Kids are facing a mental health crisis and schools aren’t able to address it - Florida must fix this now | Editorial
Orlando SentinelDec 19, 2019
America is preparing to close a deadly decade for public school, with children and teenagers slaughtered on school grounds at the hands of young, disturbed shooters.
We know why our schools have become less safe; too much access to guns and not enough access to mental health services.
These factors contribute to the rising number of threats by young people who intend to harm others or themselves, such as the teenage girl who shot and killed herself inside a gymnasium at
But we’re not doing enough quickly enough to discourage another
A powerful eight-month investigation published this month by the
The newspaper unearthed numerous police reports, court records and spoke to more than 50 parents, educators and mental health professionals to help answer a very tough and complicated question: How many other potential killers are simmering in our schools?
Here is the inconvenient truth: A lot more than you think.
A deep dive into public records across 10 major
These are just the threats we know about. It’s unnerving to imagine how many more go undocumented.
These measures address the part of the iceberg above water, not the part below.
We still lack answers about what communities, mental health providers, law enforcement and schools should do about severely emotionally disturbed kids who pose immediate and imminent threats like Cruz once did.
Remember, Cruz’s mother sought counseling services for him before she died from complications of pneumonia, according to the
Kids who are found to pose immediate harm to themselves or others can be Baker Acted, a 1971 law that allows people who are believed to be mentally ill to be held involuntarily for up to 72 hours at a mental health facility.
In
But a Baker Act only addresses the immediate crisis, not the long-term care high-risk kids need to get better.
Even if a mental heath professional determines the child or teenager needs further treatment after the evaluation period and all parties consent, what’s the next step?
“There is a hole in that area,” said
Several local mental health experts and pediatricians say long-term residential care is severely lacking, meaning kids with severe emotional challenges often cycle back through the system. Some end up being Baker Acted multiple times without any real improvement.
The sad reality is that kids with severe emotional trauma can get better with the right support and resources. Raskin said treatments like, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), have been very successful, but it’s also expensive for treatment centers to administer.
The initial training for staff is
Florida’s legislators have underfunded mental health programs far too long.
If we want to move past crisis response to preventative care and treatment for high-risk kids, then legislators need to prioritize this in next year’s budget.
We’ve seen the devastating impact from a lack of vigilance and funding for mental health programs by our state play out inside schools and beyond.
Let’s hope our kids don’t have to see those impacts again in the next decade.
Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor
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