
According to the PPSD, 65% of the district’s students are Hispanic, 16% are Black, 9% are white, 5% are Asian, 4% are multi-racial and 1% are Native American. The majority of PPSD students “come from homes where English is not the primary language spoken,” PPSD’s website states.
Forty percent of Hazel Health’s providers are bilingual, with 31 languages represented across the provider force. Close to half of the mental health providers also identify as people of color.
Hailey Santos, a 16-year-old student at Classical High School, was not previously aware of the campaign but thought that it would be a useful resource, she wrote in an email to The Herald.
While Santos felt that her school counselors “seem like they genuinely want to help,” the telehealth programs can be a “good opportunity” for struggling students that are “too afraid to speak to someone at school directly,” Santos wrote.
But although Akin thinks the telehealth services make sense while Providence schools are state-run, she felt that these programs cannot compare to in-person counseling, which is “so pivotal in identifying the best course of treatment.”
She also noted that the Health and Wellness Committee was not consulted about the implementation of the program.
Armando Ramos, an organizer with the Providence Students Union and a 15-year-old student at the Juanita Sanchez Educational Complex, had a different view. “I feel like counselors don’t really help as much as they should. They just say what you want to hear,” he wrote.
Beyond individual experiences with counseling services, Akin emphasized that there are other aspects of school that contribute to mental health. She pointed to school programs in sports, arts and music as factors “that helped me graduate high school,” she said.
Santos emphasized the importance of having mental health spaces in schools, describing “resource rooms” at Classical for students who need a break during class or a quiet space during exam periods.
“I feel like they’re pretty effective since people are allowed to just go whenever they’re stressed or just need a break,” she wrote.
